Hollies Photo/Gear Timeline

[manwithnoexpression]

Hi all,

If someone else has already done this, please point me in the right direction, but basically I would love to eventually make something akin to the Beatles Gear Book but for the Hollies, and I've begun organizing as many photos and videos as I can find into a Google Doc with dates and context added.

So if any of you would like to help, I'd appreciate it! But be cautious as photos are often misdated on the internet. (For a lot of the 1963 photos I've tried to associate to TV appearances, I'm not even sure if I've got the right month!)

If anyone has a good archive of videos or photos they could point me to, that'd be fantastic! Or if you've got good scans of 60s music magazines, that'd be really helpful too! So far, I've been using these scans, some of which are pretty good: worldradiohistory.com/Home-UK.htm

Additionally if anyone knows which shows were broadcast live (or close to live) versus shows that would have been recorded a month or two in advance, that'd be pretty helpful. Specifically for something I've been trying to determine, does anyone know how far in advance the Red Skelton Hour performance (broadcast on February 1st, 1966), or the various Hollies performances on Shindig would have been recorded?

Here's what I've got so far, a bit messy but I'm making progress:
docs.google.com/document/d/1JtidNEWBMOEKDYQY-NsW5KflTO0mSMNc2xqn0ycn9es/edit

So far, I've determined a few things:

Graham's Epiphone Texan got painted black/got a big black pickguard sometime in late 1963, as he appeared on the first Top of the Pops episode with that already there.
This Texan also got a pickup installed sometime in mid/late 1964.

Tony's got his Gibson ES-345 as early as either September 1963 (or earlier) as there exists a photo of a TV appearance with Don Rathbone with this guitar.
Furthermore, Tony's ES-345 got a Bigsby Vibrato added sometime between March 4th, 1964, and April 26th, 1964. (It isn't there in the TOTP Just One Look video, but is there in the NME Poll Winners Concert)
Tony's ES-345 was painted black sometime in late 1965, as it appears black in the December 6th, 1965 episode of Hullabaloo (The Varitone knob also seems to go missing around this time).

Graham's Danelectro Longhorn was also painted black around this time, as it shows up in an early 1966 episode of Ready Steady Go as black.

Tony's Vox Phantom XII guitar was painted black sometime between February and June of 1966.

Eric used far more basses than I realized:
The Fender Bass VI in 1963,
An Epiphone Rivoli in late 1963/early 1964
(back to the Bass VI for several months)
A Prototype 12-string Burns bass in mid 1964, made by putting bass strings on a Burns Double Six guitar (confirmed to be used on at least 3 Hollies songs)
A Gibson Thunderbird from late 1964 to early 1965
He's seen in at least one studio photo with a Fender Jazz Bass
and a Fender P Bass starting in the middle of 1965 which is used until Bernie joins the group.

I hope some of you are as excited about this type of project as I am! Additionally if any of you are interested in seeing my youtube channel where I make covers of Hollies songs, it's ManWithNoExpression

Thanks, Ryan

[baz]

Hi Ryan,

Have had a good look at your document and it looks pretty impressive and nice to see somebody making a serious attempt at something like this. It can be a tedious headache trying to find and date photos as accurately as possible as half the time even the rights owners are prone to getting dates wrong but everything looks pretty consistent to me. I hadn't seen the Blue Peter photos before and was amused by the one with the camel at Chessington Zoo!

There are gaps that will be filled and one I can toss in for the moment include this one which is the 21st September 1967 TOTP appearance : www.alamy.com/stock-photo-hollies-about-1965-on-top-of-the-pops-from-lgraham-nash-allan-clarke-29377084.html - there's a few other photos from that day you'll find here and there.

The Morecambe and Wise appearance in 1967 was shot earlier in the year, broadcast for the first time in colour on "Piccadilly Palace" on May 27th 1967 whilst the UK had to wait till 12th November to see it in black and white. Unfortunately I've no idea when the recording date was but had to be February or early March time as Bobby was hospitalised and out of action for a couple of months. I do know The Kinks taped their appearance on 28th March, was broadcast in the States on 29th July but wasn't shown in the UK until 1st October... 1968!

Back in the days of the original forum I used to have fun with photos and on one occasion created a collage of some of Bobby's ever changing drum skins...



Anyway, I look forward to seeing this work and document expand and progress.

[manwithnoexpression]

Cool, I'll add the 21st September 1967 TOTP appearance, I had seen the photo but I just couldn't determine what date it was from!

Thanks for clarifying the Morecambe and Wise appearance! The hair lengths were really confusing me on that one.

And yeah those changing drums are one of the things I'm going to try to narrow down the dates for, it might help to put tighter ranges on other photos.

Thanks for the support!

[Mevrouw Bee]

Aug 14, 2023 22:15:39 GMT baz said:

Hi Ryan,

Have had a good look at your document and it looks pretty impressive and nice to see somebody making a serious attempt at something like this. It can be a tedious headache trying to find and date photos as accurately as possible as half the time even the rights owners are prone to getting dates wrong but everything looks pretty consistent to me. I hadn't seen the Blue Peter photos before and was amused by the one with the camel at Chessington Zoo!

There are gaps that will be filled and one I can toss in for the moment include this one which is the 21st September 1967 TOTP appearance : www.alamy.com/stock-photo-hollies-about-1965-on-top-of-the-pops-from-lgraham-nash-allan-clarke-29377084.html - there's a few other photos from that day you'll find here and there.

The Morecambe and Wise appearance in 1967 was shot earlier in the year, broadcast for the first time in colour on "Piccadilly Palace" on May 27th 1967 whilst the UK had to wait till 12th November to see it in black and white. Unfortunately I've no idea when the recording date was but had to be February or early March time as Bobby was hospitalised and out of action for a couple of months. I do know The Kinks taped their appearance on 28th March, was broadcast in the States on 29th July but wasn't shown in the UK until 1st October... 1968!

Back in the days of the original forum I used to have fun with photos and on one occasion created a collage of some of Bobby's ever changing drum skins...



Anyway, I look forward to seeing this work and document expand and progress.

Any reason that the photo in your alarmy link won't open? Is it a me problem? Or a permissions one?

[baz]

Aug 15, 2023 8:42:27 GMT Mevrouw Bee said:

Any reason that the photo in your alarmy link won't open? Is it a me problem? Or a permissions one?

No idea... they maybe changed the permissions as it was working when I posted last night as the link now isn't working for me either.

[JamesT]

It seems to have disappeared now, but eBay had an advert a few months back with Bernie endorsing Aria bass, must have dated from 1980-ish. Indeed, this seems to be the bass he's still using.

Recently, I'd been wondering about the keyboards used by the band back in the day. Managed to narrow Pete Wingfield down to using an ARP Pro-Soloist and Vox String Thing (Logan String Melody) on the Live Hits album and appearances in 1975/6.

[sandy]

Aug 15, 2023 17:18:21 GMT JamesT said:

It seems to have disappeared now, but eBay had an advert a few months back with Bernie endorsing Aria bass, must have dated from 1980-ish. Indeed, this seems to be the bass he's still using.

Recently, I'd been wondering about the keyboards used by the band back in the day. Managed to narrow Pete Wingfield down to using an ARP Pro-Soloist and Vox String Thing (Logan String Melody) on the Live Hits album and appearances in 1975/6.

This is a good link for Bernie's guitars.

equipboard.com/pros/bernie-calvert

And this for Tony
equipboard.com/pros/tony-hicks

[manwithnoexpression]

Can anyone help me find a higher quality scan of this photo? Additionally, does anyone else have other photos from this recording session or know if other photos exist? Based on my research it's likely one of the recording sessions between June - August 1964.

imgur.com/gallery/6oLzndP

I've got this one other high quality photo of the session: 

I'm trying to determine the way that Tony's amp was being mic'd in 1964, and in that first blurry photo, it appears as though there are two microphones but I can't quite make out what the one on the left is.

Thanks, Ryan