Sweet Caroline
RADIO CAROLINE WAS THE SHIP THAT LAUNCHED A THOUSAND HITS. MARION McMULLEN LOOKS BACK AT THE BIRTH OF THE PIRATE RADIO STATION 55 YEARS AGO
THE Dave Clark Five were Glad All Over, the Searchers were singing about Needles and Pins and the Beatles were topping the UK charts with Can’t Buy Me Love.
The year was 1964 and the sound of pop music was changing, but trying to listen to the hit songs on the radio was another matter. Pop was only played by the BBC for an hour a week on Saturday mornings on the Light Programme, but pirate station Radio Caroline was about to rock the waves.
Named after Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of American president John F Kennedy, the station was the brainchild of Irish businessman and music manager Ronan O’Rahilly.
He managed people like George Fame and Alexis Korner, but became frustrated at how difficult it was to get airplay on official radio stations.
The solution was to take anchor in international waters five miles off the east coast of England and start blasting out the music.
The rock rebels made themselves at home afloat and Radio Caroline began broadcasting 55 years ago on Easter Sunday, March 28, with a pre-recorded message from presenters Chris Moore and Simon Dee announcing: “This is Radio Caroline on 199 – your all-day music station.”
The first record played was Not Fade Away by the Rolling Stones and the station initially broadcast from 6am to 6pm, seven days a week. It was soon attracting millions of listeners – more than the three BBC radio networks combined.
Tony Blackburn became the youngest DJ on British radio at 21 when he joined the crew on board in July later that year, and presenters also included Johnnie Walker, Tommy Vance, Dave Lee Travis, Keith Skues, Spangles Muldoon, Robbie Dale, and Tony Prince. Their studio was a small cabin with only one porthole.
The Fortunes recorded the pirate radio’s theme, Caroline, and a Radio Caroline T-shirt became the latest teenage fashion fad.
The station became so famous that girls would even travel out in sailboats just to wave at the ship and the presenters on board.
Emperor Rosko, son of Hollywood film producer Joe Paternak, joined the Radio Caroline family after sending a demo tape to Ronan O’Rahilly.
Rosko was often joined during his programme by a mynah bird called Alfie, but said his feathered sidekick had to be gagged after he went away on holiday and left Alfie with fellow DJ Tony Prince.
“When I got back, Tony had taught it how to swear – really filthy stuff. The bird had to go,” Rosko later revealed.
The station inspired the 2009 Richard Curtis comedy film The Boat That Rocked, which saw Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rhys Ifans and Nick Frost as some of the rogue DJs.
Radio Caroline also provided the movie with a lot of its own turntables and broadcasting equipment.
The station’s schooner, Mi Amigo, came adrift in a storm in 1966 when the anchors broke while the unsuspecting presenters were watching a TV show about singer songwriter Donovan. They only realised something was wrong when Dave Lee Travis went to adjust the aerial and discovered they were close to shore.
The crew eventually ended up at Walton-On-The Naze police station and a shopkeeper opened early to provide them with clothing and they were put up at a hotel as “shipwrecked and distressed mariners”. Broadcasting at sea meant conditions were often far from ideal for the DJs.
Emperor Rosko said: “If the sea was rough I would have to sit on my chair and use my legs against the cabin walls to stop me from rolling around. “Sometimes it would get so choppy that you couldn’t play the records – you would have to reply on tapes instead. Glamour it wasn’t.”
There was also the danger of being boarded by criminals intent on raiding the ship. Luckily Radio Caroline was never a target, but the crew had instructions to turn on the water hoses if invaders ever struck.
The Mi Amigo finally came to a watery end in 1980 when it sank after 16 years of broadcasting.
However, changes in the Marine Offences Act, which came into force in 1967, changed the future of Radio Caroline and other pirate radio stations forever as it made it illegal for them to broadcast.
Radio Caroline continues to this day, but six weeks after the law took hold, Radio 1 was launched by the BBC on September 30 with a roster that included ex Radio Caroline DJs Tony Blackburn and Keith Skues.
Tony Blackburn launched the new station with the words: “Welcome to the exciting sound of Radio 1” before putting The Move’s Flowers In The Rain on the turntable. And just who did he hand over to at 9am? A middle-aged ex-crooner called Jimmy Young.