Cliff Richard in the 80s
Cliff Richard in the 60s This time I would like to touch on the music, about one of the greatest singer, the evergreen singer which is now still alive, well and still single. Back in the 60s this man was one of the most popular singer and film actor. One of his unforgotten film was 'The Young Ones'. Some of his old Album is still on sales until now. Cliff Richard 'The Devil Woman' is one of my favourite song and I still heard the song being played on the radio quite often nowadays.
1. Rodger Webb marries Dorothy Dazely
26 April, 1939
26 April, 1939
His relatives came to India from as part of the taskforce needed to build a system of railways that would transform the country, and hers left the mother country as soldiers.
In 1936 Dorothy first met the man who was to become her husband when Rodger Webb came to visit his sister who lived in the apartment above her family's in the town of Asansol. He was thirty-one and she was sixteen, but despite this significant age difference, and the fact Rodger was based in the far away town of Howrah, they fell in love and for three years stayed in contract mostly through letters.
On 26 April 1939 Rodger and Dorothy were married at St Paul's Church, Asansol. They soon moved north-west to Dehra Dun where they were soon to start a family.
On Monday 14th October 1940, Dorothy Webb gave birth to a nine pound boy who would eventually go on to be described as the boy who's going to rock the world.
Harry Rodger Webb was born in The King's English Hospital in Lucknow due to the lack of major hospitals in Dehra Dun, and was due to be christened 'Rodger Harry' upon his return to the town. However, Cliff's godmother voiced her preference for 'Harry Rodger' at the actual Christening, which took place at St Thomas' Church, and that was the name he was very hastily christened with.
The boy who would eventually go on to become Cliff Richard started school at St Thomas' Church School in Church Road, Howrah.
One of his family servants, Habib, used to bring his lunch every day to the school, which was laid out among stands of banana trees. Harry's best friend was a boy named Lal who spoke no English, and thus all of their conversations were in Hindi which he was being taught at school after some preliminary lessons from his father.
After World War II ended, life in India, which had been promised home rule by Britain for its wartime efforts, began to change forever.
When independence became a genuine possibility, old religious feuds between Hindus and Moslems began to rise to the surface, and violence began to erupt on the streets around 1946. English nationals living in India were also becoming the target of violence, and Harry's mother Dorothy was being hassled while shopping with Indians shouting 'Go back to England white woman.' A frightened young Harry would scream back 'Leave her alone. She's my mummy.'
During a period of intense rioting, a nearby family of Moslems were killed, with the only survivor a young boy who they could see hiding in his garden. They kept him alive by dropping food parcels from their window every night until Dorothy's uncle, a Calcutta Policeman, could be called. This experience shook the young family tremendously, and when the police arrived to collect the boy with flesh visibly hanging off the tracks of the car they decided they had to leave.
Initially Rodger wanted to take his family to Australia, but Dorothy convinced him that they should move to England where her mother and other relatives lived. So on Saturday 21 of August they boarded a train to Bombay where, three days later, they boarded a P&O passenger liner called the Ranchi.
At 6am on Monday 13 September, the Ranchi arrived at Tilbey Docks in the UK. After a charmed existence in India, the Webbs would now struggle to afford even the basics and having to sleep on mattresses at the houses of various relatives. They would have to wait until April 1951 before they were awarded a council house of their own in the working class town of Cheshunt.
After just failing the eleven-plus exam, Harry was enrolled in the newly built Cheshunt County Secondary School which was taking in 800 pupils.
Cliff soon developed a keen interest in sports, playing soccer, rugby, sprinting, and even managing to break the over-13s javelin record. He also began to develop an interest in drama through a teacher who was to remain a close friend throughout his life, Jay Norris.
Perhaps a humble start to a career which would see him break theatre and movie box office records, Cliff had his acting debut Sheila Buckley's The Price of Perfection, which he followed up in October in The Ugly Duckling by A.A. Milne.
It was for the school's 1955 Christmas play that Jay Norris finally convinced Cliff to sing in public. According to Jay, he told her that he wanted the part of Ratty but couldn't sing, to which she responded, 'It's actually quite simple. If you can't sing you can't play Ratty.' He did go on to play Ratty and, according to Jay, 'Sang it beautifully.'
One Saturday in May 1956, Harry was walking with some friends in Waltham Cross when he heard a sound that would change his life forever.
That noise was Elvis Presley singing Heartbreak Hotel blaring from the radio of a parked Citroen which quickly zoomed off, leaving the teenagers fascinated by a sound unlike any they'd heard before.
Cliff later said 'The first time I heard Elvis' voice I thought of it as a sound or an instrument. I had never heard anyone sing like that before...When I heard Elvis the next step for me was to try to do it.'
Harry and his friends all went home and tuned into Radio Luxembourg and the American Forces Network until they eventually found out that the man who would eventually turn Harry Webb into Cliff Richard was Elvis Presley.
After being inspired by the music of Elvis, Harry and school friends Betty Clarke, Freda Johnson, John Vince and Beryl Molineux formed an informal singing group which started off singing along to records at the Holy Trinity Youth Club's Saturday night dances.
While the group didn't have any serious intentions at the time, they were asked to appear at the Anglo-French dance which was a fundraiser for the Holy Trinity School on Bastille Day, 1956. They quickly gave themselves the name 'The Quintones' and started practising at a friend's house.
On the night, 250 people witnessed the singing debut of a man that would go on to have more hit singles than any other singer in history. The brief performance included the song that had started his interest in rock'n'roll just months earlier, Heartbreak Hotel, and earned him his first picture in the paper.
The Quintones brought young Harry closer to a girl he'd known since junior school, Betty Clarke. At age fifteen she would become Harry's first girlfriend.
It wouldn't be until 1958 that Harry would find his first girlfriend, albeit under a different name, in Janice Berry who he'd also come to know at Cheshunt County Secondary School.
In yet another dramatic role at Cheshunt Secondary School, Harry earned his first critical review which was published in the Cheshunt Weekly Telegraph. The review stated, 'Harry Webb acted well as Bob Cratchet, but was rather let down by the make-up team and, hard as he worked, he could not dispel the impression that he was a teenager and not a harassed father.'
11. The guitar first enters Harry's life
14 October, 1956
For his sixteenth birthday, Rodger Webb decided to give his son a gift which would help indulge his new found fascination with rock'n'roll: a guitar.
The guitar cost £27, which represented a substantial financial commitment for Rodger in 1956, and he soon taught he son the three chord progression of G, C and D7 that he'd picked up from his days playing banjo in a trad jazz band.
Harry and his friends skipped school to buy the tickets and some, including Harry, were stripped of their prefect badges for the offense. The concert, however, electrified them all with Cliff saying in 1960 'This, I think, was when I knew what I wanted to do above everything else in the world.'
13. Working life for Harry
July/August, 1957
Harry Webb got his first job in summer 1957 picking tomatoes at a local garden nursary.
After this job had finished, he moved into a job that his father had got him at Atlas Lamps. His job was to check orders against the different trade discounts and passing the information on to regional dispatch centres.
He found the job dull and used to spend his time trying to figure out how to become a singer, with most of his four pounds a week pay packet going to his mother.
14. The Drifters debut
March, 1958
After a short stint playing skiffle in a band called Dick Teague's Skiffle Group, Harry and fellow band member Terry Smart left to form a new band that would, in various forms, remain with Cliff for the next ten years.
With school friend Norman Mitham, they rehearsed in the front room of Harry's house in Hargreaves Close playing rock'n'roll classics such as Blue Suede Shoes, Heartbreak Hotel and Rock Around The Clock. Cliff's sister Donna would write down the words from the records, while the band figured out the chords.
Initially, at Terry Smart's suggestion, the band was going to be called The Planets, but Harry and Norman didn't think it sounded quite right. They looked up 'planet' in the dictionary and saw that it came from the Greek word 'planetes' which meant 'wanderer' or 'drifter' and decided upon The Drifters. They also decided that their first album cover would feature them all sitting in a toboggan driving into a snow drift.
The group made their grand debut at the annual dinner dance of the Forty Hill Badminton Club between Cheshunt and Enfield. Their fee for the evening's performance was the princely sum of ten shillings.
15. The first manager for The Drifters
March, 1958
One evening not long after their debut a man who was to become their first manager spotted the drifters playing at the Five Horseshoes pub in Burford Street, Hoddleson.
This man was John Foster, who drove a tracter on a sewage farm and who's greatest experience in the rock'n'roll world was once standing next to early British rocker Terry Dene at the legendary 2i's in Soho. Despite this lack of experience, he was struck by what he saw, particularly in Harry, later recounting that 'something told me, yes, he's going to be big. He's going to be really big.'
Foster, who was drinking with his mates at the bar, walked up to the Drifters after their set and simply asked them if they wanted a manager. A little taken aback, they laughed 'Ok, you're on!'
16. The Drifter's first appear at the 2i's
April, 1958
One connection John Foster did have was that he was on speaking terms with manager Tom Littlewood who booked acts into the legendary 2i's coffee bar on 59 Old Compton Street in Soho, London.
The 2i's was the Mecca of British rock'n'roll at the time and had launched the countries biggest rock'n'roll stars of the time, Tommy Steele and Terry Dene. The bar was originally owned by the two Irani brothers (hence the name) who sold it to two flamboyant Australian professional wrestlers, Doctor Death (Paul Lincoln) and 'Rebel' Ray Hunter who had transformed the originally langusishing establishment into a thriving icon of the rock'n'roll era.
After an audition for Tom Littlewood, they were booked for that night which turned into a two week booking. While they wouldn't be discovered there, the booking at the 2i's led to a chain of events which would see Harry Webb becoming the country's biggest rock'n'roll star by the end of the year.
Ian Samwell, who, like Harry, had been playing in a local skiffle group, was auditioned on the next Saturday afternoon and began playing with The Drifters that night. He would go on to write them a song which changed rock'n'roll in Britain forever.
18. Official fan club formed
April, 1958
On the same night Ian Samwell first saw The Drifters, was a confident and chatty sixteen year old, Jane Vane, who had come along with her boyfriend to celebrate her birthday.
She was very taken with the group and stayed behind to get Harry's autograph when she asked him if he had an official fan club. He laughed and explained that he had only been playing rock'n'roll, at which point she offered to start up an official fan club with six members.
The club was to last until 1966 and, at its peak, boasted a membership of 42,000.
19. Harry Webb becomes Cliff Richard
April, 1958
While performing at the 2i's, The Drifters were approached by a man named Harry Greatorex who ran the Regal Ballroom in Ripley. He would offer them a fee of five pounds, with an extra ten pounds for expenses. The only problem was that he wanted to bill the group as 'Harry Webb and the Drifters' and Harry objected as he didn't like the sound of his name.
To solve this problem, John Foster took the band to The Swiss, which was a pub in Old Compton Street near the 2i's. They started by playing around with the name of a current British singer called Russ Hamilton. The came up with Russ Clifford which Harry didn't really like, then Cliff Russard, and then Cliff Richards. Ian Samwell then suggested that the drop the 's' to make in Cliff Richard as a tribute to Little Richard and also so when people called him 'Cliff Richards' he could correct them and then get his name mentioned twice.
Cliff Richard and the Drifters made their debut on Saturday 3 May and the Regal Ballroom, their biggest booking so far.
20. Cliff Richard and the Drifters cut their first demo
June, 1958
Making their second appearance at the Gaumont Theatre in Shepherd's Bush, the Drifters decided to invite an agent that they'd randomly chosen out of an entertainment newspaper. The agent they chose was George Ganjou who they knew nothing about, but who had started off his showbiz career as one part of a cabaret act called the Ganjou Brother and Juanita. He knew nothing about rock'n'roll and proudly referred to himself as 'square'.
Despite his disinterest in rock'n'roll he cancelled a weekend of golf to come and see the shows, and liked what he saw enough to suggest that they cut a demo record. Early the next week they cut a demo in a small studio above the HMV record shop in Oxford Street. They recorded Elvis' Lawdy Miss Clawdy and Jerry Lee Lewis' Breathless. These recordings were released forty years later as part of The Rock'n'Roll Years box set.
21. Norrie Paramor
June, 1958
George Ganjou took Cliff and the Drifters' demo to an A&R man at EMI, Norrie Paramor, along with that of an opera singer and, as an afterthought, suggested that Norrie might want to listen to it. Norrie liked the single sufficiently to call the Drifters in for an audition. He told the group that he'd make a decision over the next two weeks while he was on holiday with his family, and when he returned he told the group that he wished to sign them to the Columbia label and record a song which had been a hit in America for Bobby Helms, Schoolboy Crush.
Norrie would go on to produce Cliff and the shadow for over a decade, producing more hits for Cliff and the Drifters/Shadows than anyone since.
22.First recording session
24 July, 1958
After Norrie's decision was announced, Cliff and the Drifters quickly went to work learning the new single that had been chosen from them. One issue that needed solving was what to put on the b-side, and Ian Samwell obligingly wrote a song which would transform their careers, Move It, while riding on a double-decker bus to Cliff's house in Cheshunt.
The first recording session took place at Abbey Road, and Norrie brought in musicians Frank Clarke on double bass and Ernie Shear on electric guitar. Schoolboy Crush was the first song recorded and the intended a-side, but it was Move It which really showcased the group's talents. Session engineer Malcolm Addey even allowed the song to exceed the maximum volume that music was allowed to be recorded at in the studio, helping to add to its raw authentic feel.
Cliff's first publicity shot was also taken at the same time in studio 2 at Abbey Road.
23. Cliff signed with Capitol Records
9 August, 1958
After recording what would be their first hit single, the Drifters were quickly signed by Columbia.
Despite the fact that Cliff Richard and the Drifters had passed the audition, only Cliff was awarded a contract and the Drifters would not receive any royalties from sales, but rather a fee for taking part in the recording sessions.
24. First airplay for Cliff Richard and the Drifters
August, 1958
Before rehearsals began for the television show Oh Boy!, Cliff and the Drifters played a short season at the Butlins holiday camp in Clacton-on-Sea.
While performing, EMI sent a pre-release copy of Move It to the DJ of the Butlin's camp radio station. Tulah Tuke was the first person in the world to play a Cliff Richard song on radio, with the simple plug 'That was the new record from Cliff Richard and the Drifters. You can see them live tonight at the Rock'n'Roll Ballroom.'
25. Schoolboy Crush/Move It released
29 August, 1958
Cliff and the Drifters released the single that was to bring them national prominence within just four months of their appearance at the 2i's coffee bar in Soho. Initially the a-side was Schoolboy Crush, but soon public demand prompted EMI to flip the single and make Move It the a-side.
Not only did the song reach No.2 in the British charts and go on to sell over one million copies, it inspired a generation of British teenagers that genuine rock'n'roll could be produced in their own country. John Lennon once referred to it as 'the most influential British record ever made' and it has gone on to be listed in the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame's five hundred most influential songs of all time.
The song that Ian Samwell had written on the bus to Cliff's house pondering the fate of rock'n'roll was soon to liberate a generation of budding British musicians, giving them the realization that rock'n'roll wasn't purely an American phenomenon.
26. Cliff appears on Oh Boy!
13 September, 1958
The final stage in Cliff's metamorphosis from local rock'n'roll hero to national icon would be his appearance on Jack Good's revolutionary television series Oh Boy!
After being struck by the b-side of Cliff and the Drifters new single, Jack agreed to hear the group audition for a new series of his rock'n'roll show. He was further struck by Cliff's performance, but made alterations which were to help mould him into the superstar he was to become.
Firstly, he eradicated Cliff sideburns and stopped him from playing the guitar on stage because he felt that this made him appear an Elvis impersonator rather than a fresh new talent. Jack also worked on building up a stage act for Cliff, instructing him to tilt his head up and raise his eyes to the camera, and also to suddenly grab at his arm 'as if stuck with a hypodermic syringe'. It was also here that Cliff premièred his famous pink jacket.
While Marty Wilde remained the star of the show for the first week, by the second week Move It had entered the charts at No.12 and he was causing a sensation with the Daily Sketch asking 'Is this boy too sexy for television?'
27. Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch join the Drifters
September, 1958
Upon returning home from their shows at the Butlin's holiday camp, and before auditions began for Oh Boy!, the Drifters received a letter inviting them on their first tour as a support act to American duo the Kalin Twins. The Kalin Twins currently had a No.1 hit in the charts with When, and the Drifters quickly accepted.
Unfortunately the group realised that they needed stronger musicians, thus they sent John Foster to the 2i's where he was to meet with guitarist Tony Sheridan. While there he met with another guitarist Hank Marvin who was currently touring with the Most Brothers, but agreed to tour with the Drifters if he could bring along his mate Bruce Welch on rhythm guitar.
Both these seventeen year olds had, like Cliff, started out playing skiffle, and both had also changed their names (Hank's original name was Brian Rankin, and Bruce's Bruce Cripps). They would go on to be the two dominant members of Cliff's backing band for the decade to come, and one of the most influential British bands in history.
Their first rehearsal together was in the front room of Cliff's family's house in Cheshunt.
28. Cliff and the Drifters embark on first tour with the Kalin Twins
5 October, 1958
On a tour which would launch one of the most powerful concert draws in British pop history, Cliff and the Drifters played support to Americans the Kalin Twins.
There were around eight acts in the show, and the Drifters went on just before the Kalin Twins. At the beginning of the tour the Kalin Twins were still riding high on the charts, but as Move It began to climb Cliff and the Drifters started to draw a bigger and bigger response. Eventually the Kalin Twins had to play over shouts of 'We want Cliff!' and Cliff and the Drifters had to be moved around to finish the show.
'He tore the house down, ' Hal Kalin said many years later, 'There was no way we could compete with an up-and-coming seventeen year old. It became a nightmare for us.'
The only sad note of the tour came when thieves broke into the dressing rooms and stole the guitar Cliff's father had given him for his sixteenth birthday.
Eventually the Kalin Twins were to forgive Cliff, and he brought them back to England to perform as part of the Oh Boy! set of his 1989 The Event concerts at Wembley Stadium.
29. Cliff, first album, released
April, 1959
To help capture some of the raw excitement of Cliff's live performances with the Drifters, Norrie Paramor decided that their first album should be recorded in front of a live audience in Abbey Road studio 2, where Move It had been recorded the previous year.
Three hundred members of Cliff's fan club were invited to the studio, given a buffet lunch and encouraged lend as much 'atmosphere' to the recording as they felt appropriate. The album was recorded over two nights, and on the first night the barriers to keep the fans back were set too close to the stage which resulted in too much screaming being picked up on the microphones. On the second night Cliff had a bout of laryngitis which meant, as Cliff was to say forty years later, 'my first album undoubtedly has too much screaming in some places, and too much croakiness in others.'
None the less, the album, which mainly consisted of rock'n'roll hits of the time, reached No.4 on the albums chart.
30. Hank's red Fender Stratocaster ordered
April, 1959
While playing at the Birmingham Hippodrome, it was decided that Hank needed a new guitar to replace the beat up Antoria he'd been playing up until this time.
Both Cliff and Hank liked the sound of James Burton who was playing on Ricky Nelson's records, and they knew he played a Fender guitar. They managed to acquire a Fender catalogue and decided that Burton must of been playing the Stratocaster as this was the most expensive guitar in the catalogue.
Due to an import ban, Cliff had to send away for the guitar. When it arrived Hank recalls it as 'looking like something from outer space' and it was certainly an unusual looking piece of equipment for a British band at that time. This instrument helped the Drifters to develop the sound which would define them for decades to come.
31. Cliff Richard makes his big screen debut
29 June, 1959
While Cliff went on to star in some of the most successful British films of all time, his movie debut was in a supporting role in a film called Serious Charge which was directed by Terrence Young who went on to direct the early James Bond films.
The films story dealt with a vicar (Anthony Quayle) who helps a juvenille delinquent (Andrew Ray) who turns around and accuses him of indecent assult. Cliff played the delinquent's younger brother Curly, mainly due to the fact producer Mickey Delamar felt a rock'n'roll soundtrack was needed to broaden the appeal of the movie in a time when homosexuality was a taboo subject.
Lionel Bart wrote the songs, including one which was to become Cliff's first No.1 hit single.
32. Cliff and the Shadows hit No.1 for the first time
July, 1959
While Serious Charge wasn't the film which launched Cliff as a major film star, it did produce a song that was in many ways as important to his career as Move It: Living Doll.
Originally this song was an up tempo number that Cliff and the Drifters hated, until one night while sitting around in a dressing room in Sheffield Bruce Welch started strumming through the song when he had the flash 'Why don't we do this as a country number?'
Not only did this record become Cliff's first No.1 single selling almost two million copies, it signalled a broadening of his career from a purely rock'n'roll singer to an all-round entertainer who could tackle almost any kind of material. This helped him weather changing musical tastes and appeal to larger audience than his contempories.
It was also around this time that the Drifters became the Shadows.
33. First Car
August, 1959
Through car mechanic Ronnie Ernstone who Cliff had met at an EMI studio party, Cliff organised in August 1959 to purchase his first in a long line of cars.
Cliff's first car was a grey Sunbeam Alpine with red leather seats, which he would later trade in for a Thunderbird. He still counts automobiles as one of his major vices.
34. Expresso Bongo premieres
20 November, 1959
Cliff's second movie once again saw him take a supporting role, however Expresso Bongo was a more successful and critically accepted film than his last effort.
In this film Cliff played a character named Bongo Herbert who is exploited by an unscrupulous manager (played by Laurence Harvey) and latched on to by a fading movie star (Yolande Donlan). Eventually he sends to have the contract with his agent nullified, but Harvey's character simply picks himself up in search of the next Bongo Herbert.
The film was originally created as a satire of the career of Tommy Steele's rise to fame, and much of it was shot in the 2i's coffee bar where Cliff had performed the previous year.
35. Cliff and the Shadows release second album
November, 1959
Reflecting a broadening of his career which started with Living Doll, Cliff Sings further cemented Cliff and the Shadows as entertainers rather than a purely rock'n'roll act. This album contrasted rock hits such as Blue Suede Shoes with standards such as Embraceable You recorded with the Norrie Paramor Orchestra, showcasing the mix of styles that would guide Cliff's career through the sixties.
36. Cliff presented with first gold disc
17 January, 1960
During Cliff's performance on the television show Sunday Night at the London Palladium, presented Bruce Forsythe presented Cliff with what would be the first of many gold disc for Living Doll.
Bruce told the audience when the award was being presented, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I just want to announce that Cliff's Living Doll has sold a million.'
The broadcast also drew nineteen million viewers which was a record for a light entertainment program.
37. America welcomes Cliff and the Shadows
18 January, 1960
While his only impact on the charts so far had been Living Doll's No.30 placing, then-manager Tito Bruns decided Cliff should tour America and eventually signed a deal with Irving Feld of the General Artists Corporation, one of America's biggest booking agencies of the time. Cliff was booked on a package tour with big American artists of the day including Frankie Avalon, Bobby Rydell and Freddy Cannon and billed as 'Extra added attraction: England's singing sensation'.
The tour lasted 31 nights and took Cliff right across the states in a Greyhound tour coach, with the bands travelling for anything from eight to sixteen hours a night with no time for rest in a hotel room. While on tour, he also managed to appear on the Pat Boone Show.
Despite their relative anonymity, Cliff and the Shadows were one of the most well received acts on the tour, with audiences screaming for more at the end of their set. Unfortunately EMI showed little interest in promoting him in the states, and he would recount later that he never once met a representative of his record company during the entire tour.
During this tour Cliff also came close to fulfilling his ambition of meeting Elvis when he and his family met with Colonel Tom Parker. Unfortunately Elvis was still serving in the army and the icons of British and American rock'n'roll were never to meet.
38. Peter Gormley becomes Cliff's manager
March, 1961
After Tito Burns was dismissed from the position of Cliff's manager, there was one logical choice for who would replace him. This man was a 41 year old Australian who had come to Britain managing a country singer Frank Ifield, and then, through Norrie Paramor, moving on to manage the Shadows.
Peter Gormley ended up being the man who would guide Cliff's career in various capacities for almost thirty more years and was Cliff's last real manager. Peter died in 1999.
39. Thousands greet Cliff and the Shadows on first tour of South Africa
March, 1961
In the greatest scenes of mass hysteria that Cliff had produced to date, 3,000 screaming fans greeted him and the Shadows at the airport when arriving for their first tour of South Africa.
The hysteria didn't stop at the airport. Fans lined the entire route from the airport to his hotel, where police estimated around 10,000 fans were waiting in the area in front of his hotel in Johannesburg chanting 'We want Cliff!'
Cliff and the Shadows were unaware that apartheid prevented interracial mixing at their concert, and when this was discovered they offered to do a second concert for black citizens with the proceeds going to the Salisbury Society for Handicapped Africans.
40. Rodger Webb dies
15 May, 1961
A stern figure, Cliff's father had a strong influence on Cliff's life. Not only was he strict with Cliff as a child, but also as a pop star, helping to guide his career and who managed it.
During the last weeks of his life, Rodger and Cliff started to become close for the first time and his death had a profound impact on Cliff. It was probably this more than any other single event which led to his eventual conversion to Christianity.
41. 21 Today becomes Cliff's first No.1 album
14 October, 1961
Another part-rock, part-ballad album, 21 Today was released on the exact date of Cliff's twenty-first birthday. It went on to become his first No.1 album, taking over, interestingly enough, from the Shadows' first LP which had been in the top spot for the past five weeks.
42. First tour of Australia and New Zealand
15 October, 1961
Straight after a 21st birthday party in London, Cliff Richard and the Shadows hopped on a plane for their first journey down under. He actually turned 21 on the flight.
On this tour Cliff played in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and then on to New Zealand. He has since toured this region more than thirty times and has had the third highest amount of hit singles of any artist in Australia.
It was on this tour that Cliff began to explore spiritual matters after the loss of his father. He would later say, 'Perhaps that is also part of the reason Australia is a very special place for me - it was there that I began a most important spiritual journey and began to grapple with my ideas about religion and mortality.'
43. Cliff stars in The Young Ones
13 December, 1961
Cliff's first starring role (and colour film) was in the wildly successful 1961 musical which borrowed more from the old MGM musicals than the rock'n'roll culture.
The story of a group of teenagers fighting to save a youth club was light and accessible to all age groups, and talented actors such as Robert Morely, Richard O'Sullivan, Teddy Green and Melvin Hayes all contributed to a film which revolutionised the British film industry. The task of casting a female lead was a little more difficult as she couldn't be too attractive so as to cause the fans to resent her, nor could she be too ugly to be believable as Cliff's love interest. For a while Barbara Streisand was considered for the role, but producer Kenneth Harper didn't believe she'd be right for the role, and Carole Gray was eventually chosen.
The film went on to become a massive success and established the mould for his next three films to follow.
44. First single to enter the charts at No.1
January, 1962
Following the monstrous success of the movie, the title song from The Young Ones became Cliff's first single to enter the UK charts at No.1, and in three days no less!
With pre-orders of over one million copies, the single was released on the Friday and by Monday was sitting atop the British charts. It would remain on the charts for 21 weeks.
45. Coronation Street prompts Cliff to change his lifestyle
April, 1962
Perhaps one of the most unusual milestones in Cliff's life was a reference to him on the British soap Coronation Street.
It was a comment by one of the original characters on the show, Minnie Caldwell, while listening to a brass band that 'Isn't that Cliff Richard a lovely, chubby lad?' which prompted him give up his favourite drink of Tizer with a scoop of ice cream and Indian sweets and adopt a strict a strict diet which saw his weight drop from 12 to 11 stone where it has stayed ever since.
He now only eats one large meal a day in the evening, with a light snack at lunch time.
46. Summer Holiday is released
11 January, 1963
The second film with Cliff in the leading role was another lavish musical, this taking many of the same team that made The Young Ones a success across Europe in a red double decker bus. New additions to the group including a new leading lady played by Lauri Peters and someone who was to become a close friend of Cliff's over the years, Una Stubbs.
Not only did this film out perform The Young Ones at the box office, it broke all previous records for a British film which was helped by the premiere being scheduled in the middle of winter when audiences wanted to be transported out of freezing Britain. The soundtrack from the film also went to No.1 where it stayed for fourteen weeks, and produced two classic No.1 singles Bachelor Boy/The Next Time and Summer Holiday.
47. Cliff and Bill Latham meet
July, 1964
After the death of his father in 1961, Cliff was struggling with issues of faith and spirituality. One of the first people to engage Cliff in serious discussion about religion was a new member of the Shadows, Brain 'Licorice' Locking. He was a Jehovah's Witness and began having discussions around 1962 with Cliff, his family and Hank about the bible. Hank and Cliff's mother went on to join the religion.
Cliff's old school teacher Jay Norris was concerned with Cliff's new interest in Jehovah's Witnesses, and arranged for Cliff to meet with the school's religious education master Bill Latham at her annual car ralley in July. She put Cliff in the car with Latham, who was given strict orders by Norris to get into a spiritual conversation with Cliff.
While they did discuss spirituality briefly, they didn't immediately develop the connection Jay Norris had hoped they would, so when the issue of religion came up one evening while Cliff was at her house for supper she suggested that Cliff invite Bill over to discuss religion.
Not only was this a pivotal moment in Cliff's journey toward Christianity, but it was also when Cliff was to meet the man who would over the years become Cliff's best friend. He is also now the director of the Cliff Richard Charitable Trust and manages Cliff religious commitments.
48. Cliff announces his conversion to Christianity
26 June, 1966
Even though he was a religious education teacher, Bill Latham felt that he needed help answering Cliff's theological questions and brought in friends from Christain youth organisation the Crusaders Graham Disbrey and David Winter. Bill also began to take him to Crusaders classes that he was teaching, where he would sit up the back quietly listening.
The turning point for Cliff came when he was staying with Bill and his mother during the filming of his 1966 movie Finders Keepers. One evening he sat in his bedroom reading the book of Revelation and came across the passage where Jesus says, 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock; whoever hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in.' He sat and mouthed a hesitant prayer, 'All right, Jesus, I know that you are knocking - you'd better come and take over.'
While no public announcement had been made, word of Cliff's conversion began to spread, and when Billy Graham came to London for a four week crusade at Earls Court, Cliff was sent an invitation to appear with him in front of 25,000 people at the Earl's Court Arena. This was where Cliff would announce to the world that he was a Christian.
49. Cliff is Go!
12 December, 1966
Perhaps one of Cliff's most interesting film appearances is in the 1966 Jerry Anderson movie Thunderbirds Are Go!
In the movie, Cliff is reduced to puppet form and appears on the stage of the Swingin' Star Nightclub with the Shadows. He is introduced as Cliff Richard Junior, 'the biggest star in the universe' and sings the song Shooting Star.
50. Good News, Cliff's first gospel album, released
April, 1967
In his struggle to try and integrate his newfound Christian faith with his career, Cliff released his first album of gospel songs in 1967 featuring tracks such as When I Survey The Wondrous Cross, What A Friend We Have In Jesus and It's No Secret.
Cliff would go on to regard this album as his most important recording achievement of the late sixties.
51. Eurovision 1968
6 April, 1968
After being chosen out of six songs performed by Cliff on Cilla Black's TV show, Congratulations went on to become the song which represented Britain in the Eurovision Song Contest and one of Cliff's highest selling hits ever.
Despite it's eventual popularity, Congratulations came second to Spain's forgotten La La La thanks to the German vote, which was somewhat ironic considering that Germany placed advance orders for the single of 150,000 copies.
Congratulations went on to become Cliff's ninth number one hit and the highest selling song ever to loose Eurovision. It also won two Ivor Novello Awards in 1969 for Most Performed Work and International Song of the Year.
Congratulations has gone on to become one of the most recorded songs in Britain with over one thousand versions, and has been played at events such as the wedding of Charles and Diana, on the dockside at Southampton when the British troop ships returned from the Falklands War, and for the Queen Mothers 100th birthday celebrations.
52. Last album with the Shadows
September, 1968
In celebration of their tenth anniversary in show business, Cliff and the Shadows re-teamed for a last album of new material, Established 1958. Half of the tracks on this album were Cliff songs, and the rest were Shadows instrumental tracks.
The last single released from Cliff and the Shadows was to be Don't Forget to Catch Me in November 1968.
53. Cliff's first gospel tour
1968
As he continued to become more involved in Christian groups in Britain, Cliff began to toy with the idea of performing gospel concerts. From this desire to become more actively involved in spreading the Christian message was born his first gospel tour, Help Hope and Hallelujah.
The tour started off in Stockholm, and moved to The Hague and eventually Zagreb. The show in Croatia, then Yugoslavia, was a boost for local Christians who were not allowed access to the media at that point in time. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the tour was a segment of the concert being broadcast three minutes before their ten o'clock news, with Cliff synchronising the show to have the broadcast coincide with him talking about how he became a Christian before launching into What A Friend We Have In Jesus. The head of the country's Baptist Union was later called in to meet with the head of Zagreb's secret police, but rather than being reprimanded, he was offered mild appreciation for the concert which the police chief's teenage daughters had attended and thoroughly enjoyed.
54. It's Cliff Richard premieres
3 January, 1970
Twelve years after his career first began, Cliff was given his first television show in 1970 which ran for 13 weeks, and returned the following year.
The show was a mixture of music and comedy, featuring performers close to Cliff including Una Stubbs, Hank Marvin and Olivia Newton-John.
55. Alan Tarney, Terry Britten and Trevor Spencor join Cliff's band
1970
Perhaps the most important musicians to join Cliff since the Shadows, Alan Tarney, Terry Britain and Trevor Spencer were three Australians who came to Britain in after performing in local cover bands in Adelaide.
The team didn't immediately make a huge impression on Cliff's career, with the first song they wrote to be recorded by him being Tarney/Spencer's 1972 single Living In Harmony. However, in time Terry Britten would end up writing or co-writing hits for Cliff such as Devil Woman (1976) and Carrie (1980), while Alan Tarney went on to become Cliff's most successful songwriter/producer ever, writing hits such as We Don't Talk Anymore (1979), Wired For Sound (1981) and Some People (1987), and producing his two highest selling studio albums ever: Always Guaranteed (1987) and Stronger (1989).
56. Serious acting debut
11 May, 1970
As he began to loose interest in his musical career, Cliff's interests turned toward acting and he made his stage debut in a dramatic role in Peter Shaffer's play Five Finger Exercise.
Cliff played the part of Clive Harrington, in the play which focuses on a 'deep friendship' between an artistic student and his tutor. The play was originally considered controversial for it's veiled homosexual themes.
The play opened in May 1970 at the New Theatre in Bromley, with the review in the Kentish Times calling his performance '...a triumph for Cliff's determination to make his way in the theatre.'
57. First duet with Olivia Newton-John
January, 1971
During Cliff's first television series in 1970, Cliff recognised the talents of a relative unknown, Olivia Newton-John, who had joined the cast and he began to launch her career in Britain by including her prominently in his concerts and in the show. Peter Gormley, Cliff's manager, also became her manager.
While they would go on to have a trans-Atlantic top twenty hit with the duet Suddenly in 1980, the first duet Cliff and Olivia ever sang together was the b-side of his single Sunny Hunny Girl. The single went on to reach No.19, and the b-side, Don't Move Away, would end up being released twenty-four years later as the b-side of Cliff and Olivia's duet Had To Be.
58. Cliff appears on stage in Graham Greene's The Potting Shed
17 May, 1971
After an encouraging response to his earlier effort at the New Theatre in Bromley, Cliff returned a year later to play the part of James Callifer in Graham Greene's 1958 play The Potting Shed. The show ended up having to be moved to the Sadler's Wells Theatre in North London after the New Theatre burned down two days before opening night. This turn of events led to the show becoming his west end debut.
Cliff, sporting his first beard, was given a better review by the Kentish Times this time around, saying 'As an obsessed James Callifer he gives a nicely restrained performance that nevertheless has the undercurrent of poignancy and despairing drive.' Cliff has mentioned through the years that his performance in this show was one of the proudest achievements of his career.
59. Brand New Song Cliff's first not to make UK top 30
December, 1972
Cliff's last single of 1972 was his first not to be produced by Norrie Paramor. It was called Brand New Song and also became the first single of Cliff's career not to make the top 30, ushering in one of Cliff's least productive periods commercially speaking.
60. Cliff returns to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest
7 April, 1973
Cliff made a second attempt to win the Eurovision Song Contest for Britain in Luxembourg with Power To All Our Friends.
While the entry placed third, it went on to sell over one million copies becoming the second highest selling song to loose Eurovision behind his previous entry, Congratulations.
61. Cliff performs at the Sydney Opera House
1973
Following up his initial tour in 1961, Cliff returned to Australia for the opening of one the world's greatest music venues: the Sydney Opera House.
Cliff performed a series of concerts at the prestigious venue shortly after its opening, and became one of the first performers to be able to claim they'd sung at the Sydney Opera House
62. First-hand experience of the third world
1973
Following a stint at the Sydney Opera House where he was feted with champagne and fine food, Cliff flew straight to one of the neediest nations on earth; Bangladesh.
What he saw shocked him, and he wandered around horribly aware that he did not want to touch the children before him when suddenly someone accidentally stepped on the fingers of a child in front of him. The child's cry of pain made Cliff instinctively reach out at hold the child, forgetting about the dirt and sores, teaching him what he has always taken with him as a lesson in Christian compassion.
The experience made him feel utterly useless and ashamed of his privileged position. At the end of the one day during a meeting in the nurses' quarters he expressed this by saying, 'What I've seen today makes me feel like giving up my life in England and staying here to help.' A nurse on the tour responded to him with the following question: 'Can you give an injection or put someone on a drip?' , to which he responded, 'No, I couldn't. I'd be horrified.' 'Well you'd be little use here,' she smiled, 'Go back home and raise money for us to do it. That's what you do and this is what we do. Without you and other Christians at home we couldn't be here. We need each other.'
These simple words helped to make Cliff more aware of his role as a Christian, and helped him to re-focus his career to help those Christians in the field.
63.Cliff's last film is released
26 December, 1974
The film that brought an end to Cliff's movie career was Take Me High; an attempt to prove musicals could be made without dancing.
Cliff played the character of Tim Matthews who ends up reviving a restaurant's flagging trade by inventing the 'Brumberger', and Debbie Watling played the love interest Sarah.
Take Me High was something of a hangover from another era and failed to ignite much interest at the box office. It became Cliff's first film not to make its money back.
64. Honky Tonk Angel withdrawn from circulation
September, 1975
Perhaps the most controversial single of Cliff's career was his cover of Honky Tonk Angel. After discovering at a Christian conference that this song was about a prostitute he withdrew in from circulation, even requesting DJs return all copies.
It became his lowest selling single ever with little more than 10,000 sales, and 1975 was Cliff's first year without a hit single.
65. I'm Nearly Famous re-launches Cliff's career
May 1976
Since his conversion to Christianity, Cliff hadn't been particularly interested in his recording career. As a result of this, his sales were seriously beginning to slide and he looked to be teetering on the brink of becoming a 'greatest hits' artist.
Producer Dave Mackay was brought in to help arrest the slide, and although his first few efforts didn't show much in the way of results, on 31st of February Street he helped to bring Cliff into the seventies musically, with Cliff even writing almost half the songs. While the album wasn't a hit, Cliff later said, 'That album was, to me, the turning point of my career.'
It was an old member of the Shadows, however, who would go on to give Cliff the hits - and credibility - that he'd been lacking with his next album, I'm Nearly Famous.
For this album his journey to America and unearthed a track hidden away on a cassette given to him by the Lionel Conway, head of Island Music, called Miss You Nights which Conway hadn't thought to mention, but would become the first top-twenty single from Cliff's new album and his most requested song on radio. He also found a song by one of Cliff's band members, Terry Britain, which he'd co-written with a singer a children's television show host Christine Holmes , called Devil Woman.
The first single to be released was Miss You Nights which sold solidly and gave Cliff his first top twenty hit in two years. The next single, Devil Woman, however, was the one to turn his career around. The first time any of them heard it played on the radio was when Terry Britten heard a DJ play the first few bars and then ask listeners to ring up and guess who was about to sing. No-one guessed it was Cliff, and there seemed to be genuine excitement that he had produced a track like this.
When the album itself was released it was greeted with the same enthusiasm with Melody Maker writing, 'Cliff Richard has at last made the sort of album he could, and should, have been making for years. It is with some incredulity that I have to say that for the past ten days I've been playing two albums constantly. One is Marvin Gaye's I Want You. The other is I'm Nearly Famous. The renaissance of Richard, for that is what I believe this album heralds, is long overdue...It is the best album of new songs ever.'
Record companies around the world churned out I'm Nearly Famous badges and t-shirts, and even Elizabeth Tayler, Pete Townshend and Elton John were spotted wearing I'm Nearly Famous badges after Rocket released the album in the US.
I'm Nearly Famous ended up becoming Cliff's highest selling album worldwide since The Young Ones and signalled to the world that he was, once again, a force to be reckoned with.
66. Cliff becomes the first western rock artist to tour Russia
August 1976
After discovering that his records were now sold officially in Russia, Cliff received an invitation from the Official State Entertainment Department to perform a series of concerts in the then-communist country.
Cliff's reception in Russia was extremely warm, with every one of the 91,000 tickets to his twenty concerts sold out. On the first night in Leningrad the orchestra pit even had to be opened up to prevent enthusiastic fans from jumping onto the stage!
67. Devil Woman becomes Cliff's first UK top-ten
August 1976
America had always seemed elusive for Cliff, but I'm Nearly Famous seemed to be a strong enough album to finally helping him to make an impact in the birthplace of rock'n'roll, and, sure enough, Cliff was soon signed to Elton John's Rocket label which was to promote the album across the Atlantic. Cliff undertook his first ever publicity tour of the States, which lasted for four weeks, and by the end of June the first single, Devil Woman, entered the Billboard charts at No.88 and began to steadily climb through July and August.
When the news broke that Devil Woman had become Cliff's first top ten in the US he was on tour in Russia. It went on to reach No.5 and become a US million-seller.
68. Forty Golden Greats tops the UK charts
October, 1977
While riding high on the wave of his new found success, Cliff released his most comprehensive 'greatest hits' collection to date.
The album, Forty Golden Greats, is significant not just due to the fact it was his first comprehensive compilation album, but also because it was his first No.1 album since the soundtrack to Summer Holiday reached the summit fourteen years earlier.
69. Cliff releases his highest selling single of all time
July, 1979
While Cliff was recording his Rock'n'Roll Juvenile album with Terry Britten, Bruce Welch came across a track Alan Tarney had written for his next album with Trevor Spencer under the banner Tarney-Spencer. Bruce immediately felt that the song would be perfect for Cliff and pleaded with Alan to let him take the song to him, and he eventually gave in.
We Don't Talk Anymore ended up giving his first UK chart-topper since Congratulations in 1968, and became his highest selling single of all time. It also became his second US top ten hit, reaching No.8.
70. Norrie Paramor dies
September 1979
Cliff's first producer and mentor, Norrie Paramor died in September 1979.
Norrie quit work at EMI in 1968, but continued to produce Cliff until 1973. In that same year he moved to Birmingham to conduct the Midlands Light Orchestra.
71. Cliff embarks on first solo tour of the US
3 March 1980
After top ten success with Devil Woman and We Don't Talk Anymore, it was decided that Cliff would embark on his first solo tour of the US.
The tour started out on a sour note when, a few days before the first show in Seattle, the trailer containing all the band's equipment was stolen from outside their motel. Other than that, however, the tour went well with a very enthusiastic response from the audiences, and the shows in New York and Los Angeles selling out.
72. Cliff awarded an OBE
23 July, 1980
Five weeks after completing his I'm No Hero album, Cliff was presented with an Order of the British Empire at Buckingham Palace.
Cliff took his mother along for the investiture, the first time a pop star had been recognised in such a way since the Beatles were awarded their MBEs in 1965.
73. Kids give Cliff the thumbs up
27 September, 1980
Amongst a swag of awards given to Cliff during 1980, one stands out as particularly significant and this was the award of top male vocalist as voted by listeners of Swap Shop.
Swap Shop was hosted by Noel Edmond, and had an audience predominantly made up of children who, in the year of his fortieth birthday, voted Cliff to be their favourite male singer.
74. Congratulations! Cliff celebrates his fortieth birthday
14 October, 1980
Cliff celebrated his landmark fortieth birthday in concert at the Apollo in London. During the show the audience would break into spontaneous renditions of Happy Birthday, and the band even managed to work the tune into one of the guitar solos!
After the show he could barely squeeze into his dressing room for flowers and gifts, and a surprise party was held for him at the Waterloo Arts Centre which lasted until four the next morning!
75. Sue Barker and Cliff begin to date
March 1982
One of the most talked about aspects of Cliff's life is his relationship with Sue Barker. She was his first publicly visible girlfriend since Jackie Irving in the early sixties, and perhaps the No.1 female British tennis player at the time, so I guess it was inevitable that as soon as they were seen together that gossip was going to spread.
Cliff and Sue first met in September 1981 through sports commentator and supporter of Christians in Sport, Gerald Williams, who felt that Cliff would be the perfect person to help Sue cope with the pressure that comes with being a Christian in the public eye. It was when Cliff flew out to Denmark with Sue to watch her play an exhibition match in Denmark that the press first spied the two together, and the next day the papers were full of headlines such as The Sun's 'Sue and Cliff In Love Riddle'.
During the short term of their relationship, the press put enormous pressure on the couple, with the question of marriage being asked almost immediately. By the end of August that year their relationship had effectively finished, but they remain friends and the speculation remained. Ultimately it took Sue's relationship with a different man in late 1984 to break down the speculation.
Out of his relationship with Sue, Cliff gained a love of tennis which was to stay with him for the rest of his life.
76. Cliff earns blacklisting from UN for South African tour
1983
Despite visiting the country on a gospel tour to raise money for charity, Cliff earned a blacklisting from the United Nations for touring South Africa.
Cliff's attitude was that by visiting a country he wasn't condoning its political system, and perhaps he could help effect change with the message he was presenting. His shows were multi-racial, and he cancelled one show in a venue which prohibited an interracial audience.
While touring Scandinavia, Cliff's hotel also received a bomb threat as a result of his South African tour.
77. The first Cliff Richard Pro-Celebrity Tennis Tournament
12 December, 1983
Sue led Cliff to begin an annual Pro-Celebrity Tennis Tournament aiming to raise money to improve the standard of tennis in Britain. Players are Cliff, Hank Marvin, Trevor Eve, Mike Read, Sue Barker, Sue Mappin and Anne Hobbs.
While the first year's tournament was only half full, the even has become increasingly popular and now sells out almost without fail.
This match was also Cliff's public debut as a tennis player.
78. New Musical Express review prompts legal action
13 October, 1984
For the first time in his career, Cliff was prompted to sue a publication over what was loosely termed as a 'review' of one of his gospel concerts, written in the form of a conversation between the writer and Satan.
The article, published in NME, made no mention of his music, but was rather a vitriolic attack on Cliff, his fans and Christianity. It referred to Cliff as a 'Nazi', ridiculed his celibacy, and referred to his fans as 'two-dimensional masochists'. Cliff won £5,000 damages, which he immediately donated to the Arts Centre Group.
79. Cliff and The Young Ones resurrect Living Doll
March, 1986
Twenty-seven years after it first topped the charts, Living Doll made it to the top once again thanks to a duet between Cliff and the cast of the British comedy show The Young Ones. In the show one of the characters, played by Rik Mayall, has an obsession with Cliff and thus this pairing to raise money for Comic Relief.
Not only did this song give Cliff his eleventh No.1 hist single, but it also gave him further credit in the music industry. The remake of Living Doll ended up selling almost as many copies as the original, selling well over a million copies.
80 Cliff's Debut in a West End musical, Time, premiers
9 April, 1986
Appearing in a West End musical was a long time ambition of Cliff's, and in the early eighties he began to form a clear picture of the type of musical he wanted to be a part of. 'Having had a little experience in the acting world I would like to bring that together with the kind of singing I do to create the first real pop-rock musical,' he said, 'I'd like to do I show where every song gave me goose pimples, songs like Miss You Nights, Devil Woman and Dreamin'.'
In 1983 Dave Clarke, formally of the Dave Clark Five, approached Cliff with a science fiction musical that he had co-written and was keen to produce. The show was called Time and dealt with the judgement of the earth by a time lord for crimes relating to the mistreatment of the planet, with Cliff playing a young rock star called Chris who pleads the earth's case.
A great deal of talent was involved with this show, with artists such as Julian Lennon, Freddie Mercury, Dionne Warwick and Steve Wonder contributing songs to the soundtrack. Sir Laurence Olivier also appeared in holographic form as Akash, a God-like figure.
Despite scathing critical reviews, the show went on to sell a phenomenal 700,000 tickets during Cliff's run at the Dominion Theatre, and helped encourage Cliff to further pursue his interests in the theatre.
81. Always Guaranteed released
September, 1987
Perhaps his most important album since I'm Nearly Famous in 1976, Always Guaranteed was the album that thrust Cliff back into the charts after his run in Time and would go on to sell more than 1.3 million copies to become his highest selling studio album ever.
The idea for a 'definitive Cliff Richard album' came to Cliff after he heard Michael Jackson's Thriller, and Alan Tarney was brought in to write and produce all of the songs. Always Guaranteed went on to produce four singles, the most he'd ever released from an album, including the No.3 hit Some People.
82. Cliff's highest selling album of all time is released
November, 1988
Capping off his third decade in the music industry was a compilation album featuring his most memorable hits from 1979 to 1980 which would become Cliff's highest selling album of all time.
Quickly rising to the top of the charts upon release, Private Collection went on to be certified platinum four times in the UK for sales of over 1.2million copies, and was to produce Cliff's biggest UK hit single of the decade.
83. Mistletoe & Wine becomes Cliff's first Christmas-themed No.1
November, 1988
At the same time Private Collection was rising up the charts, Mistletoe & Wine also began to catch on, eventually climbing to the summit where it stayed for five weeks.
Mistletoe & Wine not only went on to become the highest selling single of the year, and the twelfth highest selling of the eighties in Britain, but it became a Christmas standard that would make Cliff and Christmas almost synonymous in Britain for years to come.
84. Cliff becomes the first British artist to release 100 singles
May, 1989
For his landmark 100th single Cliff chose a song written by David Foster and Richard Marx called The Best of Me.
While the song was kept of No.1 by Jason Donovan, there was some romanticism in the fact that it peaked at the same position as first single Move It way back in 1958, and it was also heralded by the press as a significant landmark.
85. The Event takes over Wembley Stadium
16 June, 1989
To celebrate his thirtieth anniversary in show business, Cliff commandeered Wembley Stadium for what would be the largest dates of his entire career.
While Cliff was initially worried that he wouldn't be able to fill the stadium, all 72,000 tickets for the first concert sold out in the first weekend and a second show was soon scheduled which also quickly sold out. Despite these impressive numbers, Cliff gave up his own slice of the ticket sales to plow back into a show which he wanted to turn into an 'event' for his fans.
Cliff divided the show into various parts, including a version of The Oh Boy Show featuring original cast members, a Shadows reunion, reggae band Asward, and his own set at the end of the show, and over ninety performers and musicians were on stage at one time or another. To help make the show run, three thousand people from ticket takers to crowd control had to be employed, but it was the 144,000 people who bought tickets to the shows that helped life the proceedings from that of a mere concert to a bonafide Event.
86. Stock, Aitken and Waterman give Cliff his first dance hit
August, 1989
For the past few years the songwriting/production team of Stock, Aitken and Waterman had been dominating the British charts with danceable pop tunes recorded by artists such as Rick Astley, Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan. By 1991 they had seen fifty-two of their songs reach the top ten, making them the most successful production team in British chart history.
While receiving an award for Rick Astley's hit Never Gonna Give You Up at the Ivor Novello awards in April 1989, Cliff leaned over to the group and said, 'If you ever come up with another song like that, give me a call.' In no time they had whipped up a hit called I Just Don't Have The Heart, which ended up placing No.3 on the UK singles charts and No.2 on the dance charts. It also managed to top the charts in the Philippines.
87. Cliff appears at Knebworth
30 June, 1990
One of the largest crowds Cliff has ever performed to was the 120,000 people present at the Knebworth concert set up in aid of the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Centre for providing music therapy for handicapped children and the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology.
Cliff and the Shadows appeared in this concert that was beamed to ninety per cent of the world and included stars such as Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Pink Floyd and Phil Collins.
88. Cliff overtakes Elvis' chart record
August, 1990
It took him thirty-two years, but in 1990 Cliff finally surpasses Elvis' record of fifty-five British top ten hits with Silhouettes. It would take him another eight years to overtake Elvis' amount of weeks spent in the singles charts.
89.Fiftieth birthday for Cliff
14 October, 1990
Riding high on perhaps the highest wave of success since the early sixties, Cliff approached his fiftieth birthday in the same way as he had his fortieth; with relative indifference.
Another similarity was that Cliff was also performing on the night of his birthday, however this time he was having a special birthday concert at the much-larger 12,000 capacity Birmingham N.E.C. After the concert he held a Champaign party with friends and family, where he was presented with a gift by Elton John's manager on behalf of the star which was a £15,000 diamond brooch and fifty-two bottles of vintage wine.
90. Cliff embarks on record-breaking From A Distance tour
1 November, 1990
Launching him well and truly into his fourth decade in showbusiness was Cliff's record-breaking From A Distance tour.
Starting in Birmingham, and winding its way through Birmingham, Aberdeen and London, this tour set records for most sold out nights at Wembley Arena (18 nights and 216,000 people) and the NEC in Birmingham (12 nights to over 145,000 people). Overall the tour sold 420,000 tickets across Britain, firmly establishing Cliff as one of the most popular live acts in the world, with a stage show that heralded in a new era of high-tech elaborate Cliff concerts.
The tour and successful accompanying album were estimated to have generated £22million in 1990.
91. Saviour's Day tops the charts
December, 1990
Almost a quater of a century since he first revealed to the world he was a Christian, Saviour's Day was to become Cliff's first openly Christian song to top the British charts.
While Saviour's Day didn't sell as well as Mistletoe & Wine, it provided Cliff with a second Christmas-themed No.1 which would further cement his association with Christmas and take him into his fourth decade at the top. It also made Cliff the only artist to have had No.1 hit singles in each of five consecutive decades.
92. Access All Areas tour begins
1 October, 1992
Cliff decided that rather than travel the time-honoured path of releasing an album and then following it with a tour that for his latest album, Access All Areas, he would have the tour before the release of the album itself.
Following his most successful tour of all time, Access All Areas saw Cliff perform to 480,000 people across the UK. Not only did Cliff perform to 60,000 more people than he did on his last tour, making this his most successful tour to date, it was also the largest tour of the year in Britain. While production costs neared £2million, it was estimated that this tour brought in £9million in ticket sales.
The title of the eventual album was changed from Access All Areas to The Album so people would not think it was a live album of the show, and the strategy of touring before the album's release seemed to pay off when it became his seventh No.1 album in the same week that the video of the tour topped the UK video charts.
93. VE Day Celebrations
8 May, 1995
One of the experiences that Cliff is most honoured to have had a part in were the 50th anniversary celebrations of VE Day.
While Cliff wasn't part of the generation who experienced the war to any great extent, he was brought in to represent the post-war generation and was established as an icon of post-war Britain alongside war-time icons such as Dame Vera Lynn and Sir Harry Secombe.
Cliff took part in the anniversary concert in Hyde Park and was also invited to appear outside the gates of Buckingham Palace the following Monday to the Royal Family and the tens of thousands of people gathered to celebrate the anniversary of one of the most important dates of the twentieth century.
94. Arise Sir Cliff
25 October, 1995
After an announcement earlier in the year as part of the Queens Birthday Honours List, Cliff Richard became Sir Cliff Richard at 10:30am on October 25 1995. He was the first pop star to be honour with a full Knighthood in the history of Buckingham Palace. Cliff can't quite remember what the Queen said to him, but he thinks it was 'It's been a long time coming'. His sisters, however seem to recall them having a fairly length conversation which Cliff has no recollection of!
Hundreds of fans camped outside the Palace to catch a glimpse of Cliff on one of the momentous days in his career, and news of the investiture was beamed right around the world.
95. Misunderstood Man banned by BBC Radio2
October, 1995
In the same month he was knighted by the Queen, Cliff released his first single ever to be banned by BBC Radio.
"It was just thought too raucous for our audience. Too upbeat really," explained a BBC spokesman. "It was not the right feel for the station."
The single, Misunderstood Man, was the first from the album Songs From Heathcliff and managed to peak at No.19 in its first week, despite the lack of airplay.
96. First Cliff Richard home page hits the Internet
18 November, 1995
Bringing Cliff into a new technological world at the age of 55, the first Cliff Richard page was launched on the Internet in November 1995 and, yes, you are currently reading it!
The Sir Cliff Richard Home Page was launched on the fourteenth birthday of webmaster (and a hell of a nice guy) Randal Sheppard and was to lead a flood of Cliff pages, with the Official Cliff Richard page being launched four years later in 1999.
97. Heathcliff begins
16 October, 1996
Perhaps the most significant project for Cliff in the nineties was the fulfilment of his lifelong dream to play the brooding character of Heathcliff from Emily Bronte's gothic masterpiece Wuthering Heights.
Cliff began putting together the show in 1992 when he called director Frank Dunlop. After much convincing he finally agreed to direct, and Tim Rice (Evita, Phantom of The Opera and The Lion King) was brought in to write the lyrics, with John Farrar (Grease) was brought in to write the music. After the shows original opening was delayed from 1994 to 1996, the public's first taste of the music was the cryptically titled studio album Songs From Heathcliff which suffered from lack of airplay after Misunderstood Man was banned by BBC Radio 2. It still managed to sell a substantial 200,000 copies in the UK after its October 1995 release and piqued the public's interest in the show.
Tickets went on sale in March of the following and sold a record 97,000 tickets worth £2,305,000 on the first day, with fans camping out for up to ten days to get the best seats. The show itself was costing £3,500,000 to stage, three quarters of that put up by Cliff himself, and by the opening night almost 350,000 tickets had been sold, amounting to a record £8.5 million advance box office.
Despite scathing critical reviews upon its premiere at Birmingham's NIA, Heathcliff continued to draw sell-out crowds and ended up selling almost 500,000 tickets by the end of its run in April 1997.
It also gave Cliff his highest selling video ever, topping the UK video charts for two months upon its 1998 release.
98. Cliff celebrates his fortieth anniversary in showbiz
1998
Forty years after Move it first hit No.2, Cliff embarked upon a celebration of his long career with one of his most successful tours of Australia and New Zealand in February with special guest Olivia Newton-John. He sold over 200,000 tickets in Australia alone, and develops the 'in the round' presentation of his concert which he would later employ in his UK fortieth anniversary concerts and 1999 Countdown Concerts.
After releasing an exceptionally strong new album, Real As I Wanna Be, which makes the UK top ten and gave him an unexpected hit on the Club Charts with the Step Child remix of Can't Keep This Feeling In, he played a record-breaking 32 sell-out shows at London's Royal Albert Hall in October. Due to the huge demand for tickets, an extra run had to be added in March of the following year.
99. The Millennium Prayer reaches No.1
November, 1999
Radio stations announced that they would not play it, and the British national press derided Cliff for recording it, but The Millennium Prayer went on to become Cliff's fourteenth No.1 hit single and one of his highest selling ever, with over one million copies being sold in Britain alone.
Cliff announced before this single's release that having it reach No.1 on the British charts would be the 'crowning jewel in my career' and he got his wish in the single's second week when it became only the second single of the year to rise to No.1 after entering at a lower position. It would spend three weeks at its peak position, and also go on to chart all around the world with highlights being No.1 in New Zealand and No.2 in Australia.
100. HAPPY 60th BIRTHDAY CLIFF!
14 October, 2000
Cliff's life led him from India, to working-class England and then to the top of the entertainment industry where he has since stayed.
An inspiration to millions, and one of the most successful artists in the history of music, Cliff Richard continues to entertain and inspire audiences worldwide.
In 1936 Dorothy first met the man who was to become her husband when Rodger Webb came to visit his sister who lived in the apartment above her family's in the town of Asansol. He was thirty-one and she was sixteen, but despite this significant age difference, and the fact Rodger was based in the far away town of Howrah, they fell in love and for three years stayed in contract mostly through letters.
On 26 April 1939 Rodger and Dorothy were married at St Paul's Church, Asansol. They soon moved north-west to Dehra Dun where they were soon to start a family.
2. Harry Rodger Webb is born
14 October, 1940
14 October, 1940
On Monday 14th October 1940, Dorothy Webb gave birth to a nine pound boy who would eventually go on to be described as the boy who's going to rock the world.
Harry Rodger Webb was born in The King's English Hospital in Lucknow due to the lack of major hospitals in Dehra Dun, and was due to be christened 'Rodger Harry' upon his return to the town. However, Cliff's godmother voiced her preference for 'Harry Rodger' at the actual Christening, which took place at St Thomas' Church, and that was the name he was very hastily christened with.
3. Harry starts school
September, 1946
September, 1946
The boy who would eventually go on to become Cliff Richard started school at St Thomas' Church School in Church Road, Howrah.
One of his family servants, Habib, used to bring his lunch every day to the school, which was laid out among stands of banana trees. Harry's best friend was a boy named Lal who spoke no English, and thus all of their conversations were in Hindi which he was being taught at school after some preliminary lessons from his father.
4. The Webb's leave for England
24 August, 1948
24 August, 1948
After World War II ended, life in India, which had been promised home rule by Britain for its wartime efforts, began to change forever.
When independence became a genuine possibility, old religious feuds between Hindus and Moslems began to rise to the surface, and violence began to erupt on the streets around 1946. English nationals living in India were also becoming the target of violence, and Harry's mother Dorothy was being hassled while shopping with Indians shouting 'Go back to England white woman.' A frightened young Harry would scream back 'Leave her alone. She's my mummy.'
During a period of intense rioting, a nearby family of Moslems were killed, with the only survivor a young boy who they could see hiding in his garden. They kept him alive by dropping food parcels from their window every night until Dorothy's uncle, a Calcutta Policeman, could be called. This experience shook the young family tremendously, and when the police arrived to collect the boy with flesh visibly hanging off the tracks of the car they decided they had to leave.
Initially Rodger wanted to take his family to Australia, but Dorothy convinced him that they should move to England where her mother and other relatives lived. So on Saturday 21 of August they boarded a train to Bombay where, three days later, they boarded a P&O passenger liner called the Ranchi.
At 6am on Monday 13 September, the Ranchi arrived at Tilbey Docks in the UK. After a charmed existence in India, the Webbs would now struggle to afford even the basics and having to sleep on mattresses at the houses of various relatives. They would have to wait until April 1951 before they were awarded a council house of their own in the working class town of Cheshunt.
5. Harry Webb starts Secondary School
September, 1952
September, 1952
After just failing the eleven-plus exam, Harry was enrolled in the newly built Cheshunt County Secondary School which was taking in 800 pupils.
Cliff soon developed a keen interest in sports, playing soccer, rugby, sprinting, and even managing to break the over-13s javelin record. He also began to develop an interest in drama through a teacher who was to remain a close friend throughout his life, Jay Norris.
6. Acting debut
February, 1954
February, 1954
Perhaps a humble start to a career which would see him break theatre and movie box office records, Cliff had his acting debut Sheila Buckley's The Price of Perfection, which he followed up in October in The Ugly Duckling by A.A. Milne.
It was for the school's 1955 Christmas play that Jay Norris finally convinced Cliff to sing in public. According to Jay, he told her that he wanted the part of Ratty but couldn't sing, to which she responded, 'It's actually quite simple. If you can't sing you can't play Ratty.' He did go on to play Ratty and, according to Jay, 'Sang it beautifully.'
7. Harry first hears Elvis
May, 1956
May, 1956
One Saturday in May 1956, Harry was walking with some friends in Waltham Cross when he heard a sound that would change his life forever.
That noise was Elvis Presley singing Heartbreak Hotel blaring from the radio of a parked Citroen which quickly zoomed off, leaving the teenagers fascinated by a sound unlike any they'd heard before.
Cliff later said 'The first time I heard Elvis' voice I thought of it as a sound or an instrument. I had never heard anyone sing like that before...When I heard Elvis the next step for me was to try to do it.'
Harry and his friends all went home and tuned into Radio Luxembourg and the American Forces Network until they eventually found out that the man who would eventually turn Harry Webb into Cliff Richard was Elvis Presley.
8. First rock'n'roll performance as part of 'The Quintones'
14 July, 1956
14 July, 1956
After being inspired by the music of Elvis, Harry and school friends Betty Clarke, Freda Johnson, John Vince and Beryl Molineux formed an informal singing group which started off singing along to records at the Holy Trinity Youth Club's Saturday night dances.
While the group didn't have any serious intentions at the time, they were asked to appear at the Anglo-French dance which was a fundraiser for the Holy Trinity School on Bastille Day, 1956. They quickly gave themselves the name 'The Quintones' and started practising at a friend's house.
On the night, 250 people witnessed the singing debut of a man that would go on to have more hit singles than any other singer in history. The brief performance included the song that had started his interest in rock'n'roll just months earlier, Heartbreak Hotel, and earned him his first picture in the paper.
9. First girlfriend
1956
1956
The Quintones brought young Harry closer to a girl he'd known since junior school, Betty Clarke. At age fifteen she would become Harry's first girlfriend.
It wouldn't be until 1958 that Harry would find his first girlfriend, albeit under a different name, in Janice Berry who he'd also come to know at Cheshunt County Secondary School.
10. Harry Webb's first review
December, 1956
December, 1956
In yet another dramatic role at Cheshunt Secondary School, Harry earned his first critical review which was published in the Cheshunt Weekly Telegraph. The review stated, 'Harry Webb acted well as Bob Cratchet, but was rather let down by the make-up team and, hard as he worked, he could not dispel the impression that he was a teenager and not a harassed father.'
14 October, 1956
The guitar cost £27, which represented a substantial financial commitment for Rodger in 1956, and he soon taught he son the three chord progression of G, C and D7 that he'd picked up from his days playing banjo in a trad jazz band.
12. Harry attends Bill Haley concert
3 March, 1957
3 March, 1957
Harry and his friends skipped school to buy the tickets and some, including Harry, were stripped of their prefect badges for the offense. The concert, however, electrified them all with Cliff saying in 1960 'This, I think, was when I knew what I wanted to do above everything else in the world.'
July/August, 1957
After this job had finished, he moved into a job that his father had got him at Atlas Lamps. His job was to check orders against the different trade discounts and passing the information on to regional dispatch centres.
He found the job dull and used to spend his time trying to figure out how to become a singer, with most of his four pounds a week pay packet going to his mother.
March, 1958
With school friend Norman Mitham, they rehearsed in the front room of Harry's house in Hargreaves Close playing rock'n'roll classics such as Blue Suede Shoes, Heartbreak Hotel and Rock Around The Clock. Cliff's sister Donna would write down the words from the records, while the band figured out the chords.
Initially, at Terry Smart's suggestion, the band was going to be called The Planets, but Harry and Norman didn't think it sounded quite right. They looked up 'planet' in the dictionary and saw that it came from the Greek word 'planetes' which meant 'wanderer' or 'drifter' and decided upon The Drifters. They also decided that their first album cover would feature them all sitting in a toboggan driving into a snow drift.
The group made their grand debut at the annual dinner dance of the Forty Hill Badminton Club between Cheshunt and Enfield. Their fee for the evening's performance was the princely sum of ten shillings.
March, 1958
This man was John Foster, who drove a tracter on a sewage farm and who's greatest experience in the rock'n'roll world was once standing next to early British rocker Terry Dene at the legendary 2i's in Soho. Despite this lack of experience, he was struck by what he saw, particularly in Harry, later recounting that 'something told me, yes, he's going to be big. He's going to be really big.'
Foster, who was drinking with his mates at the bar, walked up to the Drifters after their set and simply asked them if they wanted a manager. A little taken aback, they laughed 'Ok, you're on!'
April, 1958
The 2i's was the Mecca of British rock'n'roll at the time and had launched the countries biggest rock'n'roll stars of the time, Tommy Steele and Terry Dene. The bar was originally owned by the two Irani brothers (hence the name) who sold it to two flamboyant Australian professional wrestlers, Doctor Death (Paul Lincoln) and 'Rebel' Ray Hunter who had transformed the originally langusishing establishment into a thriving icon of the rock'n'roll era.
After an audition for Tom Littlewood, they were booked for that night which turned into a two week booking. While they wouldn't be discovered there, the booking at the 2i's led to a chain of events which would see Harry Webb becoming the country's biggest rock'n'roll star by the end of the year.
17. Ian Samwell joins The Drifters
April, 1958
April, 1958
Ian Samwell, who, like Harry, had been playing in a local skiffle group, was auditioned on the next Saturday afternoon and began playing with The Drifters that night. He would go on to write them a song which changed rock'n'roll in Britain forever.
April, 1958
She was very taken with the group and stayed behind to get Harry's autograph when she asked him if he had an official fan club. He laughed and explained that he had only been playing rock'n'roll, at which point she offered to start up an official fan club with six members.
The club was to last until 1966 and, at its peak, boasted a membership of 42,000.
April, 1958
To solve this problem, John Foster took the band to The Swiss, which was a pub in Old Compton Street near the 2i's. They started by playing around with the name of a current British singer called Russ Hamilton. The came up with Russ Clifford which Harry didn't really like, then Cliff Russard, and then Cliff Richards. Ian Samwell then suggested that the drop the 's' to make in Cliff Richard as a tribute to Little Richard and also so when people called him 'Cliff Richards' he could correct them and then get his name mentioned twice.
Cliff Richard and the Drifters made their debut on Saturday 3 May and the Regal Ballroom, their biggest booking so far.
June, 1958
Despite his disinterest in rock'n'roll he cancelled a weekend of golf to come and see the shows, and liked what he saw enough to suggest that they cut a demo record. Early the next week they cut a demo in a small studio above the HMV record shop in Oxford Street. They recorded Elvis' Lawdy Miss Clawdy and Jerry Lee Lewis' Breathless. These recordings were released forty years later as part of The Rock'n'Roll Years box set.
June, 1958
Norrie would go on to produce Cliff and the shadow for over a decade, producing more hits for Cliff and the Drifters/Shadows than anyone since.
24 July, 1958
The first recording session took place at Abbey Road, and Norrie brought in musicians Frank Clarke on double bass and Ernie Shear on electric guitar. Schoolboy Crush was the first song recorded and the intended a-side, but it was Move It which really showcased the group's talents. Session engineer Malcolm Addey even allowed the song to exceed the maximum volume that music was allowed to be recorded at in the studio, helping to add to its raw authentic feel.
Cliff's first publicity shot was also taken at the same time in studio 2 at Abbey Road.
9 August, 1958
Despite the fact that Cliff Richard and the Drifters had passed the audition, only Cliff was awarded a contract and the Drifters would not receive any royalties from sales, but rather a fee for taking part in the recording sessions.
August, 1958
While performing, EMI sent a pre-release copy of Move It to the DJ of the Butlin's camp radio station. Tulah Tuke was the first person in the world to play a Cliff Richard song on radio, with the simple plug 'That was the new record from Cliff Richard and the Drifters. You can see them live tonight at the Rock'n'Roll Ballroom.'
29 August, 1958
Not only did the song reach No.2 in the British charts and go on to sell over one million copies, it inspired a generation of British teenagers that genuine rock'n'roll could be produced in their own country. John Lennon once referred to it as 'the most influential British record ever made' and it has gone on to be listed in the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame's five hundred most influential songs of all time.
The song that Ian Samwell had written on the bus to Cliff's house pondering the fate of rock'n'roll was soon to liberate a generation of budding British musicians, giving them the realization that rock'n'roll wasn't purely an American phenomenon.
13 September, 1958
After being struck by the b-side of Cliff and the Drifters new single, Jack agreed to hear the group audition for a new series of his rock'n'roll show. He was further struck by Cliff's performance, but made alterations which were to help mould him into the superstar he was to become.
Firstly, he eradicated Cliff sideburns and stopped him from playing the guitar on stage because he felt that this made him appear an Elvis impersonator rather than a fresh new talent. Jack also worked on building up a stage act for Cliff, instructing him to tilt his head up and raise his eyes to the camera, and also to suddenly grab at his arm 'as if stuck with a hypodermic syringe'. It was also here that Cliff premièred his famous pink jacket.
While Marty Wilde remained the star of the show for the first week, by the second week Move It had entered the charts at No.12 and he was causing a sensation with the Daily Sketch asking 'Is this boy too sexy for television?'
September, 1958
Unfortunately the group realised that they needed stronger musicians, thus they sent John Foster to the 2i's where he was to meet with guitarist Tony Sheridan. While there he met with another guitarist Hank Marvin who was currently touring with the Most Brothers, but agreed to tour with the Drifters if he could bring along his mate Bruce Welch on rhythm guitar.
Both these seventeen year olds had, like Cliff, started out playing skiffle, and both had also changed their names (Hank's original name was Brian Rankin, and Bruce's Bruce Cripps). They would go on to be the two dominant members of Cliff's backing band for the decade to come, and one of the most influential British bands in history.
Their first rehearsal together was in the front room of Cliff's family's house in Cheshunt.
5 October, 1958
There were around eight acts in the show, and the Drifters went on just before the Kalin Twins. At the beginning of the tour the Kalin Twins were still riding high on the charts, but as Move It began to climb Cliff and the Drifters started to draw a bigger and bigger response. Eventually the Kalin Twins had to play over shouts of 'We want Cliff!' and Cliff and the Drifters had to be moved around to finish the show.
'He tore the house down, ' Hal Kalin said many years later, 'There was no way we could compete with an up-and-coming seventeen year old. It became a nightmare for us.'
The only sad note of the tour came when thieves broke into the dressing rooms and stole the guitar Cliff's father had given him for his sixteenth birthday.
Eventually the Kalin Twins were to forgive Cliff, and he brought them back to England to perform as part of the Oh Boy! set of his 1989 The Event concerts at Wembley Stadium.
April, 1959
Three hundred members of Cliff's fan club were invited to the studio, given a buffet lunch and encouraged lend as much 'atmosphere' to the recording as they felt appropriate. The album was recorded over two nights, and on the first night the barriers to keep the fans back were set too close to the stage which resulted in too much screaming being picked up on the microphones. On the second night Cliff had a bout of laryngitis which meant, as Cliff was to say forty years later, 'my first album undoubtedly has too much screaming in some places, and too much croakiness in others.'
None the less, the album, which mainly consisted of rock'n'roll hits of the time, reached No.4 on the albums chart.
April, 1959
Both Cliff and Hank liked the sound of James Burton who was playing on Ricky Nelson's records, and they knew he played a Fender guitar. They managed to acquire a Fender catalogue and decided that Burton must of been playing the Stratocaster as this was the most expensive guitar in the catalogue.
Due to an import ban, Cliff had to send away for the guitar. When it arrived Hank recalls it as 'looking like something from outer space' and it was certainly an unusual looking piece of equipment for a British band at that time. This instrument helped the Drifters to develop the sound which would define them for decades to come.
29 June, 1959
The films story dealt with a vicar (Anthony Quayle) who helps a juvenille delinquent (Andrew Ray) who turns around and accuses him of indecent assult. Cliff played the delinquent's younger brother Curly, mainly due to the fact producer Mickey Delamar felt a rock'n'roll soundtrack was needed to broaden the appeal of the movie in a time when homosexuality was a taboo subject.
Lionel Bart wrote the songs, including one which was to become Cliff's first No.1 hit single.
July, 1959
Originally this song was an up tempo number that Cliff and the Drifters hated, until one night while sitting around in a dressing room in Sheffield Bruce Welch started strumming through the song when he had the flash 'Why don't we do this as a country number?'
Not only did this record become Cliff's first No.1 single selling almost two million copies, it signalled a broadening of his career from a purely rock'n'roll singer to an all-round entertainer who could tackle almost any kind of material. This helped him weather changing musical tastes and appeal to larger audience than his contempories.
It was also around this time that the Drifters became the Shadows.
August, 1959
Cliff's first car was a grey Sunbeam Alpine with red leather seats, which he would later trade in for a Thunderbird. He still counts automobiles as one of his major vices.
20 November, 1959
In this film Cliff played a character named Bongo Herbert who is exploited by an unscrupulous manager (played by Laurence Harvey) and latched on to by a fading movie star (Yolande Donlan). Eventually he sends to have the contract with his agent nullified, but Harvey's character simply picks himself up in search of the next Bongo Herbert.
The film was originally created as a satire of the career of Tommy Steele's rise to fame, and much of it was shot in the 2i's coffee bar where Cliff had performed the previous year.
November, 1959
17 January, 1960
Bruce told the audience when the award was being presented, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I just want to announce that Cliff's Living Doll has sold a million.'
The broadcast also drew nineteen million viewers which was a record for a light entertainment program.
18 January, 1960
The tour lasted 31 nights and took Cliff right across the states in a Greyhound tour coach, with the bands travelling for anything from eight to sixteen hours a night with no time for rest in a hotel room. While on tour, he also managed to appear on the Pat Boone Show.
Despite their relative anonymity, Cliff and the Shadows were one of the most well received acts on the tour, with audiences screaming for more at the end of their set. Unfortunately EMI showed little interest in promoting him in the states, and he would recount later that he never once met a representative of his record company during the entire tour.
During this tour Cliff also came close to fulfilling his ambition of meeting Elvis when he and his family met with Colonel Tom Parker. Unfortunately Elvis was still serving in the army and the icons of British and American rock'n'roll were never to meet.
March, 1961
Peter Gormley ended up being the man who would guide Cliff's career in various capacities for almost thirty more years and was Cliff's last real manager. Peter died in 1999.
March, 1961
The hysteria didn't stop at the airport. Fans lined the entire route from the airport to his hotel, where police estimated around 10,000 fans were waiting in the area in front of his hotel in Johannesburg chanting 'We want Cliff!'
Cliff and the Shadows were unaware that apartheid prevented interracial mixing at their concert, and when this was discovered they offered to do a second concert for black citizens with the proceeds going to the Salisbury Society for Handicapped Africans.
15 May, 1961
During the last weeks of his life, Rodger and Cliff started to become close for the first time and his death had a profound impact on Cliff. It was probably this more than any other single event which led to his eventual conversion to Christianity.
14 October, 1961
15 October, 1961
On this tour Cliff played in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and then on to New Zealand. He has since toured this region more than thirty times and has had the third highest amount of hit singles of any artist in Australia.
It was on this tour that Cliff began to explore spiritual matters after the loss of his father. He would later say, 'Perhaps that is also part of the reason Australia is a very special place for me - it was there that I began a most important spiritual journey and began to grapple with my ideas about religion and mortality.'
13 December, 1961
The story of a group of teenagers fighting to save a youth club was light and accessible to all age groups, and talented actors such as Robert Morely, Richard O'Sullivan, Teddy Green and Melvin Hayes all contributed to a film which revolutionised the British film industry. The task of casting a female lead was a little more difficult as she couldn't be too attractive so as to cause the fans to resent her, nor could she be too ugly to be believable as Cliff's love interest. For a while Barbara Streisand was considered for the role, but producer Kenneth Harper didn't believe she'd be right for the role, and Carole Gray was eventually chosen.
The film went on to become a massive success and established the mould for his next three films to follow.
January, 1962
With pre-orders of over one million copies, the single was released on the Friday and by Monday was sitting atop the British charts. It would remain on the charts for 21 weeks.
April, 1962
It was a comment by one of the original characters on the show, Minnie Caldwell, while listening to a brass band that 'Isn't that Cliff Richard a lovely, chubby lad?' which prompted him give up his favourite drink of Tizer with a scoop of ice cream and Indian sweets and adopt a strict a strict diet which saw his weight drop from 12 to 11 stone where it has stayed ever since.
He now only eats one large meal a day in the evening, with a light snack at lunch time.
11 January, 1963
Not only did this film out perform The Young Ones at the box office, it broke all previous records for a British film which was helped by the premiere being scheduled in the middle of winter when audiences wanted to be transported out of freezing Britain. The soundtrack from the film also went to No.1 where it stayed for fourteen weeks, and produced two classic No.1 singles Bachelor Boy/The Next Time and Summer Holiday.
July, 1964
Cliff's old school teacher Jay Norris was concerned with Cliff's new interest in Jehovah's Witnesses, and arranged for Cliff to meet with the school's religious education master Bill Latham at her annual car ralley in July. She put Cliff in the car with Latham, who was given strict orders by Norris to get into a spiritual conversation with Cliff.
While they did discuss spirituality briefly, they didn't immediately develop the connection Jay Norris had hoped they would, so when the issue of religion came up one evening while Cliff was at her house for supper she suggested that Cliff invite Bill over to discuss religion.
Not only was this a pivotal moment in Cliff's journey toward Christianity, but it was also when Cliff was to meet the man who would over the years become Cliff's best friend. He is also now the director of the Cliff Richard Charitable Trust and manages Cliff religious commitments.
26 June, 1966
The turning point for Cliff came when he was staying with Bill and his mother during the filming of his 1966 movie Finders Keepers. One evening he sat in his bedroom reading the book of Revelation and came across the passage where Jesus says, 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock; whoever hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in.' He sat and mouthed a hesitant prayer, 'All right, Jesus, I know that you are knocking - you'd better come and take over.'
While no public announcement had been made, word of Cliff's conversion began to spread, and when Billy Graham came to London for a four week crusade at Earls Court, Cliff was sent an invitation to appear with him in front of 25,000 people at the Earl's Court Arena. This was where Cliff would announce to the world that he was a Christian.
12 December, 1966
In the movie, Cliff is reduced to puppet form and appears on the stage of the Swingin' Star Nightclub with the Shadows. He is introduced as Cliff Richard Junior, 'the biggest star in the universe' and sings the song Shooting Star.
April, 1967
Cliff would go on to regard this album as his most important recording achievement of the late sixties.
6 April, 1968
Despite it's eventual popularity, Congratulations came second to Spain's forgotten La La La thanks to the German vote, which was somewhat ironic considering that Germany placed advance orders for the single of 150,000 copies.
Congratulations went on to become Cliff's ninth number one hit and the highest selling song ever to loose Eurovision. It also won two Ivor Novello Awards in 1969 for Most Performed Work and International Song of the Year.
Congratulations has gone on to become one of the most recorded songs in Britain with over one thousand versions, and has been played at events such as the wedding of Charles and Diana, on the dockside at Southampton when the British troop ships returned from the Falklands War, and for the Queen Mothers 100th birthday celebrations.
September, 1968
The last single released from Cliff and the Shadows was to be Don't Forget to Catch Me in November 1968.
1968
The tour started off in Stockholm, and moved to The Hague and eventually Zagreb. The show in Croatia, then Yugoslavia, was a boost for local Christians who were not allowed access to the media at that point in time. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the tour was a segment of the concert being broadcast three minutes before their ten o'clock news, with Cliff synchronising the show to have the broadcast coincide with him talking about how he became a Christian before launching into What A Friend We Have In Jesus. The head of the country's Baptist Union was later called in to meet with the head of Zagreb's secret police, but rather than being reprimanded, he was offered mild appreciation for the concert which the police chief's teenage daughters had attended and thoroughly enjoyed.
3 January, 1970
The show was a mixture of music and comedy, featuring performers close to Cliff including Una Stubbs, Hank Marvin and Olivia Newton-John.
1970
The team didn't immediately make a huge impression on Cliff's career, with the first song they wrote to be recorded by him being Tarney/Spencer's 1972 single Living In Harmony. However, in time Terry Britten would end up writing or co-writing hits for Cliff such as Devil Woman (1976) and Carrie (1980), while Alan Tarney went on to become Cliff's most successful songwriter/producer ever, writing hits such as We Don't Talk Anymore (1979), Wired For Sound (1981) and Some People (1987), and producing his two highest selling studio albums ever: Always Guaranteed (1987) and Stronger (1989).
11 May, 1970
Cliff played the part of Clive Harrington, in the play which focuses on a 'deep friendship' between an artistic student and his tutor. The play was originally considered controversial for it's veiled homosexual themes.
The play opened in May 1970 at the New Theatre in Bromley, with the review in the Kentish Times calling his performance '...a triumph for Cliff's determination to make his way in the theatre.'
January, 1971
While they would go on to have a trans-Atlantic top twenty hit with the duet Suddenly in 1980, the first duet Cliff and Olivia ever sang together was the b-side of his single Sunny Hunny Girl. The single went on to reach No.19, and the b-side, Don't Move Away, would end up being released twenty-four years later as the b-side of Cliff and Olivia's duet Had To Be.
17 May, 1971
Cliff, sporting his first beard, was given a better review by the Kentish Times this time around, saying 'As an obsessed James Callifer he gives a nicely restrained performance that nevertheless has the undercurrent of poignancy and despairing drive.' Cliff has mentioned through the years that his performance in this show was one of the proudest achievements of his career.
December, 1972
7 April, 1973
While the entry placed third, it went on to sell over one million copies becoming the second highest selling song to loose Eurovision behind his previous entry, Congratulations.
1973
Cliff performed a series of concerts at the prestigious venue shortly after its opening, and became one of the first performers to be able to claim they'd sung at the Sydney Opera House
1973
What he saw shocked him, and he wandered around horribly aware that he did not want to touch the children before him when suddenly someone accidentally stepped on the fingers of a child in front of him. The child's cry of pain made Cliff instinctively reach out at hold the child, forgetting about the dirt and sores, teaching him what he has always taken with him as a lesson in Christian compassion.
The experience made him feel utterly useless and ashamed of his privileged position. At the end of the one day during a meeting in the nurses' quarters he expressed this by saying, 'What I've seen today makes me feel like giving up my life in England and staying here to help.' A nurse on the tour responded to him with the following question: 'Can you give an injection or put someone on a drip?' , to which he responded, 'No, I couldn't. I'd be horrified.' 'Well you'd be little use here,' she smiled, 'Go back home and raise money for us to do it. That's what you do and this is what we do. Without you and other Christians at home we couldn't be here. We need each other.'
These simple words helped to make Cliff more aware of his role as a Christian, and helped him to re-focus his career to help those Christians in the field.
26 December, 1974
Cliff played the character of Tim Matthews who ends up reviving a restaurant's flagging trade by inventing the 'Brumberger', and Debbie Watling played the love interest Sarah.
Take Me High was something of a hangover from another era and failed to ignite much interest at the box office. It became Cliff's first film not to make its money back.
September, 1975
It became his lowest selling single ever with little more than 10,000 sales, and 1975 was Cliff's first year without a hit single.
May 1976
Producer Dave Mackay was brought in to help arrest the slide, and although his first few efforts didn't show much in the way of results, on 31st of February Street he helped to bring Cliff into the seventies musically, with Cliff even writing almost half the songs. While the album wasn't a hit, Cliff later said, 'That album was, to me, the turning point of my career.'
It was an old member of the Shadows, however, who would go on to give Cliff the hits - and credibility - that he'd been lacking with his next album, I'm Nearly Famous.
For this album his journey to America and unearthed a track hidden away on a cassette given to him by the Lionel Conway, head of Island Music, called Miss You Nights which Conway hadn't thought to mention, but would become the first top-twenty single from Cliff's new album and his most requested song on radio. He also found a song by one of Cliff's band members, Terry Britain, which he'd co-written with a singer a children's television show host Christine Holmes , called Devil Woman.
The first single to be released was Miss You Nights which sold solidly and gave Cliff his first top twenty hit in two years. The next single, Devil Woman, however, was the one to turn his career around. The first time any of them heard it played on the radio was when Terry Britten heard a DJ play the first few bars and then ask listeners to ring up and guess who was about to sing. No-one guessed it was Cliff, and there seemed to be genuine excitement that he had produced a track like this.
When the album itself was released it was greeted with the same enthusiasm with Melody Maker writing, 'Cliff Richard has at last made the sort of album he could, and should, have been making for years. It is with some incredulity that I have to say that for the past ten days I've been playing two albums constantly. One is Marvin Gaye's I Want You. The other is I'm Nearly Famous. The renaissance of Richard, for that is what I believe this album heralds, is long overdue...It is the best album of new songs ever.'
Record companies around the world churned out I'm Nearly Famous badges and t-shirts, and even Elizabeth Tayler, Pete Townshend and Elton John were spotted wearing I'm Nearly Famous badges after Rocket released the album in the US.
I'm Nearly Famous ended up becoming Cliff's highest selling album worldwide since The Young Ones and signalled to the world that he was, once again, a force to be reckoned with.
August 1976
Cliff's reception in Russia was extremely warm, with every one of the 91,000 tickets to his twenty concerts sold out. On the first night in Leningrad the orchestra pit even had to be opened up to prevent enthusiastic fans from jumping onto the stage!
August 1976
When the news broke that Devil Woman had become Cliff's first top ten in the US he was on tour in Russia. It went on to reach No.5 and become a US million-seller.
October, 1977
The album, Forty Golden Greats, is significant not just due to the fact it was his first comprehensive compilation album, but also because it was his first No.1 album since the soundtrack to Summer Holiday reached the summit fourteen years earlier.
July, 1979
We Don't Talk Anymore ended up giving his first UK chart-topper since Congratulations in 1968, and became his highest selling single of all time. It also became his second US top ten hit, reaching No.8.
September 1979
Norrie quit work at EMI in 1968, but continued to produce Cliff until 1973. In that same year he moved to Birmingham to conduct the Midlands Light Orchestra.
3 March 1980
The tour started out on a sour note when, a few days before the first show in Seattle, the trailer containing all the band's equipment was stolen from outside their motel. Other than that, however, the tour went well with a very enthusiastic response from the audiences, and the shows in New York and Los Angeles selling out.
23 July, 1980
Cliff took his mother along for the investiture, the first time a pop star had been recognised in such a way since the Beatles were awarded their MBEs in 1965.
27 September, 1980
Swap Shop was hosted by Noel Edmond, and had an audience predominantly made up of children who, in the year of his fortieth birthday, voted Cliff to be their favourite male singer.
14 October, 1980
After the show he could barely squeeze into his dressing room for flowers and gifts, and a surprise party was held for him at the Waterloo Arts Centre which lasted until four the next morning!
March 1982
Cliff and Sue first met in September 1981 through sports commentator and supporter of Christians in Sport, Gerald Williams, who felt that Cliff would be the perfect person to help Sue cope with the pressure that comes with being a Christian in the public eye. It was when Cliff flew out to Denmark with Sue to watch her play an exhibition match in Denmark that the press first spied the two together, and the next day the papers were full of headlines such as The Sun's 'Sue and Cliff In Love Riddle'.
During the short term of their relationship, the press put enormous pressure on the couple, with the question of marriage being asked almost immediately. By the end of August that year their relationship had effectively finished, but they remain friends and the speculation remained. Ultimately it took Sue's relationship with a different man in late 1984 to break down the speculation.
Out of his relationship with Sue, Cliff gained a love of tennis which was to stay with him for the rest of his life.
1983
Cliff's attitude was that by visiting a country he wasn't condoning its political system, and perhaps he could help effect change with the message he was presenting. His shows were multi-racial, and he cancelled one show in a venue which prohibited an interracial audience.
While touring Scandinavia, Cliff's hotel also received a bomb threat as a result of his South African tour.
12 December, 1983
While the first year's tournament was only half full, the even has become increasingly popular and now sells out almost without fail.
This match was also Cliff's public debut as a tennis player.
13 October, 1984
The article, published in NME, made no mention of his music, but was rather a vitriolic attack on Cliff, his fans and Christianity. It referred to Cliff as a 'Nazi', ridiculed his celibacy, and referred to his fans as 'two-dimensional masochists'. Cliff won £5,000 damages, which he immediately donated to the Arts Centre Group.
March, 1986
Not only did this song give Cliff his eleventh No.1 hist single, but it also gave him further credit in the music industry. The remake of Living Doll ended up selling almost as many copies as the original, selling well over a million copies.
9 April, 1986
In 1983 Dave Clarke, formally of the Dave Clark Five, approached Cliff with a science fiction musical that he had co-written and was keen to produce. The show was called Time and dealt with the judgement of the earth by a time lord for crimes relating to the mistreatment of the planet, with Cliff playing a young rock star called Chris who pleads the earth's case.
A great deal of talent was involved with this show, with artists such as Julian Lennon, Freddie Mercury, Dionne Warwick and Steve Wonder contributing songs to the soundtrack. Sir Laurence Olivier also appeared in holographic form as Akash, a God-like figure.
Despite scathing critical reviews, the show went on to sell a phenomenal 700,000 tickets during Cliff's run at the Dominion Theatre, and helped encourage Cliff to further pursue his interests in the theatre.
September, 1987
The idea for a 'definitive Cliff Richard album' came to Cliff after he heard Michael Jackson's Thriller, and Alan Tarney was brought in to write and produce all of the songs. Always Guaranteed went on to produce four singles, the most he'd ever released from an album, including the No.3 hit Some People.
November, 1988
Quickly rising to the top of the charts upon release, Private Collection went on to be certified platinum four times in the UK for sales of over 1.2million copies, and was to produce Cliff's biggest UK hit single of the decade.
November, 1988
Mistletoe & Wine not only went on to become the highest selling single of the year, and the twelfth highest selling of the eighties in Britain, but it became a Christmas standard that would make Cliff and Christmas almost synonymous in Britain for years to come.
May, 1989
While the song was kept of No.1 by Jason Donovan, there was some romanticism in the fact that it peaked at the same position as first single Move It way back in 1958, and it was also heralded by the press as a significant landmark.
16 June, 1989
While Cliff was initially worried that he wouldn't be able to fill the stadium, all 72,000 tickets for the first concert sold out in the first weekend and a second show was soon scheduled which also quickly sold out. Despite these impressive numbers, Cliff gave up his own slice of the ticket sales to plow back into a show which he wanted to turn into an 'event' for his fans.
Cliff divided the show into various parts, including a version of The Oh Boy Show featuring original cast members, a Shadows reunion, reggae band Asward, and his own set at the end of the show, and over ninety performers and musicians were on stage at one time or another. To help make the show run, three thousand people from ticket takers to crowd control had to be employed, but it was the 144,000 people who bought tickets to the shows that helped life the proceedings from that of a mere concert to a bonafide Event.
August, 1989
While receiving an award for Rick Astley's hit Never Gonna Give You Up at the Ivor Novello awards in April 1989, Cliff leaned over to the group and said, 'If you ever come up with another song like that, give me a call.' In no time they had whipped up a hit called I Just Don't Have The Heart, which ended up placing No.3 on the UK singles charts and No.2 on the dance charts. It also managed to top the charts in the Philippines.
30 June, 1990
Cliff and the Shadows appeared in this concert that was beamed to ninety per cent of the world and included stars such as Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Pink Floyd and Phil Collins.
August, 1990
14 October, 1990
Another similarity was that Cliff was also performing on the night of his birthday, however this time he was having a special birthday concert at the much-larger 12,000 capacity Birmingham N.E.C. After the concert he held a Champaign party with friends and family, where he was presented with a gift by Elton John's manager on behalf of the star which was a £15,000 diamond brooch and fifty-two bottles of vintage wine.
1 November, 1990
Starting in Birmingham, and winding its way through Birmingham, Aberdeen and London, this tour set records for most sold out nights at Wembley Arena (18 nights and 216,000 people) and the NEC in Birmingham (12 nights to over 145,000 people). Overall the tour sold 420,000 tickets across Britain, firmly establishing Cliff as one of the most popular live acts in the world, with a stage show that heralded in a new era of high-tech elaborate Cliff concerts.
The tour and successful accompanying album were estimated to have generated £22million in 1990.
December, 1990
While Saviour's Day didn't sell as well as Mistletoe & Wine, it provided Cliff with a second Christmas-themed No.1 which would further cement his association with Christmas and take him into his fourth decade at the top. It also made Cliff the only artist to have had No.1 hit singles in each of five consecutive decades.
1 October, 1992
Following his most successful tour of all time, Access All Areas saw Cliff perform to 480,000 people across the UK. Not only did Cliff perform to 60,000 more people than he did on his last tour, making this his most successful tour to date, it was also the largest tour of the year in Britain. While production costs neared £2million, it was estimated that this tour brought in £9million in ticket sales.
The title of the eventual album was changed from Access All Areas to The Album so people would not think it was a live album of the show, and the strategy of touring before the album's release seemed to pay off when it became his seventh No.1 album in the same week that the video of the tour topped the UK video charts.
8 May, 1995
While Cliff wasn't part of the generation who experienced the war to any great extent, he was brought in to represent the post-war generation and was established as an icon of post-war Britain alongside war-time icons such as Dame Vera Lynn and Sir Harry Secombe.
Cliff took part in the anniversary concert in Hyde Park and was also invited to appear outside the gates of Buckingham Palace the following Monday to the Royal Family and the tens of thousands of people gathered to celebrate the anniversary of one of the most important dates of the twentieth century.
25 October, 1995
Hundreds of fans camped outside the Palace to catch a glimpse of Cliff on one of the momentous days in his career, and news of the investiture was beamed right around the world.
October, 1995
"It was just thought too raucous for our audience. Too upbeat really," explained a BBC spokesman. "It was not the right feel for the station."
The single, Misunderstood Man, was the first from the album Songs From Heathcliff and managed to peak at No.19 in its first week, despite the lack of airplay.
18 November, 1995
The Sir Cliff Richard Home Page was launched on the fourteenth birthday of webmaster (and a hell of a nice guy) Randal Sheppard and was to lead a flood of Cliff pages, with the Official Cliff Richard page being launched four years later in 1999.
16 October, 1996
Cliff began putting together the show in 1992 when he called director Frank Dunlop. After much convincing he finally agreed to direct, and Tim Rice (Evita, Phantom of The Opera and The Lion King) was brought in to write the lyrics, with John Farrar (Grease) was brought in to write the music. After the shows original opening was delayed from 1994 to 1996, the public's first taste of the music was the cryptically titled studio album Songs From Heathcliff which suffered from lack of airplay after Misunderstood Man was banned by BBC Radio 2. It still managed to sell a substantial 200,000 copies in the UK after its October 1995 release and piqued the public's interest in the show.
Tickets went on sale in March of the following and sold a record 97,000 tickets worth £2,305,000 on the first day, with fans camping out for up to ten days to get the best seats. The show itself was costing £3,500,000 to stage, three quarters of that put up by Cliff himself, and by the opening night almost 350,000 tickets had been sold, amounting to a record £8.5 million advance box office.
Despite scathing critical reviews upon its premiere at Birmingham's NIA, Heathcliff continued to draw sell-out crowds and ended up selling almost 500,000 tickets by the end of its run in April 1997.
It also gave Cliff his highest selling video ever, topping the UK video charts for two months upon its 1998 release.
1998
After releasing an exceptionally strong new album, Real As I Wanna Be, which makes the UK top ten and gave him an unexpected hit on the Club Charts with the Step Child remix of Can't Keep This Feeling In, he played a record-breaking 32 sell-out shows at London's Royal Albert Hall in October. Due to the huge demand for tickets, an extra run had to be added in March of the following year.
November, 1999
Cliff announced before this single's release that having it reach No.1 on the British charts would be the 'crowning jewel in my career' and he got his wish in the single's second week when it became only the second single of the year to rise to No.1 after entering at a lower position. It would spend three weeks at its peak position, and also go on to chart all around the world with highlights being No.1 in New Zealand and No.2 in Australia.
14 October, 2000
An inspiration to millions, and one of the most successful artists in the history of music, Cliff Richard continues to entertain and inspire audiences worldwide.
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