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England’s first guitar hero Hank Marvin still strumming at 80 and set to star at
the WA Guitar Festival
Headshot of Simon Collins
Simon Collins
The West Australian
Sun, 2 October 2022 11:00PM
Simon Collins
Hank Marvin, legendary guitarist for the Shadows and Cliff Richard.
Hank Marvin, legendary guitarist for the Shadows and Cliff Richard. Credit: Simon
Santi/The West Australian

Years ago, a Jehovah’s Witness was going door to door in the Perth Hills hoping to
spread the “good news”.

Approaching one house, he could hear loud music blaring inside. He knocked, to no
avail. He paused on the doorstep, picking up on the tremulous surf guitar riffs
reverberating through a stranger’s home.

The music was the Shadows’ 1960 hit Apache — an instrumental tune originally
written by English songwriter Jerry Lordan that influenced a legion of wannabe
guitar heroes and was sampled so often in hip-hop tracks, by everyone from the
Sugarhill Gang and Vanilla Ice to Beastie Boys and Jay-Z, that it’s been called
“hip-hop’s national anthem”.

Hank Marvin: Guitarist extraordinaire.

Former electric guitar god Hank Marvin has “gone acoustic” in recent years. Credit:
Unknown/Supplied
The Jehovah’s Witness recognised the song, not so much because it’s a classic but
mostly because that’s him playing guitar.

Hank Marvin recounts this story with a glint in his bespectacled eyes that belies
the fact the Perth-based music legend turned 80 last year.

More than half a century after recording Apache at EMI’s famous Abbey Road Studios
in London, the man dubbed England’s first guitar hero is still playing and is the
marquee performer at this year’s Strings Attached WA guitar festival in Margaret
River from October 7-9.

Marvin plays a headline gig at The Heart on October 8 with Gary Taylor and Nunzio
Mondia, members of his gypsy jazz outfit.

Chatting in Mondia’s exquisite studio tucked away in an inner-city suburb, the

Shadows legend says his regular gigs playing music written and inspired by Belgian-
born jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt are “more of a hobby”.

“I’m too old to start a new career,” he laughs.

Born Brian Rankin in Newcastle upon Tyne in England’s north, music is the only
career Marvin has known.
After dropping out of school, he got a delivery job for an electrical firm to earn
enough money for the train fare to London so his skiffle group the Railroaders
could compete in the final of a band competition.

“We were so confident we’d win it,” Marvin recalls. “We didn’t, we came third.”

The Railroaders broke up after the comp. He and fellow guitarist Bruce Welch stayed
in London while the others returned home to “good jobs in the coalmine”.

“We just semi-starved for a few weeks because we had no money,” Marvin says. “We’d
go two or three days without eating sometimes.”

Hank Marvin moved to London in 1958 to pursue his musical dreams.

Hank Marvin moved to London in 1958 to pursue his musical dreams. Credit: Simon
Santi/The West Australian
Marvin and Welch frequented the coffee houses of Soho, watching other musicians and
picking up gigs where they could.

They soon heard of a talented young singer on the hunt for a backing band.

Marvin remembers first seeing Cliff Richard while he was having a pink jacket
fitted at a Soho tailor.

“He looked really cool. He had slightly olive skin and tanned looks, and very dark
hair. He looked really striking,” he says.

“Like the stars we were not”, Richard, Marvin and Welch hopped on a bus to the
singer’s parents’ council house in Cheshire to rehearse.

“I remember thinking, ‘There’s something about this kid, he’s got something’.”

Cliff Richard and the Drifters were born. (They soon changed to the Shadows to
avoid conflict with the US doo-wop group of the same name.)

While Marvin had already changed his name to something reflecting his love of New
Orleans jazz and blues, and donned glasses inspired by Buddy Holly, Richard’s gift
of a red Fender Stratocaster completed the package.

The Shadows enjoyed an incredible run of hits, both with and without Richard.
Between Apache in 1960 and Shindig in 1963, they notched up a remarkable dozen UK
Top 10 singles.

Instrumental songs such as The Boys, Kon-Tiki and Foot Tapper also climbed into the
Top 10 in Australia.

CLIFF RICHARD WAS ONLY 18 WHEN HE HAD HIS FIRST HIT IN 1958.
Cliff Richard was 18 when he scored his first UK No. 1 with Living Doll. Credit:
Supplied./Supplied
But it was the runaway success of Richard’s first No. 1 smash, Living Doll, in 1959
that thrust these young Englishman into the spotlight.

Marvin, who changed his name by deed poll when he was 18, said their first tour was
a “monstrous success”.

“We were surprised, the audience was going nuts,” he continues. “Honestly, we
couldn’t hear ourselves over the screaming.”

Between 1960 and 63, Richards and the Shadows racked up an incredible 17 UK Top 5
singles, including five No. 1 hits, notably Summer Holiday, The Young Ones and
Bachelor Boy.

We couldn’t hear ourselves over the screaming.

The band had just returned from a massive international tour when they went to see
the Beatles, who had just released Please Please Me, play third on the bill with
Chris Montez and Tommy Roe at Granada Cinema in Bedford.

“The place was half empty, the Beatles came on — no one screamed, there was not one
scream,” Marvin recalled. “But they sounded good, there was a rawness and energy
about them, which I really liked.”

Hank Marvin, legendary guitarist for the Shadows and Cliff Richard.
Hank Marvin, legendary guitarist for the Shadows and Cliff Richard. Credit: Simon
Santi/The West Australian
The Beatles and Marvin ended up back at Welch’s place, where they “got the guitars
out and played a lot old rock’n’roll” as well as some Fab Four future classics.

Marvin says that beyond being chased down the street by mobs of girls once or
twice, he never experienced fan hysteria a la Beatlemania or like what Richard
copped. He did, however, get offered plenty of free guitars and amplifiers.

While the Shadows’ heyday was well in the rear-view mirror when they split in 1989,
the band could still command record deals and decent audiences.

By that stage, Marvin and second wife Carole had moved to Perth, building a home in
Brigadoon, enjoying the warm weather and less hectic pace of life.

“We loved it,” he says. “It took a while to get used to things like rostered petrol
stations though.”

While Richard and the Shadows reunited for a world tour, which included a concert
at Burswood Dome in 2010, Marvin says they “remain in touch”.

“It’s spasmodic, really, but we pick up as if nothing’s happened, like you do with
old mates,” he says.

Marvin recalls playing Living Doll during a Shadows show in London. “I thought
‘Hey, my voice sounds great tonight’. There were all these screams. My mike was off
and Cliff had a mike on the side (of stage).”

Back together: Bruce Welch, Cliff Richard, Brian Bennett and Hank Marvin at the
Burswood Dome. Picture: Sandra Jackson
Back together in 2010: Bruce Welch, Cliff Richard, Brian Bennett and Hank Marvin at
the Burswood Dome. Credit: Sandra Jackson/The West Australian
Another one of Marvin’s long-time friends was Olivia Newton-John, who sadly died
recently. He and good mate John Farrar wrote her 1976 song, Sam, and ONJ was a
witness when he married Carole in a small ceremony.

Even towards the end when it was clear she didn’t have long to go, Newton-John
“always put on a brave face”.

PERTH WEST EX. NEWS LTD. - SIR CLIFF RICHARD AND OLIVIA NEWTON JOHN AT SYDNEY PRESS
CONFERENCE 9/2/98
The late Olivia Newton-John with Sir Cliff Richard 1998. Credit: Supplied/Supplied
Marvin reveals that he became a Jehovah’s Witness in 1973 after a decade of
research sparked by Brian Locking, a JW who played with the Shadows for 18 months
in the early 60s.
“I was pretty much an atheist, I suppose,” Marvin explains. “He talked to me about
it one day on a plane. I knew nothing and thought ‘That’s interesting’ and I
started doing some research.

“Eventually my wife and I started studying together and we decided that’s the
direction we wanted to go in.”

There was no epiphany, just a gradual accumulation of “knowledge and

understanding”.

“I like the way people lived,” Marvin adds. “Trying to live peacefully always
seemed a good way to go for me.

“You see so much aggression and I was one of them when I was younger. You’re a
teenager and you tend to think you can solve something by shouting at someone or
punching them.”

Initially, the guitar god says, he found going door-to-door “quite traumatising”.
Doors would be slammed in his face, threats made and fists shook.

Then there were people who recognise the rock legend.

“It used to happen more in the UK, but I have had it happen here. Someone said ‘You
look just like Hank Marvin’,” he chuckles. “I said ‘Yeah, people have told me that
before’.”

The West Australian Guitar Festival: Strings Attached is on in Margaret River from
October 7-9. Visit waguitatfestival.com.au for more details.

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