Kathryn Magson

Moody Blues - Go Now - tune that ended the Twisted Wheel all-nighters for a while in the 1960s. Always made me want to cry - just sounds so bloody sad!

Same up here in the north - I was out at a local soul night at the weekend & one of my friends was out on the floor, along with her extremely trendy young, mod granddaughter & her boyfriend - age gap of over 50 years. Granddaughter has grown up listening to Grandma's records & loves it - great to see!

I never felt edgy at the Wheel - always felt very much at home. Mistakenly though - one night my purse was nicked from my bag - I'd done what I always did - dumped my bag in a corner & hit the dance floor. Only in a very tiny room - I'd left my bag on the floor by the DJ cage & I was very near to it. Must have been a girl - a guy would have looked a bit sus rummaging in handbags & she must have been very quick or she would have been spotted. It was the only money I had - I had to scrounge money from a few mates to get home. Had some great pals though - they all coppered up to make sure I had enough to get me through to payday. At the time I was living in a bedsit & no parental support, so had no-one to borrow from - really made me appreciate my mates!

I vaguely remember chatting to a guy who said he had travelled down from Scotland - might well have been you David - can't have been many that came so far for a night out! I did know a guy who used to come over from Ireland though - can't remember his name - but he said he had to catch a bus into the port - then the ferry - then a train from Liverpool to Mancs. Always used to pity him when I thought of him enduring that North Sea crossing after the Wheel......

Hi David - Sorry I don't remember them - but then if I could remember anything even the next morning it would have been a miracle! The night always seemed to fly by - seemed as though it only lasted a couple of hours....lol

The travel was ok if you had a bunch of mates with you - or even just one mate - sometimes there would be a few of us from Bradford all on the same bus off to the Wheel - but often it would only be me, feeling like Billy-no-mates until I got to Manchester. Worse on the home journey on Sunday - most of the crowd from Bradford would go straight home after the Wheel, but I wanted to carry on partying lol. Off to the Top Twenty (after a bit more in the way of chemical refreshments) & party on for the rest of the day.

Well people seem to have enjoyed reading my little story at the top of the page, so I thought I would write chapter 2. I started going to the Wheel with another mate from Bradford when we were both aged only 15 - our parents would never have allowed us to go, so we said we were sleeping at each other's houses. This worked like a dream for quite a few months - until one day my friend's mum turned up at my parents' house asking for her daughter...…….the brown stuff hit the proverbial fan big time! We were both grounded - my friend's parents soon forgave her, but I turned 16 a few weeks after we were rumbled & I was thrown out of home - lived in bedsit-land so I was able to do whatever I wanted - FREEDOM!! 💃 I was at the Wheel every Saturday from then on - I knew people from all over the UK - not only the Lancs area, but Wales, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Cheshire - you name it! There was a guy used to catch the ferry from N Ireland - bus to the port - ferry to Liverpool & train to Manchester & then all the same in reverse on a Sunday! I never envied him that North sea crossing after a night at the Wheel...…. 😩 I also got to know a large group of guys from Southend - around 20 or so. They used to come up in a convoy of a Mark4 Jag; a Mini & somebody's works van! They couldn't fit all of them in - only had room for about 16 so they had to take turns. I got to know them on their first visit to the Wheel - they thought that while they were standing at the bar (unlicensed of course) & a guy started chatting to them out of the blue - that they had strayed into a gay bar! But they decided the music was good so they would stay a while...….then a couple of girls started to chat to them & they said they thought they were being chatted up...…... It was only when they had been there for a couple of hours or so that they realized that people "up North" actually talk to each other! They couldn't believe how friendly we all were - if they had just chatted to someone in a bar down south they would have been thought of as wierdos. The only name I remember is Danny (no surname) - he had the Mark4. My mate decided to give up the all nighters after a while, but I carried on going on my own for a couple of years after that. I was never daunted at the thought of catching the bus to Mancs on my own - it was a long boring bus ride on my own, but when I got to Manchester I knew lots of people - I've always been a chatty sort (still am lol). Oh those were the days...…..

I was a regular at the Wheel for just about every all-nighter from 1966-70. Saw some brilliant bands there - way too many to list here, but saw lots of the bands on the Oaks playlist. Back in those days we didn't call it Northern Soul - that term didn't come about until 1970ish when Dave Godin came up from London & he coined the phrase. To us it was just soul music - we loved it because it was "underground" - a bit niche. Something different to the bog-standard chart music that the mainstream, conventional crowd were listening to. I used to catch the X12 bus across the Pennines from Bradford every Saturday, with my overnight bag containing a change of clothes etc- it took 1hr 45 mins & cost 5 bob each way. I didn't go to the Torch or Casino, but on Sundays after the Wheel used to go to either the Blue Note - just around the corner to the Wheel as I remember - or catch the bus up to the Top Twenty. In summer we would go & sit in Piccadilly Gardens & soak up the sun (& a bit more in the way of chemical refreshments) before going on to the next venue. Never knew about the Oaks at the time, but it sounds great - love the playlist! If I wasn't at the Wheel, I would have been off my head at some nighter elsewhere - maybe the Plebs in Halifax, or The Birdtrap near Burnley. (Birdtrap is still going strong & in the same building it was in the 1960s, although back then it was in the cellar - now it's moved upstairs & it has carpets, wallpaper & a licensed bar - posh! lol) The clubs I used to go to were all in cellars - floors were either concrete, flagstones or bitumen. No such thing as a sprung dance floor covered in talc for us - no wonder we now all have knackered knees & bad backs! Loved the whole scene - mostly good times but a few sad ones too - lost a few good mates along the way. Still love the music even though I can't hit the dance floor in the way I used to - wish I could turn back the clock & do it all again!