Getting ready to rock in 1970's Amlwch

Strangely I find myself considering a return to the island. Born and brought up there, I left in 1974 to go to art school, and at the age of 17 heaved a sigh of relief as I crossed the Menai Straits to leave the dark, wind lashed, rain soaked tablet of tedium behind me. Of course I wasn't severing my ties back then as the Hughes family was established in Amlwch where my parents, Gwyn and Alwena, my sister Lowri, and younger brother Gethyn, who experienced a similar catharsis later, still reside. My ties with the island atrophied gradually. As a student I came home to work during the holidays, for my Dad, contributing labouring muscle to his sideline, slightly clandestine building business, as well as two summers working in the nuclear power station at Wylfa. However once I'd settled in London and gained my independence, Anglesey was a distant memory of long, monotonous winters, a social life based around remote desolate pubs which were closed on Sundays and occasional rumbustious football matches played on sodden, stinking, sloping manure plastered mud rinks which had square wooden goalposts and tattered creosoted nets, gradually superceded by orange plastic ones.

After the age of 15 my social circle started to include slightly older mates who had acquired cars. This meant less time skulking in doorways or hitch hiking, often walking to alternative outposts such as Rhosybol, Llanerchymedd and Cemaes in the remote hope that we might even come across some girls. And where did they go then? We never seemed to find them. There had to be another life and I counted and ticked off the mundane days. Music provided a stimulating and growing interest, and a window on a new culture. My heroes and role models had long hair, wore velvet loon pants or jeans with metal studs in the seams and were invariably from the USA. They included Lynyrd Skynyrd, Allman Brothers Band, Jimi Hendrix and Johnny Winter. Watching them was an unattainable dream and our increasingly voracious rock appetites had to be sated through performances by Humble Pie, Lindisfarne and Sparks in Bangor. I remember the volume level of the former concert at the PJ Hall in the university in Bangor making the front page of the Holyhead & Anglesey Mail when Beaumaris residents complained. Anyway, at least we could look like them? Somehow though, my ample 34 inch arse never quite cut the mustard in a pair of low waisted tight crotch strides. My Lees denim waistcoat looked quite cool though I thought? Perhaps not.

Then there was the Dragon Beat in Amlwch. What was that about then? The cinema opposite the Police Station in Amlwch was almost overnight painted purple and transformed into a sheik nightspot! Inside, the fug of Players No 6 smoke and ubiquitous strobe lighting transformed it into the Pigeon Toe'd Orange Peel from Barbarella. Even girls from Llangefni came there. Up and coming bands came to perform. I didn't see them (I wasn't allowed out on weeknights) but an up and coming Staus Quo performed there in their "In my Chair" and "Pictures of Matchstick Men" days with legends of debauched behaviour in Gas Lane abounding for weeks afterwards. Then there were the Tams, who had a huge UK hit with "Hey girl don't bother me." Presumably they didn't. It was a February Wednesday evening in North Anglesey after all.

We were just getting used to the Dragon Beat with visions of pretty North Wales "chicks" arriving by the busload, when all of a suddenly it had morphed into "Wheelers." A sophisticated late evening nightclub for the upwardly mobile and and discerning. Perhaps it was, I never got the chance to find out as you now had to be 21 to get in. My Dad was given a complementary membership card when he fixed a leak there or something for the owners. Not quite his scene though and it didn't last long. Before long it was a Kwik Save and the last time I looked the old cinema shell had been demolished to leave a square of open ground in the centre of the town.

To close this fairly broad nostalgic social reminiscence I also recall Anne Jenkins' World Go-Go Dancing record attempt at the Mariners Arms from about 1971. Anne was a tall, good looking girl who I remember from Sir Thomas Jones School. She was a few years older than me and had a reputation as a fine athlete. She was in fact the only person I used to see doing some serious training around the town back then. Anyway by this time she 'd paired up, I think romantically with John Smart, a local DJ and was going for this, I think for charity, on a purpose built stage at the back of the pub. Quite a gig it was too. It kicked off on a bright sunny Saturday morning in front of a crowd four deep, I remember being fascinated, for one thing is was loud, public free music and above all, an event! I can't recall how long she had to dance for, but interest waned and Anne got tired. Despite encouragement she didn't make it the end. Sad but heroic in a way and one of those things you remember. I wonder what she's doing now?