Olivia (7 page)

Olivia may not have recognised him, but Bruce Welch was a very famous, hugely successful star. He was also a married man.

Bruce had first met pretty Anne Findley by the jukebox at the famed 2i’s. He chivalrously went to her rescue when a speaker shook itself loose from its mounting on the wall due to constant reverberations and happened to fall on her. Soon Anne and Bruce were going steady. ‘And in those days you married your steady girlfriend,’ said Bruce.

In August 1959, at the very young age of seventeen, and with Cliff Richard as his best man, Bruce married Anne. Two years later, after he began to reap the financial rewards of his songwriting and his general success with The Shadows, Bruce and Anne bought a lovely cottagey house in north Harrow for the then splendid sum of £6,000.

Cliff and The Shadows had hit the big time almost immediately they had got together. They had started at the top and, despite Beatlemania, they were still a very big attraction in 1966 at the time when Pat and Olivia were added to the bill as a support act for the summer concerts by the seaside in Bournemouth. From the wings Olivia watched Cliff and The Shadows go through their thoroughly professional paces on stage, bringing the screaming audience to their feet. She witnessed at close quarters how the singer and his band worked their magic. Now she was left in no doubt that the man she thought was an electrician was indeed a star.

When Bruce later managed to get Olivia on her own to chat to her for a few moments, he promptly asked her out. He realised how young and innocent she was when Olivia said she wouldn’t mind going out with him but only if her friend Pat came along too. Pat Carroll duly played gooseberry on their first date, but it was nevertheless the start of what was to become Olivia’s first real love affair.

Olivia eventually agreed to another date with Bruce, and this time she was happy to go out with him without a chaperone. The delivery to her door of a dozen roses beforehand not only took her breath away but clearly showed the romantic feelings Bruce had towards her. And when he arrived to pick her up, he was behind the wheel of his Rolls-Royce. Olivia could hardly have been more impressed. ‘I’d never been out in one before. He took me to dinner at a fancy restaurant and then we started going round to expensive nightclubs, another and another, all over town.

‘Everywhere we went we drank champagne, glass after glass, champagne on top of champagne, and we danced. It was quite a night for a teenager who had never been exposed to such things and I’m sure I’ll never forget it, mostly because I drank too much, got sick and threw up all over his beautiful car . . .’

At the age of twenty-four, Bruce Welch was seven years older than Olivia, he was far more worldly, and decades ahead of her in terms of life’s lessons. Bruce himself had not had a drink until he was twenty-one and he forgave the teenage Olivia’s over-imbibing on their first date and her eventual ‘chunder’. It was just a shame his beloved Rolls had caught the brunt of it.

Bruce was tall, solidly built, dark, good-looking, plain-speaking with a strong personality, and Olivia found him very attractive. He was dedicated in his work as a well-travelled songwriter and guitarist - with Cliff he had toured the USA, South Africa and Australia as well as several European countries. He had made a success of his chosen profession and he enjoyed the acclaim and the rewards that came his way.

Given his extraordinary success and his standing in the music business, it’s not difficult to see why Olivia looked up to Bruce. She was even a little in awe of him. Besides Olivia’s obvious good looks, he adored her bouncy personality, and their passion for music was a common bond. He liked the way Olivia sang and her interest in music in general. She might not have had the strongest voice, he realised, and yet he noted she had a good ear for music.

As their relationship developed, Olivia was happy to accompany Bruce to gigs by Cliff and The Shadows, and to concerts where The Shadows themselves were the stars. They had had a string of instrumental hits, such as ‘Apache’ and ‘Wonderful Land’, and were in big demand as a headline attraction even without Cliff. Olivia was so supportive of her new boyfriend she even helped out willingly as an emergency spotlight operator during a week’s residency for The Shadows at Darwen in Lancashire.

Once she had hooked up with Bruce, Olivia’s own life was pretty much dictated by his. ‘I guess you could say I was detached,’ she commented. ‘We had our own little group of people, Cliff and The Shadows, Pat and me, and a few other musicians.’

But in November, just when Bruce and Olivia’s budding romance might have blossomed into a full-blown love affair, Olivia decided to head home to Australia for Christmas, much to Bruce’s dismay. They had been seeing each other for just a matter of weeks but Bruce was already smitten.

The problem was Pat Carroll. Pat’s visa expired at the end of 1966. And after much deliberation, Olivia chose to go back to Melbourne with her great friend. Together they had made an encouraging start in England as a singing duo, and there was every chance they could build on this experience back in Australia. Olivia was also anxious to find out whether she and Ian Turpie still felt the same way about each other. With Bruce now on the scene and clearly enamoured with her, she needed to sort out her own feelings and find out where she and Ian both stood and whether they still had a future together.

Even putting aside any personal feelings about Bruce, it was still a difficult decision for Olivia to make. By leaving London she would be passing up the chance of a giant leap up the showbiz ladder: Bruce was urging her to audition for the role of Cinderella in a Christmas pantomime. The Shadows would be starring in the panto with Cliff at the London Palladium for a winter season, and the role of Cinders was up for grabs.

By now Olivia had got to know Cliff reasonably well and they clearly liked each other very much. If Bruce hadn’t been so quick off the mark when they had all first met at Bournemouth, Cliff would most certainly have asked her out. Olivia was exactly Cliff’s kind of girl and a girl he would have most certainly been proud to take home to his adoring mum Dorothy, who vetted all her son’s girlfriends before they could get too close to her boy.

Olivia appreciated Cliff was kind and polite to her, encouraging about her singing, and there was even talk about the possibility of Olivia providing back-up vocals on one of his recordings. Most certainly Cliff would not have been averse to Olivia as his Cinders.

After Cliff’s first big hit ‘Move It’, his management had moved him away from wild rock ’n’ roll into movies and pantomime in the belief that rock was a passing fad and that the way to ensure a long career was to turn him into an all-round family entertainer. Pantomime was a sure way to reach that family audience and, with Bruce and Hank Marvin coming up with catchy, brand new songs written specifically for each new Christmas show, Cliff and The Shadows had proved a sell-out panto attraction for the previous two years. With TV favourites Terry Scott and Hugh Lloyd added to the Cinderella cast as the Ugly Sisters, and even a baby elephant due to make a novelty appearance, the show was a guaranteed box-office hit from the moment it was announced.

Bruce felt sure Olivia would stand a good chance of winning the part of Cinders. He stressed what a notable showbiz break it would be for her if she clinched it. She’d be appearing opposite a huge star in Cliff, who would be playing Buttons, and Bruce himself would be on stage much of the time as one of the Brokers Men to help her through and support her.

Cinderella would also mean ten solid, well-paid weeks of work for Olivia and a vital springboard to a possible solo career now Pat was heading home. All in all it was a tempting opportunity, but Olivia displayed her typically Libran trait of being unable to make up her mind while seeing every point of view. In the end she stood firm. She felt she wasn’t ready for such a big step. She didn’t feel confident she could pull it off, and she was determined to fly home.

Bruce was sad to see her go and seriously wondered whether he would ever see her again. It left him facing tricky times both personally and professionally because Olivia was leaving him at a time when he was feeling vulnerable. His new love was going home to her old boyfriend, growing friction among the members of The Shadows was making his professional life uncomfortable, and the band’s very future with Cliff was looking uncertain anyway as the singer was seriously contemplating giving up his showbusiness career completely in the new year.

Cliff had recently declared himself to be a committed Christian in front of a crowd of 25,000 at a rally by the American evangelist Billy Graham at Earls Court. Now, Cliff doubted whether he could combine his career with his Christian beliefs and commitments. If Cliff quit showbusiness, where would that leave Bruce and the other members of The Shadows?

 

 

Just as Bruce had predicted, the Cinderella panto at the London Palladium proved another runaway success, with young actress Pippa Steele seizing her chance to make an eye-catching Cinders. Towards the end of the panto’s run, Bruce happened to meet up with John Ashby, the manager of The Seekers, who informed him that a friend of his from Australia was back in town and that she would be very happy to hear from him. Bruce wasted no time in getting in touch with Olivia and meeting up with her. He was thrilled to hear her teenage romance with Ian Turpie back home had petered out. It had run its course and was now well and truly over. Olivia and Ian both knew they had changed. Their lives were on different paths now.

Olivia may have become a free agent, but Bruce emphatically was not. Not only was he still married to Anne, but they had a six-year-old son to consider. He knew he was falling for Olivia and, when Anne found out about his new love, Bruce had a desperately difficult decision to make about their future.

He has freely admitted that when it came to girls, he had been ‘the naughtiest Shadow’. It was wrong, of course, said Bruce, because he was married. But Olivia was different. ‘The moment I met Olivia it was over. Until then it had just been one-night stands, but with her it was different. I told my wife what had happened and that our marriage was finished.’

According to Bruce, his wife tried to talk him out of leaving but he decided he couldn’t live without Olivia. When the final split from Anne became inevitable, he left the marital home in Stanmore and moved with his new young girlfriend into a rented flat overlooking Lord’s cricket ground in St John’s Wood in north London. Their flat was high up on the ninth floor and offered a fine view of the most famous turf in the whole of England.

Having been cosseted at home with Irene for the past seven years, apart from a brief spell with Pat in the Shepherd’s Bush flat, Olivia’s domestic and culinary skills left something to be desired. Peter Vince, The Shadows’ recording engineer, could testify to that.

One night after a recording session, Bruce and Olivia invited Peter and his wife back to their flat for something to eat. In a humorous account of the evening, Peter said they were all starving by the time the lift had reached the ninth floor; Olivia fixed everyone a drink and brought out a couple of bowls of cheese footballs for the four of them. But as time went by, it became clear to Peter that Olivia had no intention of getting busy in the kitchen. After two hours of devouring cheese balls, Peter knew for sure that he and his wife were not going to be properly fed. When a third hour passed with Olivia and Bruce, then in the first flush of an exciting love affair, passionately wrapped up in each other on a mattress on the floor, he felt it was time to go. He left wondering how Bruce didn’t waste away with all that exercise and no food other than cheese balls.

Inevitably, Bruce’s social life had for some years revolved around the world of showbusiness. The guitarist was a popular man and his circle of friends included fellow musicians, songwriters, actors and actresses and important people in the record business. He knew his way around London’s showbiz scene and Olivia was happy for Bruce to set their social agenda. Wherever they went, everyone seemed to know her boyfriend. He was welcomed with open arms at the London clubs he took her to, especially drag artist Danny La Rue’s club in smart Hanover Square in the West End, where showbusiness folk regularly congregated and lived it up until the small hours. Bruce seemed to have an automatic entrée even to clubs he wasn’t a member of, Olivia noted. Fame certainly opened doors.

Olivia was wide-eyed at some of the people she was introduced to, not least Beatle Paul McCartney, who was a good friend of Bruce’s. ‘We went round to Paul’s house one day and he said: “I’ve just written this song,” and he started playing “Lady Madonna”. At the time I didn’t even realise what I was hearing. I was thrilled to meet Paul and all, but I had no sense of what was really going on at the time. Now when I look back, I know it’s amazing that I was there at the time he wrote that song.’

Bruce was a dedicated musician, and Olivia soon came to learn about his degree of perfectionism. Just by observing him at work, she learned a great deal about the importance of a thoroughly professional approach. She accompanied him to concert venues and saw Bruce was a stickler for time-keeping and made sure that when he went on stage his shoes were finely polished and his suit immaculately pressed. She patiently watched her boyfriend endlessly checking and rechecking his guitar was in tune in the long hours leading up to his going on stage. He was meticulous about this. Such attention to detail inevitably led to tension when others around him failed to meet his high standards and there were times when Olivia felt it her place to chase after him and calmly coax him to return after he had stormed out pre-concert and driven off in a huff in his E-type Jaguar.

In time, Bruce and Olivia were able to move out of their flat overlooking Lord’s and relocate to a house in Hadley Common near Totteridge in the north of London, which Bruce bought from Jerry Lordan, the musician who had written The Shadows’ first smash hit, ‘Apache’.