Let Me Take You Down…

About March 1970, I heard a languid, dreamy song one Sunday morning on Kenny Everett’s radio show.

“Screams from adoring teenagers and a “mini-riot” made up the fantastic reception BBC Radio 1 DJ Tony Blackburn received when opening the new Strawberry Fields boutique in Rickmansworth on Saturday morning.”

“Traffic through the town centre was delayed as the DJ made his way to Penn Place. Several times the police cordon around the shop front was broken as frantic teenagers peered closer into the glass window. A small child trampled in the rush and the decorative flowerbeds outside the shop crushed.”

“Tempers frayed as limited numbers of fans were allowed into the shop to receive autographed photographs of this quietly spoken doctor’s son from Bournemouth, who himself had to be rescued by police in the scramble.”

“He left the premises by a back entrance to make his way to a football engagement.”

(Watford Observer, October 11, 1968)

Tony Blackburn, screams, frantic teenagers, really? Yes really, this was the 1960s.

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Four years earlier, there had been a gala opening of fourteen shops in Penn Place. The event had even been broadcast in the USA, because William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, had lived and married in Rickmansworth.

I was eight, and my family had just moved to Chorleywood. Mum and Dad both worked, and we would do our weekly shop in Rickmansworth on Saturday morning. At some point, the local grocers Anthony Jackson, just along from Penn Place, was replaced by that brash newcomer Tesco, to my grandma Sallie’s disapproval. I was appointed custodian of the Green Shield Stamps: it was my task to stick the vast roll of stamps Mum acquired at the till into the booklets.

It was quite a relief when they introduced a stamp representing ten of the little blighters.

Then on Saturday 5th October 1968, Strawberry Fields threw open its doors, shamelessly exploiting the huge stock of goodwill accruing to that marvellous song. I wasn’t a cool twelve year old, but I knew straight away it was the best shop in town. When I had finished getting my Saturday morning haircut, I would wait in there soaking up the music, looking longingly at the records and studying the latest charts on the board, while Mum was getting her perm from Mr Louvère, two doors away. My older brother Rob might have done the same as me, although about this time he more or less abandoned barbers’ shops.

I don’t remember actually buying many records there. Rob and I still shared a bedroom, and I was usually also happy to share his records, so I was introduced to bands like Led Zeppelin and King Crimson while I was quite young. We also possessed a reel-to-reel tape machine, which we used to record our favourites, in the early days from pirate radio and Alan Freeman’s Pick of the Pops, and later from Radio 1.

But there’s one record I certainly did buy there. About March 1970, I heard a languid, dreamy song one Sunday morning on Kenny Everett’s radio show. It was called The Prettiest Star by David Bowie, who had made his chart debut the previous year with Space Oddity. (Not to be confused with the brittle, metallic glam-rock version later to appear on Aladdin Sane.). It had a beautiful, wailing guitar part, played – although I didn’t know at the time – by Marc Bolan, soon to break through to huge success with Ride a White Swan.

Next Saturday morning I was in Strawberry Fields asking for the record. Despite the plugs from Kenny Everett, it hadn’t done much, and they didn’t stock it. But they could order it for me, and it would be there by Thursday. So I broke my bus journey home from school in Watford, and stopped off in Rickmansworth to pick it up. When I got home I ran upstairs and put it straight on the record player, with the stacking arm up to make it repeat play indefinitely. According to Wikipedia, it reportedly sold fewer than 800 copies, but I still think it’s beautiful.

Another record I bought there was much less cool, certainly at the time. I had heard Let’s Hang On by the Four Seasons on that radio show where Jimmy Savile (yes, him) played the charts from five, ten and fifteen years ago. The song ambushed me with its cheesy falsetto pop drive and conviction. This was years before the band’s 1970s disco reinvention, decades before Jersey Boys. I found in their imported oldies box and bought it. Rob nearly disowned me.

My other clear memory of Strawberry Fields again relates to David Bowie. In April 1973, Rob, a passionate fan, had pre-ordered Aladdin Sane , illegally discounted, from an upstart mail order advertiser in Melody Maker called Virgin Records.

Release day arrived, but not the LP. Luckily our cousin Jonathan was visiting: we all went to Strawberry Fields to listen to the new album – I can’t remember whether it was in a booth, or sharing headphones. The verdict was positive, and Rob prevailed upon Jonathan to buy a copy there and then – enabling us to listen repeatedly to Bowie’s new masterpiece until our cousin returned home. After that I think there were just a couple of days of anguish until Rob’s own copy arrived.

In 1974 our family moved to Chipperfield, and soon afterwards I left for university. We didn’t visit Strawberry Fields again. The shop moved down to the High Street. Online comments suggest that it lost its cutting edge: also the collapse of Resale Price Maintenance in the 1990s caused fierce price competition in the record industry from chains like W H Smith and Our Price. This made life very difficult for small independent record shops, and at some point unknown to me, years after it opened with such a bang, Strawberry Fields, it turned out, was not forever, but closed its doors with barely a whimper. So ended a tiny but magical chapter of Rickmansworth’s history.

P.S. (Oct 2022) I thought Tony Blackburn might be interested in this story so I emailed it to him at the BBC. And bless him, he sent me this. Aw…