Legendary guitarist on The Shadows' 60 years and love of Richmond

Even among the well-heeled of Richmond riverside, Bruce Welch stands out, his charisma, air of glamour and – it must be said – impressive rock star barnet still intact.

He stops for a snap and instantly looks comfortable in front of the camera, gifting photographer John Royle the flashiest of flashy smiles.

"It's a beautiful place to live. I've got this incredible view of the river," he says of his home in Richmond.

The 79-year-old enjoyed a huge career in one of the most influential bands in British musical history, The Shadows, where he played rhythm guitar to Hank Marvin's lead.

"I would do it all again – if I was 16," he told Richmond Nub News.

As a schoolboy in Newcastle, he and classmate Hank would bring in their guitars and play at every opportunity – in the playground and later in pubs and any and every spot around town.

They were inspired by skiffle, a sub-genre of American folk music. Having formed a band they headed down to London and finished third in a national skiffle competition. Their bandmates returned home; Bruce and Hank were offered a night's kip with a friendly landlady, a fellow Geordie. They stayed for six months.

The two budding musicians spent much of their time in the "melting pot" that was the 2i's Coffee Bar in Soho. It was crowded, it was hot and it was where it was all happening.

Bruce was selling orange juice at the back of the café when Cliff Richard came onto the stage. His manager approached Hank with a stunning offer. Cliff had a tour starting in three weeks: did he want to play in the band?

The story is told in BBC documentary The Shadows At Sixty which you can watch on iPlayer.

The Shadows went on to have 69 UK chart singles from the 1950s to the 2000s, 35 credited to The Shadows and 34 to Cliff Richard.

It's quite a task to cram them all into one album, and Bruce spent some time earlier this year compiling Dreamboats & Petticoats Presents: The Shadows - The First 60 Years, containing 46 tracks.

"It's just a real reflection of 60 years and how music has changed. Music changes all the time."

Hopefully it will bounce back in 2021 after an exceptionally challenging year.

"Because of the dreaded covid everything has ground to a halt, including the whole music industry. It's been a real tragedy for a lot of musicians," Bruce says.

"When you're a jobbing musician or actor and suddenly there's no work… people will be stacking shelves just to live.

"It's been a hell of a year."

Bruce is looking forward to things getting back to normal – and seeing Richmond flourish again.

"You remember the good old days when we could go to London – everything's easy from Richmond. It's just a lovely atmosphere.

"In the summer it's like a fairground. People come to Richmond for the weekend and go drinking in the pubs. It's a big attraction."

Extracts from the documentary

In The Shadows At Sixty, which marks their diamond anniversary, fellow musicians pay homage to the role The Shadows played in the British music scene.

Fellow Richmond resident Pete Townshend – whom Bruce often bumps into in Hill Street restaurant Côte – says smash hit Apache was a profound influence on him, the reason he picked up the rhythm guitar. "It was more pivotal for me than Elvis Presley," Pete said.

"The thing about Apache is, it was us, it was the British. It was our music. It was our band and we were the glue that knitted this stuff together. It woke me up."

The Shadows released Summer Holiday, which summed up Bruce's life at the time. "Throughout the 60s it was like summer every day", he says in the documentary.

The stars of this era were not wedded to one arts discipline – they were all-round entertainers who would appear in films and theatre. Bruce and co performed in Aladdin at the London Palladium.

At the turn of the 1960s, another band was showing promise in the British music scene. The Beatles headed to Hamburg because The Shadows had England "sewn up".

"I believe that we played a part in the Beatles' career," Cliff Richard says. "Paul McCartney said 'Cliff and the Shadows have it sewn up in Britain'.

"We drove them out, and that's probably the best thing that ever happened to them. Whatever happened in Hamburg? They came back and blew us all off the stage!"

In the early 1970s Bruce and Hank teamed up with Australian artist John Farrar to form Marvin, Welch and Farrar.

But "we couldn't escape The Shadows", Bruce says, as barely three songs into a concert fans would shout 'play Apache'.

The Shadows represented Great Britain in the Eurovision Song Contest 1975. They finished second with Let Me Be The One.

They played to their largest ever crowd in Wembley at The Event in 1989 and in 2009 played a series of farewell concerts.

As he turns to leave and head back home, Bruce seems a happy man. And who wouldn't be with a house right on the river and an astonishing 60-year plus career to look back on that took him to the very heights of British music.