The E.B.C. Archives - FROM RUSSIA WITH LUCK
Original articles written by Ray Ennis
and first published in The Beat Goes On magazine

For over six years, Ray Ennis of The Swinging Blue Jeans enthralled sixties music fans with his monthly article published in The Beat Goes On magazine about the antics of the legendary Elbow Bending Club. Now, with Ray's permission, we are re-running these articles on the web.

What is the Elbow Bending Club? Well, no-one really knows except for the members themselves - and membership is restricted to 60s performers and other carefully selected people from within the business!

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FROM RUSSIA WITH LUCK
THE EBC ESCAPES THE RUSSIAN INVASION

When you consider some of the scrapes and near misses we have been involved in, being part of the Elbow Bending Club is something akin to being part of Ml5!

One such escapade happened at the end of a Swinging Blue Jeans tour for the Czechoslovakian Ministry of the Interior in 1968. It was at the time the Czech government was headed by Alexander Dupcek and the Czech people were enjoying comparative freedom, at least they were compared to the rest of the eastern bloc countries. One example of the freedom was, that men could grow their hair long without fear of being dragged off the Street into the nearest police station to have it sheared off in a convict type crop. Pre Dupceck, anything remotely associated or resembling the west was banned and dealt with in a very severe manner. Mind you, although the people were beginning to enjoy themselves there was still an atmosphere of distrust and some were still scared to voice an opinion.

On arrival we were met at the airport by a member of the British Consulate who requested that we behave like gentlemen and do not let our country down (as if we would!). We were then introduced to our tour manager, a chap by the name of Paul (who had very long hair) and our coach driver Rolly (who was bald)... obviously Paul was good at hiding while Rolly wasn't and in his youth must have made a number of unexpected visits to his local cop shop for a slight adjustment to his head!

On the way to the hotel Paul explained how bad it had been before Dupceck, but was still enthusiastic about communism in general, which I could see was going to cause quite a few arguements over a beer during the coming weeks, and I wasn't wrong!

As guests of the Czech government, they had booked us into the best hotels. The first thing we noticed was how wonderful the beer was, then how bad the service was. When we enquired from a waiter as to why it took so long to be served (seeing how we were the only customers) he simply shrugged his shoulders and maintained the same bored look he'd had on his face when we'd arrived. Les "Thumper" Braid came up with the suggestion that if he didn't like his job he could always go and work in another hotel, to which he replied "Same boss, same money"!

After the gigs, which were quite riotous affairs due to them having been starved of western music, apart of the odd snatch of Radio Luxembourg behind closed doors, which was quite difficult to listen to as the radio station of the Czech government tended to transmit on the same frequency, we returned to our hotel where the only consolation was that it had it's own night club.

On our first visit to the said night club,Thumper Braid's eyes lit up when he became aware that the resident trio consisted of drums, string bass and accordion. I think his love of the accordion had eminated (a) from his oft' denied gypsy background and (b) from the various positions he had found himself in after the odd gallon (or two) of nectar, and then being cajoled into playing piano (sometimes on his back), hence his preferance for the accordion as the piano tended to put
too much pressure on his chest!

The party piece of the night club trio was to waft between the tables when playing the latest western hit, the big one at the time being Tom Jones' Delilah. On our next visit to the club Thumper couldn't contain himself and as the trio passed our table Les jumped to his feet and grabbed the bass then proceeded to stagger around the club trying to look like part of the band. The patrons thought this was wonderful (they'd obviously been starved of real entertainment) and we never had to pay for another beer on our subsequent visits, it seemed all the audience wanted was "Less", "We want Less" they would chant, I think it was Les, or did they mean "We want less of Les?"

Another great experience were the many sing-songs on the coach ably backed by a couple of crates of good Pilsner beer, and nobody joined in the songs more robustly than our driver Rolly. It's a custom when visiting a foreign country for the host and the guest to sing songs appropriate of their own home town. Rolly was overjoyed when we agreed to do this. We opted for a rousing version of Maggie May, a whimsical little ditty which tells the sad story of a lady of ill repute who paraded her wares for seafaring gentlemen in Canning Place, Liverpool. On our request for a typical Czech song, Rolly burst forth with with Roll Out The Barrel. Immediately four scouse voices cried out in protest claiming he had to sing one of his own songs. With much wild gesticulating of arms Rolly pulled in to a lay-bye and proceeded to give us a lecture on World War II and well known songs from the same, and was quite adamant that Roll Out The Barrel was written by a Czechoslovakian. Of course we didn't believe him, but research later proved him to be right and a little bit of EBC honour was lost that night!

Throughout the tour we'd noticed a lot of jet aircraft overhead, but at the time we thought nothing of it as there was always a lot of military activity in the country. When our time came to leave, Paul and Rolly gave us a great send-off although Paul was still adamant that communism was the way of life and there was no way he could ever accept our capitalist way of life in Britain. We bade them both a fond farwell and said we hoped we would see them again one day. Little did we know how soon it would be!

Two days after we left, the Russian's invaded Czeckoslovakia!

About a week later we were doing a gig in Fulham when we noticed a familiar face in the crowd. Yes, it was Paul (I'll never come to Britain) Roadie. He told us he'd escaped over the border and made his way to England with few possessions, and was amazed at the help he'd received here. When asked if he would be going back after he'd sampled our western capitalism he simply replied to the effect "**** that for a game of soldiers ....at least he had remembered some of our quaint English sayings!

PS They say bad luck always comes in threes and that ain't no lie! First my car packed up, then Hughie Green died, and to top it all, I am now informed that the Swinging Blue Jeans are doing a gig with Dave Berry on 29th June Life's a bitch!