Ron Poston working at the BBC Club

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Thanks to Jan Poston, for sharing this photo from the late 1990s, of her father working at the BBC Club at Pebble Mill.

Ron was a true gentleman and is fondly remembered by BBC staff. He also worked as a studio attendant.

Chris Phipps profile by Roger Shannon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Roger Shannon wrote this profile piece about Chris Phipps several years ago, but the article sums up the man very well)

Roger Shannon talks to Chris Phipps about Birmingham’s rich rock heritage.

Birmingham’s rich music heritage is at long last receiving serious attention, its profile further boosted by the screening of a legendary rock film – and an appearance by one of the city’s cultural torch-bearers.

International music industry consultant Chris Phipps is returning to his home city on Saturday to introduce and discuss a special showing of the Led Zeppelin movie The Song Remains The Same at the Flatpack Film Festival.

It follows hot on the heels of Phipps’ visit to the city’s Home of Metal event last month when he discussed the indigenous origins of heavy metal while also introducing a screening of the 1992 documentary, Motor City Music Years.

Phipps has ramped up a 35-year career in the music industry. Based in the United Kingdom, he has worked in the United States, Japan, Africa, Israel, Holland and throughout Europe.

His passion and enthusiasm for music remains as ebullient as it was in the mid-1970’s when, as a college disc jockey, he began promoting local bands.

He has worked with the best, from Bob Marley to Sting, the Pet Shop Boys and Dire Straits and as a television producer and interviewer, he has put many more bands and musicians on the world’s screens, including Joan Armatrading, Ozzy Osbourne, UB40, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Steel Pulse and the Fine Young Cannibals.

Born in Northfield, he attended King Edwards School, Camp Hill, and studied teacher training at West Midlands College of Education. Phipps was already steeped in vinyl and music, booking local bands such as Carl Wayne and the Vikings (later The Move), The Idle Race with Jeff Lynne, who was later to form the Electric Light Orchestra and Jon Lord (later to form Deep Purple).

Phipps recalls: “Sixth form was great – Steve Winwood was playing in local jazz bands before the dawn of the Spencer Davis Group, Robert Plant was getting up to sing with Alexis Korner at the Midland Arts Centre, Gene Vincent was at St Francis Hall, Bournville, the Four Tops played the Odeon.

“At college, I booked Robert Plant’s Band of Joy, got sacked from the Ents Committee for booking Cream for £360 and then reinstated myself by getting The Scaffold to perform in the Common Room; I booked Paul Simon for £6 for the Christian Club, Black Sabbath, the original Fleetwood Mac, Joe Cocker, Jethro Tull …”

The recent Home of Metal weekend summed up many good things about Birmingham’s popular musical heritage. An event organised by music industry entrepreneurs Capsule took the form of a unique walking tour visiting talismanic venues from the 1960s and ’70s, where heavy metal music was born, bred and bottle-fed. Leading the tour was Phipps, back in his home city, and oozing with enthusiasm.

The Metal Heritage Tour took in Hill Street, where the Golden Eagle pub stood and hosted a blues venue; the Whisky a Go Go, now gone, where Cream once performed; the Crown on Station Street, where Henry’s Blues House was resident; Hurst Street and the legendary El Sombrero, where the young Ozzy Osbourne dreamed up the name Black Sabbath; and close by, the Diskery, a place of vinyl heaven. Phipps wrote the tour guide and advised on its contents and cartography.

Phipps says: “I hope the Walk draws attention to the fact that heavy metal is as valid to the Midlands as Matthew Boulton and the Jewellery Quarter. It’s living cultural history, as valid as the Mystery Plays and Shakespeare.

“It’s industrial folk music and draws on the locality, as UB40 drew on their multi-cultural roots in the next decade. The founding dynasty of metal – Ozzy, Sabbs, Priest – are still touring and unerringly loyal to their fans.”

Phipps holds a unique place in the city’s popular music heritage. When I moved to the city in the late-1970s, people would point out this whippet of a young man, all hair and quips.

At Pebble Mill, he produced reggae and rock shows for BBC Radio Birmingham, now Radio WM, and for a time was their roving interviewer, chewing the fat with major singers and bands visiting the region – Joe Cocker, Rush, Whitesnake, Uriah Heap, Sting (for the BBC drama Artemis 81), Iggy Pop, Captain Beefheart (who threw Chris off his tour bus), the Sex Pistols and a trio of reggae giants in Gregory Isaacs, John Holt and Bob Marley and The Wailers.

He also scooped the occasional exclusive, as when he interviewed Dexys Midnight Runners frontman Kevin Rowlands for television at a time when the frequently verbose singer had refused to speak to the press.

From presenting and interviewing on radio, it was a small step to doing the same on television and the opportunity arose when BBC producer Roger Casstles assembled a team to front the BBC Midlands pop show Look! Hear!, produced at BBC Pebble Mill.

The pairing of Phipps with Toyah Willcox is self-effacingly described by Chris: “We were played off against each other as a punk versus a Keith Chegwin.” Toyah, the Birmingham-born actress and singer, was hot-foot from her infamous appearance in the Derek Jarman movie, Jubilee (1978).

Look! Hear! showcased the region’s post-punk and 2-Tone scene – Duran Duran, The Specials, Selector, Dexys Midnight Runners – making the Pebble Mill a key location in the promotion of the city’s burgeoning musical pedigree.

Phipps was recruited to join Channel Four’s flagship pop programme The Tube as assistant producer, working alongside anarchic presenters Paula Yates and Jools Holland. He says: “The Tube gave you carte blanche to fight your corner and work with every idiom of music. I found myself all over the world – with Culture Club in Japan; Dire Straits in Israel; Malcolm McLaren in Los Angeles; Sly and Robbie in Jamaica.”

His proudest moments were closer to home, involving two Birmingham bands. Chris booked the Fine Young Cannibals and Hollywood Beyond for their first television appearances, shooting on two freezing days in Birmingham at Zella Studios and at the Grand Hotel.

His later career included many hours of television for ITV, via Tyne Tees, and for independent film and television companies, taking in African music, Bob Marley and Chris Rea amongst others.

The programme Motor City Music Years, made in 1992 for Channel 4 and Central TV, was a three-part series documenting popular music in Birmingham from the 1960s to the 1990s.

I worked with Phipps on the series and it benefited enormously from his contacts, enabling us to film previously inaccessible interviewees such as Joan Armatrading, Ozzy Osbourne, UB40 and Duran Duran.

One project involved the boss of Island Records, Chris Blackwell, plus the legendary Bill Graham, owner of the Fillmore in San Francisco. Phipps recalls: “When Bill died, Chris authorised me to search the Fillmore archives. Every band he promoted, he filmed – The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix Experience. Yet because of rights, almost of all of this classic material remains unseen.”

Phipps is looking forward to introducing The Song Remains The Same, at South Birmingham College, Digbeth.

“I saw Robert Plant play to 14 people in 1967 in the Black Horse, Northfield. The band remain an enigma even now.

“I look at the chemistry when two session musicians hired two loose cannons and the power they unleashed. You may leave with more questions than answers, but that’s Zeppelin.”

* Roger Shannon is professor of film at Liverpool’s Edge Hill University and film producer at Swish For more, go to www.flatpackfestival.org, www.homeofmetal.com or http://birminghammusic archive.co.uk

The Queen and Jim Dumighan

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Jim Dumighan showing the Queen around Pebble Mill in 1981.

The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

Malcolm Hickman: ‘I remember it as Roy Thompson and I were on shift in the comms centre when security phoned to say they had a bomb warning. We scoured the area and found a bag under a table in the corner. We didn’t know who’s it was, so security removed it. Turned out one of our colleagues, who was not on shift, had all his cameras gear in the bag as he had been photographing the queen.’

Roy Thompson: ‘Thanks Malcolm for reminding me of that had totally forgotten it. How intrepid we were searching for the bag!!! Do you remember the other time the comms centre was “under attack”. We thought we were being shot at when a loud bang was heard and a chip mark appeared on the large toughened glass window facing the road. Turned out to be the gardener’s lawn mower throwing a stone in our direction from the front lawn. Happy days!!’

Keith Warrender BBC Club Card


BBC Club cards were highly valued, they allowed you access to the BBC bar, with its competitively priced alcohol and food, and endless networking opportunities. The BBC bar in Birmingham was originally on the 2nd floor of the office block, and later moved to a small building across the Bourn brook from Pebble Mill, by the sports field.

Thanks to Keith Warrender for sharing his card.

Tony Newbury

Photo of Tony Newbury and the late Geoff Watts, by Ian Collins, circa 1972. No reproduction without permission.

Photo by John Williams, circa 1974. No reproduction without permission.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tony Newbury died 20thDec 2018 at the Q.E. Hospital.

The following information about Tony is from John Duckmanton, who was a friend of Tony’s since the early 1970s.

Tony was an electronics engineer, he was in the armed forces before he joined the BBC. He worked at the BBC in the 1960s at Carpenter Rd and Broad St, and then at Pebble Mill. He was an inventive and very practical man who built a house in Evesham with Geoff Watts. This gave him a taste for building, and so he left the BBC and became a builder, building bungalows and houses in West Midlands. Tony was a very strong man. There was a fireplace in the Evesham house which needed to be taken upstairs, about 6 of his friends, including John came round and carried it upstairs, when it was up there Tony just put it under one arm and carried it into the bedroom, as if it weighed almost nothing. He was also famous for his tables. He felt that the legs were always in the wrong place, and therefore designed a table with no legs, which was cantilevered from the wall –and incredibly strong.

John remembers an occasion when Tony built a talkback box in the early days of wireless talkback. He was given a talkback in a flimsy plastic box with batteries that lasted around 30mins and asked to rebuild it. As with many things he over specced the modification, ending up with a much bigger box about the size of a house brick, but it was much more robust and with very long-lasting batteries. On another occasion the problem was an insufficiently bright programme countdown clock, when Tony had finished with it, there were complaints that it was too bright and causing reflections on everything!

When Tony worked at the studios in Broad Street he had an old mini whose sliding windows made it very easy to break into. Tony’s solution was to install a fuel switch under the front seat, so that if it wasn’t pressed the fuel supply would cut out after a few hundred yards. He would regularly go searching for it close to Broad Street, if it wasn’t where he’d parked it, as the thieves never found the fuel switch. Once he couldn’t find it, but the police found it a few days later, but said to him that they couldn’t get it started!

Tony had a kidney removed about 20yrs ago but carried on as strong as ever. Several years back, he had problems with the other kidney and needed regular dialysis, however he didn’t get on very well with dialysis and did not have as much as the hospital thought he should. He died from complications with his kidney condition just before Christmas.