When Roger Moore stole my thunder: jazz singer Georgie Fame looks back
The British musician, who has been visiting Hong Kong since the early 1990s, says the episode involving the James Bond star taught him an important lesson
How long has this been going on? I was born (as Clive Powell) in Lancashire, in northern England, in 1943. When I left school at the age of 15, in the summer of 1958, I went straight to work in a cotton mill as an apprentice weaver. We had a coal mine at the back of our house and, when we were kids, we’d hear the siren, run to the pit head and see them bringing up the injured miners, covering them in red blankets and putting them in the ambulances. I thought, “I don’t want to go down there,” so I went to the cotton factory instead. At weekends, I was working with a local band; I didn’t see it as a way out. It was just an exciting thing to do.
Let the good times roll After I’d been working for a year I went to a holiday camp with a couple of mates from the factory and entered a talent contest, doing my Jerry Lee Lewis/Fats Domino bit. I was heard by a professional rock band from London that were working at the camp for the summer season, and the leader asked me to join his band as a professional musician. I’d only just turned 16.
That’s what I say Yeh Yeh (1964) was my first big hit and it gave me and my band (the Blue Flames) our first opportunity to play outside the United Kingdom. On the strength of this hit record we flew from London to Stockholm. We were in economy class, but we didn’t know the difference in those days, we were just glad to be on an aeroplane going somewhere.
When the plane arrived in Stockholm, we looked out the window and we could see dozens and dozens of beautiful blonde Swedish girls all waving and screaming, and, naturally, we thought the reception committee was for us. We’d seen the Beatles getting that, so we thought, “Now it’s our turn.” Alas, by the time we’d walked from the back of the plane down to the tarmac, they’d all disappeared – and the reason was that (British actor) Roger Moore was in first class.
