World in My Eyes: The Autobiography

by Richard Blade

  John Warner

  Bobbie Junior

  Anders nodded and described how my audition would go. He wanted me to come back tomorrow and observe Bobbie and John playing to the crowd to learn how his club worked, then the following evening he would have a mobile disco unit set up in a restaurant he owned and I would have my audition there. He couldn’t risk doing it at the Key House itself. It was the hottest club in Oslo and he couldn’t allow a new DJ he wasn’t familiar with to just turn up and spin.

  I understood and said that was fine with me and asked what time he would like me to be there the next night.

  “I want you here at opening tomorrow so you can get familiar with how we turn everything on and set it up for the evening, and stay through closing so you can do the same with the shutdown.”

  “Seven until midnight, right?”

  Anders nodded in reply. I explained that there was a problem. I was staying on Nesodden and the last ferry left at 11pm.

  “Then stay in the city,” Anders suggested. “I have a place for you at my flat.”

  I thanked him and said I’d work out something for sure. Then I asked him if I could go up to the booth and watch Bobbie DJ. He thought that was a good idea and I headed back out to the club.

  In between records I told Bobbie what was going on and he paused for a moment and looked me up and down. I didn’t know why. Then he said that he would help out. He waved one of the cocktail waitresses over and explained the situation. She gave Bobbie a knowing nod and introduced herself.

  Hilde was a good-looking blond in her mid-twenties with eyes that hinted of experience well beyond her years. She said I could sleep at her place those two nights, it would be no problem. We’d go there after the club closed tomorrow. With that taken care of I went out onto the dance floor to tell Tove the news.

  As the ferry sliced through the black, mirror-smooth waters of Oslo fjord, Tove and I huddled for warmth under the star-filled sky. Normally I would have been trying to name the constellations or spot a meteor burning up as it entered Earth’s atmosphere but instead my mind was racing. A gig at one of the hottest clubs in Scandinavia. That would be the answer to so many of my short-term questions; how to get away from the boredom of the English winter, what to do for a job over the next few months, a way to continue DJing . . .

  Tove’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Maybe you should go tomorrow if you really have a place to sleep?” I looked down at her. “You can come back, of course, if it doesn’t work out. I invited you to stay so you can be at my house for as long as you like, but if this is what you want then you must do it.”

  My smile provided Tove with her answer. I gave her a little hug and replied, “ Takk sa mye,” Norwegian for “thanks so much.”

  I was eager to be back in Oslo and was anxiously waiting outside Key House when the first workers arrived to get the club ready for its opening that night. They let me right in assuming I was one of the English DJs.

  I needed to get to know the DJ booth and studied it intently. The mixers were standard—four inputs for music, two for turntables and two for cassette decks—all controlled by rotary faders which were common at the time. There were also two microphone inputs which was great as it gave the DJ the option of a second mic in case there was someone else in the club, like a visiting artist, who wanted to say hi to the crowd. But the amplifiers were the most interesting thing in the booth.

  In most installations they would have been tucked away in a rack and fan-cooled to keep them from overheating and shutting down. The prevalent brands in the industry were Orange, RSD, Kustom and Peavey. But at Key House they weren’t using pro gear for the heart of the system; instead they had installed four high-powered home-stereo amplifier/receivers in each booth to drive the speakers and had proudly mounted them on display in a vertical hanging position. They were in plain sight and a complete mish-mash. One was a Marantz, two were Technics and one was a Sansui. It should not have worked but somehow it did and sounded amazing.

  John Warner told me that once a month on a Sunday afternoon the club would open for a listening party where they would switch the system to Quadraphonic and play the latest albums from Pink Floyd, Santana and Eric Clapton all the way through. At a time when mono was the accepted norm for a club system this was nothing short of revolutionary. Apparently the audience really appreciated it because it was incredibly popular and as the monthly four-hour session came to a close the kids would roll out on the street “stoned” from the combination of the high-fidelity music and Jägermeister shots.

  That night my training with Bobbie Junior went really well. I watched the ebb and flow on the dance floor and got a feel as to what worked and what didn’t. All the very latest American disco and soul were big as was English glam rock like Bowie, Queen, Gary Glitter and Roxy Music, and my old stand bys, foot-stomping rockers like Free, “All Right Now” and Slade, “Cum On, Feel the Noize”, were guaranteed to pack the floor.

  Bobbie let me spin a thirty-minute set while he partied with his fiancé, Brit. They both gave me a thumbs-up from the floor. I was doing good. Tomorrow night, bring it on. Everyone would be talking about the new DJ in town and his name was Dick Sheppard!

  Anders seemed very pleased at the attention I was paying to the crowd and the music. The only thing that seemed to bother him was that I was not drinking.

  “All my DJs drink,” he said. “It loosens them up.”

  But I’m not a big drinker and I needed to see—and remember—how everything worked. He had shots and beer sent up to me in the booth throughout the night but I turned them all down. This was my chance and I was focused 100%.

  Anders asked me several times if I was certain that I didn’t want to stay at his flat, and just to be sure he gave me his address and said I could come over anytime if it didn’t work out at Hilde’s. But I wasn’t comfortable staying with “the boss”; that might upset the other employees thinking I had an unfair advantage and ultimately work against me. I wanted to stick with Hilde’s offer, plus she could let me know the ins and outs from a staff member’s perspective and that is so important.

  Hilde lived just over a mile from Key House on Steinspranget in a cute little apartment she had decorated with posters of Monty Python and Frank Zappa.

  Her roommate, Eva, was a waitress at a nearby restaurant and she had already made up a bed for me on their fold-out couch. We stayed up late that night swapping endless lines from Monty Python, “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition” and “This is a late parrot. It’s a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn’t nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies.”

  In my photo album I have a picture of them and a caption that I hand-wrote that says “Two of the kindest girls that I ever met.” They gave me a place to stay, food and drink and asked for nothing but friendship in return. They became a big part of my life for the next month.

  Saturday rolled around and audition night was here. I wanted to get to the restaurant early to check out the gear. Hilde knew the location and walked with me to make sure I didn’t get lost. As twilight fell across the streets of Oslo, Hilde excitedly pointed out a black-and-white flyer taped to a lamppost. It was in Norwegian but I recognized the words printed in block letters:

  FRA STORBRITANNIA ENGELSK DJ DICK SHEPPARD

  It was a poster that Anders had put out advertising the evening to make sure there would be some people there. I had picked up a little Norwegian and was learning more each day so I was able to make out the key words. “Ti krone” (ten krone to get in), “Rock’n’Roll, Pop, Disco og Gammaldans”—of course I knew the first three but what was Gammaldans?

  Hilde laughed and explained that it was the music used for Norwegian folk dances, popular with the older crowd. My Gammaldans experience was obviously very limited so I was hoping that no old people would show up – if anyone came who was over thirty I would be in trouble!

  As we got closer I saw at least a dozen more posters and flyers taped on pol
es and pasted on walls. I have to admit that it was quite a thrill to see my name plastered up in a foreign city.

  The word restaurant was an exaggeration; this place struggled to be a cafeteria on its best day and was lit with hideous flickering fluorescent strip bulbs. It had all the ambience of a truck stop. But there at the end of the long white room was a DJ console set on a Formica table with a pair of big black speakers on either side sitting on the floor. I’d seen worse.

  The manager took me into his office where two milk crates full of vinyl albums were locked up and waiting for me along with a box of seven-inch singles. He gestured to them and it was obvious that he’d done all he was going to do. As far as he was concerned this young wanna-be DJ was on his own from here on out.

  There is nothing heavier on the planet than a milk crate full of vinyl. If you don’t believe me just ask any old-time DJ. No wonder most of them have back problems. I lugged the boxes out and plopped them on the floor behind me. I fired up the system and dropped a needle on the record. It didn’t sound half bad. I tested the microphone with the time honored “1, 2, 1, 2, 3.” I was good to go.

  Even as I was basking in that “I can make this work” feeling, the manager ran up and yelled, “No music now. Not until eight when we will have the dancing. Turn it all off.”

  As he stomped away I realized that no matter where you go in the world there’s always one person who will have zero respect for the DJ and go out of their way to treat you like shit.

  I busied myself by sorting through the records and getting to know the music I had available. To my horror many of the albums were Music for Pleasure. That was a cut-price series that had started in the sixties and featured all the latest hits on them, kind of a “best of the charts” compilation. But they weren’t the original songs!

  To save money and licensing fees the MFP people would hire a group of session singers and musicians to come into the studio and re-record the current hits as close to the originals as possible. Unfortunately nine times out of ten it was painfully obvious that it wasn’t the real thing; after all, no one can perform a song by Stevie Wonder or Diana Ross and reach those notes and convince anyone it’s the genuine Tamla Motown article!

  In preparation for disaster hitting and emptying the floor with one of these counterfeit hits I made sure I had a couple of songs to keep “in my back pocket” that would be certain to have the punters pushing past each other in their race to get back out there dancing.

  I pulled Suzi Quatro (“Can the Can”), Hamilton Bohannon (“South African Man”) and as I was in Scandinavia, ABBA, with the record that had won the Eurovision Song Contest for them just six months previously, “Waterloo.” I was making damn sure I wasn’t going to go down like Napoleon that night.

  They cleared away the tables at eight to open up an area to be used as the dance floor and surprisingly people began streaming in. The posters and flyers had worked! Within thirty minutes the cafeteria was crowded and I had dancers on the open linoleum area that masqueraded as the dance floor.

  I cranked the music and was bouncing around like a crazy man behind the console as Anders walked into the restaurant to assess my audition. Great. He’d picked the perfect time; it was still early, the floor was already packed, all I needed to do was bring the show. I figured I would take a chance and switch it up. I grabbed the mic and with a “Are you ready to rock and roll?” slammed into The Doobie Brothers “Long Train Runnin’.” Now you needed a shoe horn to find a spot on the floor and two waiters scurried out and moved more tables to make space for the dancers.

  As the record started to fade I decided to push the limits; I knew I had to make an impact and stand out. Among the singles was a new track that had only just been released in the shops. I’d had it for two months as a record company promo and it had worked fantastically for me with the Scandinavian students in Torquay this past summer. It should work here.

  I yelled into the mic, “Here’s something new for all you rockers. We’re off to Canada with B.T.O. and ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet.’”

  Randy Bachman’s driving guitar tore through the speakers as I leapt onto my chair and pumped my fist in the air. The crowd went nuts and by the end of the song they were singing along with the chorus. I caught Anders’s eyes with mine and knew I’d gotten the job.

  I was sliding the records back into the crates as Anders walked through the now empty club and approached me.

  “That was better than I thought it would be,” he said. “I think we’ll have you start a week from tomorrow, next Sunday. We’ll work out the schedule.” Anders paused. “You should stay with me until you get your own apartment. That way if John or Bobbie call in sick you can be there to cover those nights. It won’t work as well if you stay with Hilde.”

  He smiled warmly and put his arm around my shoulder. “Now you are part of my staff I want to make sure you feel welcomed. Come by tomorrow at six and we’ll have dinner together and talk.”

  Anders shook my hand and left. I was thrilled. Oslo, man! This would be my town.

  A few minutes later I headed downstairs clutching Hilde’s address to give to the first taxi driver I could find. As I hit the sidewalk I heard a voice behind me.

  “Excuse me.”

  I turned to see a tall, well-dressed Norwegian man. He seemed familiar. I’d seen him in the club.

  “My name is Tor Tendon. I saw you playing up there. I’d like you to think about coming to work with us.”

  Us? I looked around. Tor was alone. Did he have a mouse in his pocket?

  “I have a company called Europa Booking. I place DJs in clubs throughout Europe. I’d love you to be one of them.”

  Wow! Two job offers in one night. I thanked Tor but told him I had just been offered a gig at Key House starting next weekend.

  Tor shook his head slowly. “Did he say anything about a work permit?”

  That hit me hard. Anders hadn’t mentioned that. Just a part-time job, weekends and fill-ins to start.

  “He’s going to hire you because he likes you. And if you don’t like him back the same way he’ll call the police and you’ll be deported and he won’t pay you. He’s done it before and it’s a shame. Ask him about your work permit. If what I’m saying sounds right then call me.”

  Tor handed me his business card and walked away.

  Dinner the next night with Anders was uncomfortable. I so wanted this job at his amazing club but I was not going to be anyone’s fool. I asked if he needed a copy of my passport for the paperwork, to which he replied it wasn’t necessary, he’d pay me cash under the table. It would be much better all around. No tax for me and no extra employee fees for him to pay the government.

  I broached the topic again. How long could I stay in Norway without a work permit? He laughed and said that I could stay as long as I wanted. The paperwork wasn’t important; it was keeping the club full and him happy that was. That moment over dinner the stars in my eyes were gone.

  I think Bobbie sensed it later that night at Key House. He said that everyone was talking about my audition “blowing off the roof” and that I would be great to work with.

  I nodded unenthusiastically and asked Bobbie quite pointedly, “Do you have papers to be here? A work permit?”

  Bobbie replied it was the first thing he made sure he had and that every time he changed clubs the manager would take care of the paperwork and he would take that with him to the police station to renew his permit.

  “I’m sure Anders will get you yours,” he said.

  I realized that Bobbie didn’t know. He was unaware of Anders’s plans for me.

  Tor’s agency in Skoyenasen was a short five-minute walk from Hilde’s apartment and he met with me first thing Monday morning. His office was small and neat and featured something that definitely caught my eye, a large map of Europe with a series of colored pins in it.

  I learned that each pin represented one of the clubs he booked. I told Tor he was right about the work permit and asked what
he would be able to do if I took a job with Europa Booking. Tor explained that there were two major agencies that booked English DJs across Europe and his was one of them.

  He specialized in Norway and Denmark, but also had clubs in Austria and Switzerland that took his DJs. Everything above-board with a work permit granted in advance for each club and country. You would play at each disco for one month and the club provides a room for you, takes care of your food and the first two drinks every night. I found out later why many of the clubs had a two-drink limit and that was because a lot of the DJs were prone to drinking non-stop so the managers, to protect both the DJ and their profits, charged them for all their drinks after the first two.

  The clubs booked English DJs because it made them “hip”; all the music being played in Europe came from England or America and featured English vocals and so to the audience it was much better if the DJ was talking in the same language as the songs they were playing. If the DJ was to spin The O’Jays or Silver Convention then bust out on the microphone in Danish or German it would be too jarring. It didn’t matter whether the crowd understood the DJ or not, it just sounded much smoother and more sophisticated.

  And all the clubs required the DJs to talk between the songs. Their only experience of pop music was through Radio Luxembourg and the rapid-fire patter of their on-air jocks. So that’s what the owners expected in their clubs, personality DJs who were entertaining on the microphone.

  Prior to the start of disco, most of the countries in northern Europe had absolutely no club culture for the kids, it was all afternoon-tea dances for moms and pops and at night rock or swing bands in local church halls. Now with teenagers demanding their own places to go out to and party so they could mingle, spend money and dance, the discotheque phenomenon was exploding across Europe and the only country that had a history of those kinds of nightclubs was Britain. So that’s where the continent turned to for experienced DJs.

  “The clubs will promote that you are coming. They will make it seem like you are a famous radio DJ visiting from England. That helps bring in the crowds to the bars. You are going to be like a rock star. People are going to want to meet you. We’ll need photographs for you to sign,” Tor told me. “I will pay for the first couple of hundred then it’s up to you.”