Getting gigs in 1971 outside the rock In' roll circuit was difficult, but through Paul's hard work and gimmicky sales technique at last the band began to make inroads into the then lucrative college circuit where they were able to establish themselves without too much difficulty as the kind of band worth re-booking. Paul sold them at first on the basis of the Stones gig ("Remember man, we're the ones who supported the Stones at their last major gig- we're not just any old rock 'n'roll band, if they like us - so will you!"). But just on the basis of return dates, the number of college dates that filled their date sheet grew with an almost magical rapidity. Some of the bands they were booked to support during this time were the top hippie names of the day - like Juicy Lucy and Stone the Crows. There were times when the band had to literally raise an entire audience from their prostrate positions on the floor before they could even begin playing.

Here Paul's habit of introducing the band paid off dividends. He would climb onto the empty stage and stand, a strange, tall figure in his leather jacket and motorbike boots facing a crowd of long haired, dope smoking, kaftan draped students. Peering out at them through the stage lights, he'd say,"1 can understand why you're sitting on the floor, waiting for stupendous guitar and lengthy drum solos. That's OK by me, but I'm here to tell you that for the next hour or so there just won't be any. What you're about to hear is the sound that made bands like Juicy Lucy possible- rock In' roll, the first music to kick out against the establishment and the first music that gave teenagers the freedom to listen to what they wanted, or even play what they wanted.

It's message is direct, it's got balls, but it needs you to make it happen. I ask you, then, to welcome Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets!" On stage then would leap the band, and burst into something guaranteed to wake even the dead and miraculously the audience would rise to its feet, moved by the sheer emotion and energy of the moment The first time Juicy Lucy witnessed this event, which was entirely spontaneous, they wrote a letter to the band a few days later, saying how they had dismissed rock ‘n' roll out of hand before this night, but now they would regard it with a new respect and belief- praise indeed from these high priests of the early seventies. The creed ofShakin' Stevens and the Sunsets was to keep music at its most uncomplicated, basic level - a philosophy regurgitated during the awakening of the punk movement. The idea was to experience it first hand, at a gut rather than a cerebral level. In other words you didn't have to think about it - the music didn't give you time. At a gig at Aberystwyth University with Stone the Crows Paul found himself called upon to defend their basic but adequate equipment: the long haired guitar heroes had panicked when their own equipment took a wrong turning off the motorway in the care of some enthusiastically dopey roadie who must have thought Aberystwyth was a kind of beer and that all gigs up the Ml end in Leeds - a common enough error among roadies.

Placing a comforting hand on the shoulder of the road manager who had, somehow, made it to the gig, Paul kindly offered to place the Sunsets equipment at the disposal of Stone the Crows for the night. The blubbering roadie wiped his eyes and then looked across at the Sunsets equipment which had been set up some hours earlier on stage. "We wouldn't even lower ourselves to rehearse on that rubbish," he cried, a snob to the last and with his mind's eye on the articulated lorry load of gadgets which would have dwarfed this meager spread. Paul folded his arms quietly and looked at him - he wasn't bothered if the band played or not. "Maybe you should," he replied.

It's true that the Sunsets equipment wasn't all that much to boast about, but it did the job and that's what mattered to them. It also went complete into their battered old Bedford van leaving enough space for the likes of Legs Barrett to enjoy and after-gig snooze on the way home without causing excessive bruising to the shins of the others. They could also set themselves up in a matter of minutes, an asset for which the social secretary of Portsmouth Polytechnic was to pray to god in, gratitude on the night that the van broke down before the band were due to playa gig at his freshers' ball. Now, for those of us not privileged enough to attend one of England's illustrious establishments of higher learning, a freshers' ball is an event which takes place during the first week of a college year. It's when all the 17 and 18 year old first year female students, straight from school get the once-over from the more experienced second and third year men and promptly get themselves involved in entanglements which take the rest of their college year to unravel; particularly if they have unwittingly involved themselves in the heat of the moment with one of the randier lecturers. The straight from school first year boys, of interest to no one but themselves and off the reins of home for the first time, usually get roaring, reeling, drunk and disgrace themselves in the ladies' lavatories.

For the social secretary whose task it is to organise the entertainment for these events, and whose reputation with his peers rests entirely on the success of that entertainment, it's a harrowing night. It may even be the first time he's booked anything in a business- like way, dealing with agents he's sure are sharking him, managers who mention VAT on the night for the first time (usually about the price of a take-away Indian meal), and as for degenerate, filthy, slob-like rock 'n' roll bands breaking down on the motorway and ringing him up from a call box (reverse charge) half an hour before they're due to play (sounding drunk) to ask directions to his college- that's asking for heart failure, even for a rugby- playing engineering student.

When the blue, battered and filthy Sunsets van finally careered on two wheels into the Portsmouth Poly car park, nudging the Union Treasurer's brand new Triumph Spitfire into second place outside the stage doors, there were just twenty minutes to go. The social secretary's new green loon pants looked slightly soiled. "Twenty minutes?" said Paul, relaxed as ever. "We've done quite well then. Just find us some beer and leave the rest to us." Clutching some hastily poured pints the guitarists set up their own amps while Paul threw the P A on stage, complete with two open backed speakers (making the need for mQnitors redundant) and a few microphones. The band started their set on time, and needless to say, blew the joint apart. In the Spring of 1971 the band was approached by the press officer of a now defunct record company called B&C, which was by no means a small label for its time and had made quite strident inroads with the Wild Angels, who were "the other" popular rock 'n' roll band of the day largely through the clever hype of their press officer, Max Needham. Although the majority of the establishment music industry found it quite difficult to accept rock 'n' roll as anything but a quaint museum object, Max had just enough pull and lovable eccentricity to raise the Wild Angels to a level where they could at least be tolerated. He mixed with the right types.

In his spare moments he wrote letters to the music press under names like "Bopping Bertie" and "National Assistance Norman". The Wild Angels had an acceptable image, too. They'd come out of a rock 'n' roll joint in London called the Ace cafe in the late sixties and had been cleverly hyped onto the Bill Haley tour of '68 which earned them the kind of credibility that the Sunsets had gained from their brush with the Stones. You needed it, if you played rock 'n' roll then. The Sunsets didn't go a bundle on the brylcream, suspender belts and tattoo image of the Wild Angels, figuring it to be just a little too pat to be real. But they tolerated each other and Paul knew as well that he couldn't argue with the kind of success the Wild Angels were having under Max's guiding hand. Although the band was doing better than ever for live dates, building their price and their reputation with almost alarming speed, Paul was having no luck at all selling them to the record companies. Since the EMI/Rockfield episode of the previous year, doors were firmly closed to them. So when Max called Paul and told him about a proposed B&C compilation album to include them, he jumped at it. Little or no money was involved the band were paid session rates for their time in the studio and as only one track was demanded from them, they hardly covered the expenses of their trip to London to record it.

But it was good to see the album, which was first released under the somewhat misleading title of "Battle of the Bands" (bearing in mind today's heavy metal connotations of that phrase), carrying tracks from the likes of Gene Vincent, TJte Wild Angels, the Houseshakers, the Hellraisers all the major rock In' roll names of the time, coupled with their own. And it introduced them to the man who was to lead them into the next phase of their so far luckless recording career - Donny Marchand. Donny (short for Donald) was an expatriate American who had decided to make a home for himself in Great Britain after an emotional experience with WEA in the States, when he had been excorted from their New York offices and asked never to darken their door again during a period when stress and overwork caused him to behave somewhat eccentrically - even for a New York record company. He was now making a name for himself within the narrow field of rock ‘n' roll in England as a producer, and Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets met up with him when he handled the B&C compilation. He had had some success producing the Wild Angels but in the end the Sunsets were not very happy with the work he did on their one track, "All By Myself', but they knew he had clout in record company circles.

Marchand was fairly confident that if they only left all the negotiating to him, he could swing them a recording deal with none other than CBS Records - a company who had only recently passed on the band. Paul shrugged his shoulders and told Donny to "go right ahead and try" - he figured if anyone could get a deal for them now, it must be Donny - he had friends in high places at CBS plus just enough sheer cheek to fool the A&R men into signing them as next year's big thing. It worked. The band was signed almost on the spot to record an album - with Donny as producer - to be released in the autumn. It was during this period that a few line-up changes occurred within the Sunsets. Trevor the Hawk, the Wild Piano player who had been with them from the early days at the Northcote Arms, made a vital mistake when he moved from his native London down to Cardiff to be near the band while they rehearsed. Things seemed to be going so well for them that he must have thought it was worth the upheaval for both himself and his girlfriend and the band had been booked to support Chuck Berry over a summer tour, which would have capped even the Stones date for them. But just after Trevor had put up his poster of John Wayne, and plugged in his gas ring in his small Grangetown bedsitter, chuck Berry canceled. It was blamed on the World Cup which was taking place at the same time and was collecting all the media attention that belonged to Chuck - whatever the reason, tickets just weren't selling well enough to warrant him even climbing aboard an aeroplane with his guitar.

So Trevor was left a bit high and dry with no major tour, no regular income and his roots torn from under him. Eventually he went home, leaving the Sunsets without a piano player. But only temporarily - the band at the time were connected to a Bristol Agency called Tower who got them the occasional gig and were generally quite riendly and helpful to them. It was one of the agents at Tower - an ex-army mercenary called Bud Godfrey - who put Paul on to Ace Skudder. Ace was a black Bristolian who talked with a strong West Country accent and who could boogie woogie like nothing you ever heard. Paul invited him to come and play at a gig just outside Swansea - the Langham Bay Hotel, and he agreed. They must have looked an odd sight as they met on Swansea Station for the first time - two rockers, one tall and thin with a crew-cut and the other short and stocky with a head like a basket ball resting on a massive pair of shoulders and with a grin which stretched almost from ear to ear across his jet black features. Ace played the gig that night and was immediately accepted into the band.

They had a new bass player, too, George Chick who had replaced Stephen Percy after the whisky smashing episode, who lived in Barry and had been playing in bands around Cardiff for some years. Paul found George at a period of fairly low activity for him with the local bands, so he was pleased to move into the Sunsets, and what for him must have looked like the big league. George was a good rock In' roll bass player, he introduced a wild element into the set which pleased Paul, the wilder the players, the wilder Shaky would go in his efforts to keep his front-man hold, and the better the show. And so the band set out on yet another shoe-string budget album, the second of many more to come in their career, with: Shakin' Stevens on vocals, Rockin' Louie on drums, Carl Petersen on guitar, George Chick on bass and Ace Skudder on piano. It looked like a good team when recording began. But Paul knew that trouble was brewing with Carl Petersen. Carl "The curse" had found a new interest in life, the hippie ethos and all its attendant vices, he was already beginning to wonder if it wasn't time he left the rock 'n' roll scene and caught up with the seventies.

He started to grow his hair, which Paul didn't mind nearly as much as the fancy guitar licks that crept into his playing during the first few sessions in the studio. He had to go. Brought in to replace him for the last half of the album, which by now had a name, "I'm No Juvenile Delinquent" was Mickey Gee, a fine rockabilly guitarist who could play "That's Alright Mamma" just like the original. He wasn't quite what the band had in mind, his sweet licks and beautiful solos had altogether too much finesse for their approach, but he was good, and he stepped in just when they needed him most. Mickey played a few gigs with the Sunsets after the recording finished but you have to be a special kind of person to withstand life on the road with Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets for long. They really were slobs. It didn't take long for the cigarette smoke, inevitably No.6, and the empty beer cans and the excessive life-style to finish him off completely - he split.

Its strange to think that it's to Mickey that Shakin' Stevens now owes much of his success, he arranges his songs, plays on all his hit records and is very much a driving force in the success story of the present day Shaky. He is a highly talented musician, one of the best in this field. To replace Mickey, Paul brought in Willie Blackmore, who came in just in time to be included on the album cover of "I'm No JD", ( short for juvenile delinquent) which was released in the autumn with all the passaz that CBS could muster, including a rock 'n' roll launch party with all the record company staff togged out in rock 'n' roll fancy dress. The band hadn't seen any kind of advance from the album, although it's the usual practice that record advances go to the artist, with an agreed cut to the manager and/or the man who negotiated the deal, of something around ten percent. Donny seemed to have added a nought somewhere. To date neither Paul nor any of the Sunsets have seen a penny in royalties from the "I'm No JD" LP. It has, however, sold something in the region of 300,000 copies. This wasn't the last they were to hear or see of Marchand however. Early in 1972 they were approached by a small record company called Contour, a subsidiary ofPolydor headed by Lionel Blurge that employed Donny Marchand as an independent producer. They wanted a quickie from Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets, and Paul refused at first, naturally. But they persisted with their talk.

The royalties from "I'm No JD" would be sorted out soon, they insisted, and this album was something not to be missed, it was to be one of those budget LP's guaranteed a showing in every supermarket and petrol station throughout the country. Finally Paul agreed, he didn't have too many cards left to play record-wise, and he knew it, and even a budget record is better than nothing. Early in 1972 they went into Majestic Studios in London to do the fastest recording in the history of the band, thirteen tracks were laid down in one long session. One of the tracks was the famous "At the Hop:, laid down on the first session as just the bare bones of itself. At the end of the day, Paul approached Donny and said, "We're still going, we'll do the overdubs now if you like." "Overdubs?" queried the producer, "Sorry, no time for those. This is it." That's why the album, "Rockin' and Shakin' " on Contour Records is memorable as being the only cut of" At the Hop" with a chorus of" At the hop silence...at the hop..." without any of the familiar "bop bops" which usually punctuate that song.

Listen closely to Shaky on "Tallahassie Lassie" and you'll hear the kind of monumental cock-up usually avoided on slightly more serious projects, when he sings "Tally Assie Lassie" and puts a whole new meaning into the lyric. Soon after the disastrous day in Majestic Studios, Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets were booked to appear during the afternoon at the "Disc" Awards at Hatchetts Club, in Mayfair. The band played, watched by their old friend John Peel with Lindisfarne who looked decidedly uncomfortable to see them there. Later on, armed with alcoholic courage, Paul and Louie went to the Conduit Street offices of Contour Records and burst in on Lionel Burge as he was preparing to go home for the evening. "We want our royalties from this album to come direct to us instead of to Donny," they demanded, leaning menacingly over his desk, although in hindsight their demand was totally justified. Lionel Burge was unmoved, however. "OK, if you guys won't play it my way, I'll re-do the whole thing with the Hellraisers," he said calmly. Paul looked at Rockin' Louie, knowing that his bluff had been called. He shook his head. "What can we do?" he asked him. Burge had them over a barrel. The band never received any royalties from the "Rockin' and Shakin'" album either.

Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets aren't the sort of band who would see their bad luck with record companies as sounding any kind of death knell for them as a working unit, however. They knew they were good live, and that was enough for them at the time. A lot of punters knew it, too. They began to pick up the sort of regular live work which some bands can only dream about, in clubs and colleges across the length of the country. Some of the clubs were known rock 'n' roll haunts: rooms in the back of hotels and pubs with understanding or even enthusiastic landlords, and some of the clubs verged on the cabaret scene. Then there was the Watersplash. A law unto itself. Paul was the first contacted about a date at the Watersplash during 1971, when the band had hitherto only been making a name for themselves on the college scene. It was an agency in the Midlands run by old hand Granham Wood who organised everything for them, including the fee, which was respectable. The club was based in Brownhills, just outside Walsall in the West Midlands, and as the band traveled up the motorway in their battered old transit van Paul took the opportunity to give them a little talk about the value of cabaret work to them, how it could serve as a necessary financial backbone to their careers. "Don't blow it, " he told them, "Be cool and stay in order when you're off-stage, these people don't like any kind of bad behaviour, and we want a return booking." The boys agreed to give it a try.

When the van pulled into the small courtyard in front of the club, Paul was instantly enthralled by its seedy elegance. It had definitely seen better days. In fact, when the gambling laws weren't quite so particular, it had served as a class watering hole for the gambling rich of the Midlands. Jaguars made rainbow patterns outside its front door and the ladies' cloakroom was nightly mink lined. Now the once expensive carpets were slightly sticky underfoot and most of the velvet furnishings were torn and stale with cigar smoke. Famous names like Wayne Fontana often left a large part of their earnings at the roulette and card tables. Of course, when the government decided to put gambling establishments under closer scrutiny, it was clubs like the Waters plash that suffered immediately, although not without a fight. When the gambling stopped, though, so did the lifestyle. The big spenders took their money elsewhere, leaving the club to its inevitably sorry fate.

Enter Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets. The band were actually delighted with the sight that greeted them, and in particular by the double act, Brian and Ken, who respectively managed and owned the place and who were to become firm friends through the following months. Ken was the one with the mysterious background, apparently he had an interest in the huge one-arm bandit scene around Walsall and was some kind of big wheel on the entertainment front. They never really found out exactly what his whole story was, people like Ken don't let people like the Sunsets in on everything, even when they've just emptied a bar together. That's one of the rules of survival. Brian, the permanent in-house manager, had an eye like Bill Haley and without him the club would definitely have collapsed. He held things together while all else around him slid away. On the first night that Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets played, the house was half-full and unenthusiastic. The band, under instructions from Paul, were keeping themselves remarkably under control-wild antics were at a minimum during the first set. Paul stood and watched from the bar, noticing that the owner Ken was looking less than happy at their performance and also noticing with some surprise, and not a little respect, that Ken appeared to be consuming superhuman amounts of alcohol. The band were pretty depressed during the break, and joined Paul at the bar for a drink. Or two. The atmosphere was relaxed, and with the help of a few drinks on the house, so were the band by the time they got back on stage for the second act. Ken stood up by the front of the stage and staryed something known in the world of pub darts as "barracking".

"Is this the best you can do, you bunch of greasy timewasters" was one of his loud comments, overheard by everyone on stage. Shaky's response was immediate-he never needed much encouragement to commit acts of excess. Leaping from the stage, he proceeded to finish the set from the tops of tables in a state of wild frenzy, spilling beer, knocking chairs to the floor and forcing the entire audience (such as they were) to their feet in a kind of desperate move towards self-preservation. Ken and Brian loved it. The band were to learn quickly, that the more chaos they could produce at one of their gigs, the more they would please this odd couple, for whom life must have been very boring before their arrival. Soon, the Waters plash was to become a second home for Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets.

One of the resident support acts at the club was a singing duo, composed of two personable young men with rhythm guitars, cavalry twill flares and clean white shirts who nightly sang sweet pop songs to match. One of these guys was called Lenny. He was one of the club fixtures soon to become known to the band during the many post-gig drinking sessions which took place under the encouragement of Brian and Ken. Another character who frequented the club under the guise of occasional compere was Vince. An incident surrounding Vince worthy of note for the way it illustrates how the club was run, was the night he was accused of stealing five pounds and sacked. Vince emotionally declared himself to be entirely innocent of this crime and went on stage to do his compering, but during the course of the night it became apparent to all that his emotion was getting the better of him: each announcement that he made was slightly more slurred than the last, until finally at the end of the night he collapsed, falling forward with his arms outstretched across the stage and his eyes rolled upwards towards the heavens. Ken was in the kitchen at the time, but when Brian came and told him about it, he roared with laughter and reflected that maybe Vince wasn't so bad after all! He was duly reinstated, but his pride was sufficiently damaged for him not to show his face too often after that. So, another compere was needed to take his place.

Lenny seemed the ideal answer. He was a fresh-faced, personable young man- white teeth, clear eyed, just the hint of a tan, shiny black hair and immaculately clothed. He eagerly accepted his new role, along with the offer of accommodation in one of the rooms up- stairs which went with it. Over the next few months, the band didn't have too much occasion to go to the club- their date sheet was loaded with gigs elsewhere, and recording sessions. When they next saw Lenny, however, they received something of a shock. Gone was the clear-eyed complexion and the ready smile. Lenny had become definitely dog-eared. His eyes were bloodshot, and he didn't shave as closely as he did at one time. He sagged. After a few visits, Paul became quite worried about him and approached him at the bar.

He gazed at the tall rocker with a kind of sad, or was it tired, desperation. "I've got to get away from this place, Paul, I've got to think of some way to escape," he said, with a quick glance over his left shoulder at an imaginary eavesdropper. He hadn't, it was revealed after some probing, seen the light of day for six months. His routine was set: he'd compere at the club until the early hours and then drink at the bar until the even earlier hours. Then he'd go to bed with one of the barmaids in his room upstairs and be forced to prove his masculinity before sleep overtook both of them and he would lie in a kind of whirling blackness until the late afternoon, when he would stagger downstairs for a meal, a pick-you-up drink and the whole cycle would begin again. A few months later Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets went to the Watersplash to discover that Lenny had, in fact, managed to escape. Late one night, it seemed, he had climbed out of a window clutching his belongings and a few bottles of scotch, and was never seen again. That was Lenny.

When Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets were wealthy enough to afford roadies, they, too, were introduced to the delights of the Watersplash. Paul recalls one particularly wild gig when the band had played the entire show with their two long-haired roadies lying at either side of them on the stage, smoking huge and instantly recongnisable joints. No one seemed to notice or care. Paul was standing in his usual position at the bar, consuming vodka and lime at a fairly mediocre rate for him, when he suddenly realised that everyone else at the bar was much taller than him. He spent a few minutes pondering what it was about Walsall that made everyone so damned tall. Then it became clear, he was on his knees. They didn't serve vodka in ordinary measures at this place. While recovering, one of the roadies suddenly leapt from the stage, dashed across the room and jumped up onto the bar. Leaning dangerously over he grabbed a large bottle of Drambuie and made a run for it,drinking as he went and hotly pursued by Brian, Ken, Paul and an assortment of bouncers and fellow drinkers who had hitherto been tippling Drambuie. The roadie ran into the room where Brian live, knocking over a television set and smashing it, and, somehow, while still in full flight with the bottle fixed firmly to his lips, managing to get his trousers down to his ankles. Still on the run, but only just, he stumbled into the kitchen where Ken's elderly mother was making sandwiches and where he was eventually captured.

The details of his punishment are not known, but suffice to say that although Brian and Ken weren't altogether pleased by the incident, it was soon forgotten. Later that same night Ken was spotted in the kitchen with a small dog under one arm and a pint bottle of whisky under the other, trying to leave the club. Unfortunately he opened the wrong door. It was the fridge. It took several minutes for Brian to persuade him that this was not, in fact, the way out. The Watersplash was on its last legs, though. They had a DJ who introduced Shakin' Steven's and the Sunsets records saying that they were in the current top ten, and who also made statements like, "What the hell are you lot doing at this club, that's what I'd like to know, there's a far better one down the road." With that kind of low morale, it wasn't surprising that the whole debauched scene fIZZled out during 1972, with nothing but fond memories and hangovers to mark its passing.