Cliffennium Volume 2

11. The guitar first enters Harry's life
14 October, 1956 For his sixteenth birthday, Rodger Webb decided to give his son a gift which would help indulge his new found fascination with rock'n'roll: a guitar.
The guitar cost £27, which represented a substantial financial commitment for Rodger in 1956, and he soon taught he son the three chord progression of G, C and D7 that he'd picked up from his days playing banjo in a trad jazz band.

12. Harry attends Bill Haley concert
3 March, 1957 A concert which would further ignite Cliff's interest in becoming a rock'n'roll star was the Bill Haley concert at the Regal in Edmunton in March 1957 around the time his film Rock Around The Clock was causing a sensation in Britain.
Harry and his friends skipped school to buy the tickets and some, including Harry, were stripped of their prefect badges for the offense. The concert, however, electrified them all with Cliff saying in 1960 'This, I think, was when I knew what I wanted to do above everything else in the world.'

13. Working life for Harry
July/August, 1957 Harry Webb got his first job in summer 1957 picking tomatoes at a local garden nursary.
After this job had finished, he moved into a job that his father had got him at Atlas Lamps. His job was to check orders against the different trade discounts and passing the information on to regional dispatch centres.
He found the job dull and used to spend his time trying to figure out how to become a singer, with most of his four pounds a week pay packet going to his mother.

14. The Drifters debut
March, 1958 After a short stint playing skiffle in a band called Dick Teague's Skiffle Group, Harry and fellow band member Terry Smart left to form a new band that would, in various forms, remain with Cliff for the next ten years.
With school friend Norman Mitham, they rehearsed in the front room of Harry's house in Hargreaves Close playing rock'n'roll classics such as Blue Suede Shoes, Heartbreak Hotel and Rock Around The Clock. Cliff's sister Donna would write down the words from the records, while the band figured out the chords.
Initially, at Terry Smart's suggestion, the band was going to be called The Planets, but Harry and Norman didn't think it sounded quite right. They looked up 'planet' in the dictionary and saw that it came from the Greek word 'planetes' which meant 'wanderer' or 'drifter' and decided upon The Drifters. They also decided that their first album cover would feature them all sitting in a toboggan driving into a snow drift.
The group made their grand debut at the annual dinner dance of the Forty Hill Badminton Club between Cheshunt and Enfield. Their fee for the evening's performance was the princely sum of ten shillings.

15. The first manager for The Drifters
March, 1958 One evening not long after their debut a man who was to become their first manager spotted the drifters playing at the Five Horseshoes pub in Burford Street, Hoddleson.
This man was John Foster, who drove a tracter on a sewage farm and who's greatest experience in the rock'n'roll world was once standing next to early British rocker Terry Dene at the legendary 2i's in Soho. Despite this lack of experience, he was struck by what he saw, particularly in Harry, later recounting that 'something told me, yes, he's going to be big. He's going to be really big.'
Foster, who was drinking with his mates at the bar, walked up to the Drifters after their set and simply asked them if they wanted a manager. A little taken aback, they laughed 'Ok, you're on!'

16. The Drifter's first appear at the 2i's
April, 1958 One connection John Foster did have was that he was on speaking terms with manager Tom Littlewood who booked acts into the legendary 2i's coffee bar on 59 Old Compton Street in Soho, London.
The 2i's was the Mecca of British rock'n'roll at the time and had launched the countries biggest rock'n'roll stars of the time, Tommy Steele and Terry Dene. The bar was originally owned by the two Irani brothers (hence the name) who sold it to two flamboyant Australian professional wrestlers, Doctor Death (Paul Lincoln) and 'Rebel' Ray Hunter who had transformed the originally langusishing establishment into a thriving icon of the rock'n'roll era.
After an audition for Tom Littlewood, they were booked for that night which turned into a two week booking. While they wouldn't be discovered there, the booking at the 2i's led to a chain of events which would see Harry Webb becoming the country's biggest rock'n'roll star by the end of the year.

17. Ian Samwell joins The Drifters
April, 1958 During the first week of their run at the 2i's, a young man who was nearing the end of his national service with the RAF came up to The Drifters' table during an interval to offer his services as a lead guitarist.
Ian Samwell, who, like Harry, had been playing in a local skiffle group, was auditioned on the next Saturday afternoon and began playing with The Drifters that night. He would go on to write them a song which changed rock'n'roll in Britain forever.

18. Official fan club formed
April, 1958 On the same night Ian Samwell first saw The Drifters, was a confident and chatty sixteen year old, Jane Vane, who had come along with her boyfriend to celebrate her birthday.
She was very taken with the group and stayed behind to get Harry's autograph when she asked him if he had an official fan club. He laughed and explained that he had only been playing rock'n'roll, at which point she offered to start up an official fan club with six members.
The club was to last until 1966 and, at its peak, boasted a membership of 42,000.

19. Harry Webb becomes Cliff Richard
April, 1958 While performing at the 2i's, The Drifters were approached by a man named Harry Greatorex who ran the Regal Ballroom in Ripley. He would offer them a fee of five pounds, with an extra ten pounds for expenses. The only problem was that he wanted to bill the group as 'Harry Webb and the Drifters' and Harry objected as he didn't like the sound of his name.
To solve this problem, John Foster took the band to The Swiss, which was a pub in Old Compton Street near the 2i's. They started by playing around with the name of a current British singer called Russ Hamilton. The came up with Russ Clifford which Harry didn't really like, then Cliff Russard, and then Cliff Richards. Ian Samwell then suggested that the drop the 's' to make in Cliff Richard as a tribute to Little Richard and also so when people called him 'Cliff Richards' he could correct them and then get his name mentioned twice.
Cliff Richard and the Drifters made their debut on Saturday 3 May and the Regal Ballroom, their biggest booking so far.

20. Cliff Richard and the Drifters cut their first demo
June, 1958 Making their second appearance at the Gaumont Theatre in Shepherd's Bush, the Drifters decided to invite an agent that they'd randomly chosen out of an entertainment newspaper. The agent they chose was George Ganjou who they knew nothing about, but who had started off his showbiz career as one part of a cabaret act called the Ganjou Brother and Juanita. He knew nothing about rock'n'roll and proudly referred to himself as 'square'.
Despite his disinterest in rock'n'roll he cancelled a weekend of golf to come and see the shows, and liked what he saw enough to suggest that they cut a demo record. Early the next week they cut a demo in a small studio above the HMV record shop in Oxford Street. They recorded Elvis' Lawdy Miss Clawdy and Jerry Lee Lewis' Breathless. These recordings were released forty years later as part of The Rock'n'Roll Years box set.