LITTLE STAR

Twinkle

David Pearson peers into the more shadowy recesses of the discography

During the 60s scores of young British girls passed through the doors of recording studios to seize their opportunity for fame and fortune (see RC 516). The majority were from ordinary backgrounds and either still at school or else in routine jobs in shops, factories or offices. Most were not songwriters, and a lucky few cracked the charts with one, maybe two, hit records, the rest fading into obscurity as quickly as they had appeared.

Twinkle didn’t quite fit the mould. She did have a couple of hits: the hugely successful “death disc”, Terry (Decca F 12013, 1964), notoriously banned by the BBC, and the slightly less successful follow-up Golden Lights (Decca F 12076, 1965). But she was indeed a songwriter, penning both of these and a load of others.

And by no stretch of the imagination could her background and upbringing be regarded as “ordinary”. She was born Lynn Ripley in Surbiton, Surrey where home was a 20-room mansion. At her private school she rubbed shoulders with Camilla, later to be Duchess of Cornwall and Queen Consort. Her dad, Sidney, was a prominent local Conservative politician with a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce. But more of him later.

Twinkle’s recording career with Decca lasted only a few years and by 1967 she had pretty much decided to call it a day. Over the next few years, however, she recorded and released a few discs that were some way removed from the standard Brit Girl genre. At least a couple merit more than passing interest, while one can best be described as a curio.

In 1969, her Decca days behind her,

Twinkle teamed up with Manfred Mann’s

Mike d’abo, recording four great tracks, two of which were released on Andrew Oldham’s Immediate subsidiary, Instant: Mickey/darby

And Joan (Instant IN 005, 1969, £15). The Tamla Motown-inspired A-side was a high energy powerhouse which oozed commerciality and seemed bound to be a hit. “Great production,” commented Bob Stanley in 1997, “really catchy chorus, verging on Eurovision. Given the right label and decent distribution it would definitely have been a Top 10 hit.” Before it could pick up any meaningful promotion, however, Oldham’s label succumbed to ongoing financial problems and collapsed, taking with it what was arguably Twinkle’s best shot at the Top 10.

The subject of the song had been handsome actor/model, Michael Hannah, with whom

Twinkle had become besotted, doing whatever she could to keep hold of him despite his dalliances with other women. It was during a period when she was unsigned and working in music for advertising that she recorded a suite of self-penned songs inspired by this relationship.

Twinkle was fond of d’abo and happy when he agreed to produce an album. She test-drove the songs at a concert at Watford’s Palace Theatre, with Colin Blunstone headlining,

Duncan Browne on guitar, and Hannah himself listening from the back of the theatre. “I didn’t need the money,” she said, “but I wanted to show people that I wasn’t just a one-hit wonder.”

The set went down well so recording sessions were arranged at London’s Sarm Studios in Aldgate. Shortly before they began, tragedy struck. A Turkish Airlines DC-10 came down shortly after take-off from Paris, with no survivors. Among those who perished was Michael Hannah. Twinkle was naturally distraught, but somehow or other she pressed ahead with the sessions and her 10 songs were committed to tape. D’abo was on piano and Duncan Browne again played guitar. Madeleine Bell provided backing vocals and Del Newman did some of the arrangements. But the master tapes were lost and the album was never released. A promotional single did appear, however: Days/caroline (Bradley’s Records BRAD 7418, 1974, £15).

The years went by and it wasn’t until around 2003 that the recordings were rediscovered courtesy of David Evans, a friend of Twinkle’s who’d been heavily involved with the whole project, had attended the sessions and had kept a copy of the final mix. The tape-to-cd transfer was difficult but finally achieved, and the CD released by Acrobat in 2003.

Those who only know Twinkle through her Decca recordings will be amazed at her songwriting qualities, which show a real lyrical sensitivity. The song titles are references to elements of Hannah’s life and her relationship with him. Bowden House was the private mental hospital to which Twinkle was admitted following a suicide attempt. Jane is the name of Michael’s mother, whom he never knew. Caroline was Caroline Grey, a divorcee with whom Hannah moved in at one point... and so on. The collection as a whole has a satisfying unity, and the maturity shown in her writing has taken us a long way from Terry.

It was Lynn’s dad Sidney who had bestowed the Twinkle moniker on her. He owned a printing company and was very active in local politics, becoming alderman and Conservative chairman of Surrey County Council. He and his wife had lavished all manner of gifts upon her, including leather catsuits, a pair of silver lamé boots and a maroon bubble-car.

But he was also an amateur songwriter, and though he had little interest in the pop world, he did encourage the musical talent that his daughter showed early on, as she later recalled.

“Apparently, when I was three, I sat down at the grand piano in our drawing room, and played the National Anthem right through. That was the first time anyone realised that I had a natural ear. So my mother took me to see the piano professor at the Guildhall School of Music, and he said that if I continued the way I was going, I’d have a teacher’s diploma by the time I was 12. He recommended a local piano teacher. I started playing in concerts when I was four – but I just got bored with it, and gave up when I was eight.”

When Twinkle wrote Terry, her father played the song to anyone who would listen and she recorded it at a studio in Denmark Street. DJ Annie Nightingale recalled how, at gigs, “He would come and whack people in the queue with his umbrella shouting, ‘Come on, get your money out, come and see my daughter…’”

Given this history it perhaps wasn’t all that surprising when Lynn and Dad made a record, calling themselves Bill and Coo. Released in 1975 it was titled Smoochie/always I Love

You (Bradley’s Records BRAD 7153, £20).

The A-side is not a bad song and has a nice string arrangement, but isn’t really helped by Dad intoning the lyrics in the background.

Ian Canty, in the sleeve notes to the Girl In A Million CD compilation, describes the release as “something that should have been… restricted to Christmas family parties, an ill-judged pair of comedy songs that wastes her talent.”

That aside, Lynn Annette Ripley was, indeed, possessed of a fine and distinctive songwriting talent and deserves a place in British pop history. The mark she made goes well beyond that banned hit record about a biker called Terry. She was, along with the likes of Lesley Duncan, Friday Brown and Barbara Ruskin, one of

Britain’s very first female singer/songwriters.

The Twinkle tracks mentioned in this article can be heard on the compilations:

Michael Hannah: The Lost Years (Acrobat ACFCD 001, UK, 2003) and

Girl In A Million: The Complete Recordings (RPM RPM D 545, UK, 2019).