Still whispering after fifty years in the music business
As he celebrates half a century’s broadcasting, former Whistle Test host Bob Harris looks back on his time partying with some of the biggest names in rock ’n’ roll…
HAVING partied hard with everyone from Keith Richards to Marc Bolan and David Bowie, the famously laid-back persona of Bob Harris hides a seriously fun-loving character. As the host of the iconic music show The Old Grey Whistle Test during its 1972-78 heyday – when it featured the world’s wildest acts – “Whispering Bob” admits he got used to a certain level of rock star behaviour.
One day, he recalls Keith Richards turning up for a live Whistle Test interview clutching a bottle of whisky.
“We had no health and safety issues in those days,” chuckles Bob in that familiar deep purr. “The show was always live and he arrived 20 minutes in with this bottle, which he brought into the studio having already drunk half of it. It was the old normal. Rock ’n’ roll was kind of like that.”
In an interview marking his incredible half century-long career, the veteran DJ and presenter has quite the catalogue of rock ’n’ roll moments to reflect on. The Rolling Stones, The Who, John Lennon, Led Zeppelin, The Clash, Blondie and Queen… they all clamoured to appear on the much-loved BBC Two music show broadcast late on Tuesday nights.
“The rock bands made their own rules,” says Bob, 74.
And nowhere was this more evident than when, after their interview, Bob joined the Rolling Stone guitarist and a dozen others for lunch and Richards dumped a pile of cocaine on to the table before inviting everyone to partake. “Keith didn’t care who knew,” says Bob.
“And the fact we were in a restaurant in the middle of Knightsbridge meant I didn’t need to be discrete.”
But despite such temptations, Bob says he never dabbled in the hard stuff; a few drinks was his limit.
“I was representing the BBC,” he says.
“I know it sounds corny, but I never wanted to let the BBC down. Always in the back of my mind was, ‘What would happen if, just on a personal level, it meant I wouldn’t be able to go to America again?’ I loved how
I’d been welcomed in by that tight-knit community.”
FOR Whistle Test, Bob regularly flew to LA to interview the world’s biggest rockers, partying with them in Laurel Canyon, the LA neighbourhood that was home to the biggest names in music.
He recalls mild panic when a night out at LA’s notorious rock venue The Viper Room on on occasion ended at a party in the canyon for Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore.
“The limo swung through these massive electric gates and there was a pool and a huge birthday party was in full swing,” recalls Bob.
“It was fabulous and a lot of stuff was going on, but I was very happy just to be an interested observer. But then the police arrived and I was thinking, ‘BBC here! We’ve got to leave!’ But we got chatting to the cops. They weren’t that bothered.”
Despite starting with virtually no budget and the smallest studio in the BBC’s Television Centre, Whistle Test became one of the most influential vehicles for the Seventies rock scene thanks in part to its most famous presenter.
A new generation of musicians, with progressive rock groups at one end of the scale and solo singer-songwriters at the other, found a home in the laid-back, intimate – and relatively ego-free – programme Bob personified.
Unlike some, the Northampton-born presenter, the son of a policeman, was happy enough to bask in the aura of musicians he admired. “Being up there in the canyon sitting by Joni Mitchell’s pool, you’ve got to say they were the best days,” says Bob.
“It was unbelievable. It was the most incredible period of my life.” He hung out
‘Keith Richards dumped a pile of cocaine on the table and invited everyone to partake’
with James Taylor and Carly Simon at their “little Disney castle” on the island of Martha’s Vineyard and played volleyball on Malibu Beach with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band.
There were hairy moments, too, when Bob was in danger. As T Rex’s support act in 1971, playing records before the band came onstage, Bob and lead singer Marc Bolan were mobbed by fans as they left a venue. “The fans were ripping things off the car – it was crazy madness,” recalls Bob. “I was only worried that girls wanted locks of Marc’s hair and they had scissors coming round my face at eye level as they stabbed their scissors towards Marc.
“Marc just looked at me and smiled and said, ‘Whoa – this is amazing!’ He loved the adulation.”
One of Bob’s favourite memories is of a 1975 chat with John Lennon in New York. “It was the day he and Yoko discovered she was pregnant with Sean,” recalls Bob. “He was just so happy. It was lovely.We were two guys who met and just got on incredibly well. I loved that it was like being there with a friend.” As is well known, it all went sour for Bob in March 1977 in a confrontation with The Sex Pistols at a London restaurant.
Bob was punched by Sid Vicious and surrounded by punks angry The Pistols had not been invited on to Whistle Test.
Bob’s recording engineer, George Nicholson, was glassed and ended up in hospital. It was splashed across the papers and it was the final straw.
“It was a scary moment and a horrible experience,” says Bob. “But it’s been raked over so many times now that I always think it sounds so pathetic on every level.”
Bob decided there and then he had had enough of fame and celebrity.
“At the end of the Seventies it all unravelled,” he says. “There’s a price to pay for [paparazzi]-level fame and you’ve got to be able to deal with it and I’m not sure I dealt with it that well.
“I would say to my 24-year-old self, ‘Don’t get too destroyed by the critics and don’t let praise go to your head’. I let both those things happen to me. You’re not the massive superstar you think you are; equally, you’re not the victim or failure you think you are. In the middle is the reality.”
Bob spent the 1980s in local radio before
making his way back to the BBC in 1989. He endured a nasty legal battle with DJ Bruno Brookes over a personal loan in the 1990s, went bankrupt and got divorced. Bob has eight children by four women, which makes his personal life sound every bit as bit rock’n’roll as his musician mates.
But for the past 29 years, he has been happily married to Trudie, mother of his three youngest children. They’ve set up a production company and, with their son Miles, Bob puts on showcases called Under the Apple Tree for emerging music talent.
BOB’S latest personal battles have been not with punk fans but ill health. He is monitored monthly for the prostate cancer that was diagnosed in 2007, and then, in May 2019, he suffered an aortic dissection (a tear in the inner layer of the heart’s main artery).
“When the dissection happened last year it was such a frightening thing, but I refuse to let it define me for the rest of my life,” says Bob.
“Four months later I walked out for Radio 2’s Live in Hyde Park in front of 60,000 people [to introduce country superstar Kelsea Ballerini], because the one thing I was refusing to do was sit in a room frightened about doing anything. Having the practice of going through cancer stood me in good stead.”
But lockdown has been hard for someone who likes to be in the thick of the music scene.
“The last thing I did before lockdown was introduce a concert for Music for the Marsden [Hospital] with Eric Clapton, Cat Stevens and Bonnie Tyler,” says Bob wistfully.
“It was an incredible night in front of more than 18,000 people and then, boom, five months of nothing.
“Now I should be touring with Danny Baker [in their Harris and Baker: Backstage Pass theatre show]. I love to be onstage in front of an audience and at gigs.”
Hopefully, that time will come again soon. Until then, quite frankly, Bob Harris can afford to rest on his laurels.
He’s justly proud of having stayed the course in the fickle world of broadcasting. “I’m sort of amazed, really,” he laughs. “I can hardly believe that my career has sustained in the way it has done. It is an achievement to still be around and still be current and playing new music. I’m thrilled and proud.”
●●50 Not Out: Bob Harris in conversation with Greg James is on Radio 2 at 9pm tonight. Bob Harris presents The Country Show every Thursday at 9-10pm on BBC Radio 2