Note from the Editor: Member Alan G. is the brains behind the recent article: Bluetooth Anti-Theft Adapter: Enhance your home security for under $20. But did you know that Alan was ‘almost famous’? Here’s member Alan G.’s story.

‘Almost Famous’​

When I was a lot younger, I really wanted to be rich and famous! Well, I’ve never been rich (so far), and I certainly haven’t become famous—but at least I tried!

It was the '60s, and based on a few ‘A’ level GCE passes, I was able to go to ‘University’. Battersea College of Advanced Technology certainly wasn’t my first choice, but thanks to a Headmaster who couldn’t see the funny side of avoiding sport by playing cards in a groundsman’s shed. His bad report sort of steered me onto a path less salubrious. At least the BSc Electronics degree I studied for was from ‘London University’.

Of course, it’s difficult to put an ‘old head on a young man’s shoulders’, and I quickly found that it was far more fun to play guitar and compose teen songs than to study.

In the course of this detour from academic excellence, I managed to obtain a little paperback book by The Hollies (a very popular rock group of the day): How to Form a Beat Group. In the back of the book was a list of all the music publishers in London’s West End. Since I was in ‘digs’ in London, I was well placed to catch the train up and wander around these places.

I soon developed a sort of ‘routine’. I would type out the lyrics of three songs on my little Hermes typewriter and record the songs on a 3” tape on a small Philips portable tape recorder. Apparently, that was the recommended number of songs you could inflict on the publisher!

I think the motivation was to see these similarly aged teenagers apparently having a really good time and earning lots of money doing it. The money was in the songwriting, not so much in the singing—at least, first off.

I would get off the train, and armed with my ‘address book’, I would wander around all these little music publishers. They would listen to a few bars of each song, inevitably pushing ‘Fast Forward’ on the tape when they didn’t like the song. I asked one of them once what he was looking for. He said: ‘Well, if I don’t hear a “Hit” in the first eight bars, I don’t accept the song.’

At one point, I found myself climbing up a narrow set of steps in a very run-down part of Dean Street in the West End, and at the top, there was a smokey little room in which a couple were banging out the words for a French (or was it German?) version of ‘Puppet On A String’.

My songs didn’t get anywhere, of course, but it was interesting to see the background of so-called ‘hits’.

Another publisher said my songs were ‘too nice’. I asked him how he would judge the Herman’s Hermits song ‘Silhouettes’, and he admitted that if it had not been from Herman’s Hermits, he wouldn’t have accepted it!

Alan G. in his songwriting years. Image Credit: Member Alan G.

Having been around so many little publishers, it was with some surprise that I found myself in a very posh establishment. I sat down on a comfortable settee in a plush reception area, and an attractive young lady came over and asked me if I’d like tea or coffee while I waited. It was Dick James Music, and they were the publisher at the time for The Beatles!

Finally, I got three of my songs accepted by Chappell Music. They were ‘Country and Western’ songs. They told me they would ‘do a demo disk’ of them. They also suggested that they would have a word with a bloke by the name of Tom Springfield, saying that he may be open to collaboration since the words of my songs were ‘pretty good’, and Mr Springfield ‘didn’t like writing the lyrics’, apparently.

Of course, nothing came of it. Chappell Music moved premises shortly afterwards, and I suppose my songs were consigned to rubbish.

Fast forward to 2023, and we have Facebook! And YouTube! Perhaps you’ll see me singing those songs after all! We’ll see.

I was also ‘nearly famous’ in an advert for the R&I Bank in WA (which became Bankwest in 1994).

I’d been in a play at Castle Hill, and there was a bloke there named ‘Parker’—I don’t know his first name—and he’d been in an advert for Kodak, I think. He was a chubby chap, and his kids had ‘dared him’ to do an advert for TV. He auditioned and got the part—he was to hold up a fish and pose for a photo when a shark would jump out of the water and grab the fish. He earned a fair bit of money from that, as it was shown quite a few times. I thought: ‘Well, if he could do it, so could I!’

I was also on TV—Channel 10—with Kerry Anne Kennerley showing off an ‘eye-blink’ sensor device for people with Cerebral Palsy that I’d chosen to complete as my final year project for a B.E Degree at NSW Institute of Technology (now University). On the program, I mentioned that it could be easily adapted for use by truck drivers to rouse them if their eyes closed during long trips. The consequence of that was that The Sydney Morning Herald put it on their front page (‘Mr Gent says that it should be made compulsory for truck drivers’—I never said that!) and the Vice President of the Whistler Corporation in the USA (they held the lion’s share of the GPS/Radar detection market over there) saw the advert, treated me to lunch at the Boulevard Hotel in Kings Cross, and gave me a ‘letter of intent’.

I was to get 4 per cent of all net sales, which amounted to somewhere in the region of $200,000 in the first year! Before this gelled, the company ‘changed direction’; the bloke I’d seen resigned, and in the end, the project was shelved!

Almost rich—not quite!

After the first play in which I performed, called ‘Re-Electing Roger’ at the Henry Lawson Theatre group, I was introduced to Gough Whitlam and his wife. He said my performance as a drunk (I don’t drink, by the way) was the best he’d seen outside Parliament! At least I was able to thank him for abolishing Tertiary Education fees that allowed me to complete my Bachelor of Engineering degree.

Incidentally, it was quite fortuitous that I was able to sit down and chat with John Howard quite recently in Penrith Plaza in NSW when he was assisting the Liberal candidate there. I was able to thank him for his ‘input’ for my Postgraduate degree (Doctor of Science Education). It gave me some sort of ‘closure’ in each case.

In some ways, being ‘almost famous’ is good enough. Fame and fortune do not always augur well for us mere mortals. Human nature seems to result in a bad outcome for some, although we always say, ‘That won’t happen to me!’

Note from the Editor: A huge thank you to member Alan G. for sharing this fantastic tale with us all! Do you have your own ‘almost famous’ story? Let us know in the comments below.

You can read more from member Alan G. below:
Bluetooth Anti-Theft Adapter: Enhance your home security for under $20.

 

[Suzanne rose]

What a great story , thank you for sharing .

I believe things always happen for a reason, sounds like you went on to achieve ALOT and maybe if you became famous you wouldn't have achieved everything you have

 

[Mina vriesekolk]

Enjoyed your life story . At least you never gave up and believe in yourself .
I think you are a clever person , good on you.

 

[magpie1]

Interesting story about a very talented man.....thanks Alan G.

 

[Reet]

Note from the Editor: Member Alan G. is the brains behind the recent article: Bluetooth Anti-Theft Adapter: Enhance your home security for under $20. But did you know that Alan was ‘almost famous’? Here’s member Alan G.’s story.

‘Almost Famous’​

When I was a lot younger, I really wanted to be rich and famous! Well, I’ve never been rich (so far), and I certainly haven’t become famous—but at least I tried!

It was the '60s, and based on a few ‘A’ level GCE passes, I was able to go to ‘University’. Battersea College of Advanced Technology certainly wasn’t my first choice, but thanks to a Headmaster who couldn’t see the funny side of avoiding sport by playing cards in a groundsman’s shed. His bad report sort of steered me onto a path less salubrious. At least the BSc Electronics degree I studied for was from ‘London University’.

Of course, it’s difficult to put an ‘old head on a young man’s shoulders’, and I quickly found that it was far more fun to play guitar and compose teen songs than to study.

In the course of this detour from academic excellence, I managed to obtain a little paperback book by The Hollies (a very popular rock group of the day): How to Form a Beat Group. In the back of the book was a list of all the music publishers in London’s West End. Since I was in ‘digs’ in London, I was well placed to catch the train up and wander around these places.

I soon developed a sort of ‘routine’. I would type out the lyrics of three songs on my little Hermes typewriter and record the songs on a 3” tape on a small Philips portable tape recorder. Apparently, that was the recommended number of songs you could inflict on the publisher!

I think the motivation was to see these similarly aged teenagers apparently having a really good time and earning lots of money doing it. The money was in the songwriting, not so much in the singing—at least, first off.

I would get off the train, and armed with my ‘address book’, I would wander around all these little music publishers. They would listen to a few bars of each song, inevitably pushing ‘Fast Forward’ on the tape when they didn’t like the song. I asked one of them once what he was looking for. He said: ‘Well, if I don’t hear a “Hit” in the first eight bars, I don’t accept the song.’

At one point, I found myself climbing up a narrow set of steps in a very run-down part of Dean Street in the West End, and at the top, there was a smokey little room in which a couple were banging out the words for a French (or was it German?) version of ‘Puppet On A String’.

My songs didn’t get anywhere, of course, but it was interesting to see the background of so-called ‘hits’.

Another publisher said my songs were ‘too nice’. I asked him how he would judge the Herman’s Hermits song ‘Silhouettes’, and he admitted that if it had not been from Herman’s Hermits, he wouldn’t have accepted it!

View attachment 29655

Alan G. in his songwriting years. Image Credit: Member Alan G.

Having been around so many little publishers, it was with some surprise that I found myself in a very posh establishment. I sat down on a comfortable settee in a plush reception area, and an attractive young lady came over and asked me if I’d like tea or coffee while I waited. It was Dick James Music, and they were the publisher at the time for The Beatles!

Finally, I got three of my songs accepted by Chappell Music. They were ‘Country and Western’ songs. They told me they would ‘do a demo disk’ of them. They also suggested that they would have a word with a bloke by the name of Tom Springfield, saying that he may be open to collaboration since the words of my songs were ‘pretty good’, and Mr Springfield ‘didn’t like writing the lyrics’, apparently.

Of course, nothing came of it. Chappell Music moved premises shortly afterwards, and I suppose my songs were consigned to rubbish.

Fast forward to 2023, and we have Facebook! And YouTube! Perhaps you’ll see me singing those songs after all! We’ll see.

I was also ‘nearly famous’ in an advert for the R&I Bank in WA (which became Bankwest in 1994).

I’d been in a play at Castle Hill, and there was a bloke there named ‘Parker’—I don’t know his first name—and he’d been in an advert for Kodak, I think. He was a chubby chap, and his kids had ‘dared him’ to do an advert for TV. He auditioned and got the part—he was to hold up a fish and pose for a photo when a shark would jump out of the water and grab the fish. He earned a fair bit of money from that, as it was shown quite a few times. I thought: ‘Well, if he could do it, so could I!’

I was also on TV—Channel 10—with Kerry Anne Kennerley showing off an ‘eye-blink’ sensor device for people with Cerebral Palsy that I’d chosen to complete as my final year project for a B.E Degree at NSW Institute of Technology (now University). On the program, I mentioned that it could be easily adapted for use by truck drivers to rouse them if their eyes closed during long trips. The consequence of that was that The Sydney Morning Herald put it on their front page (‘Mr Gent says that it should be made compulsory for truck drivers’—I never said that!) and the Vice President of the Whistler Corporation in the USA (they held the lion’s share of the GPS/Radar detection market over there) saw the advert, treated me to lunch at the Boulevard Hotel in Kings Cross, and gave me a ‘letter of intent’.

I was to get 4 per cent of all net sales, which amounted to somewhere in the region of $200,000 in the first year! Before this gelled, the company ‘changed direction’; the bloke I’d seen resigned, and in the end, the project was shelved!

Almost rich—not quite!

After the first play in which I performed, called ‘Re-Electing Roger’ at the Henry Lawson Theatre group, I was introduced to Gough Whitlam and his wife. He said my performance as a drunk (I don’t drink, by the way) was the best he’d seen outside Parliament! At least I was able to thank him for abolishing Tertiary Education fees that allowed me to complete my Bachelor of Engineering degree.

Incidentally, it was quite fortuitous that I was able to sit down and chat with John Howard quite recently in Penrith Plaza in NSW when he was assisting the Liberal candidate there. I was able to thank him for his ‘input’ for my Postgraduate degree (Doctor of Science Education). It gave me some sort of ‘closure’ in each case.

In some ways, being ‘almost famous’ is good enough. Fame and fortune do not always augur well for us mere mortals. Human nature seems to result in a bad outcome for some, although we always say, ‘That won’t happen to me!’

Note from the Editor: A huge thank you to member Alan G. for sharing this fantastic tale with us all! Do you have your own ‘almost famous’ story? Let us know in the comments below.

You can read more from member Alan G. below:
Bluetooth Anti-Theft Adapter: Enhance your home security for under $20.

Your story is very interesting and especially so to me as I had an uncle who worked at Chappell Music in London. My late husband's brother-in-law was also part of a musical group, playing guitar, when he was only 15. This was curtailed by his father who told him to get a "proper job" and the group then went on to become famous.

 

[Jest]

Note from the Editor: Member Alan G. is the brains behind the recent article: Bluetooth Anti-Theft Adapter: Enhance your home security for under $20. But did you know that Alan was ‘almost famous’? Here’s member Alan G.’s story.

‘Almost Famous’​

When I was a lot younger, I really wanted to be rich and famous! Well, I’ve never been rich (so far), and I certainly haven’t become famous—but at least I tried!

It was the '60s, and based on a few ‘A’ level GCE passes, I was able to go to ‘University’. Battersea College of Advanced Technology certainly wasn’t my first choice, but thanks to a Headmaster who couldn’t see the funny side of avoiding sport by playing cards in a groundsman’s shed. His bad report sort of steered me onto a path less salubrious. At least the BSc Electronics degree I studied for was from ‘London University’.

Of course, it’s difficult to put an ‘old head on a young man’s shoulders’, and I quickly found that it was far more fun to play guitar and compose teen songs than to study.

In the course of this detour from academic excellence, I managed to obtain a little paperback book by The Hollies (a very popular rock group of the day): How to Form a Beat Group. In the back of the book was a list of all the music publishers in London’s West End. Since I was in ‘digs’ in London, I was well placed to catch the train up and wander around these places.

I soon developed a sort of ‘routine’. I would type out the lyrics of three songs on my little Hermes typewriter and record the songs on a 3” tape on a small Philips portable tape recorder. Apparently, that was the recommended number of songs you could inflict on the publisher!

I think the motivation was to see these similarly aged teenagers apparently having a really good time and earning lots of money doing it. The money was in the songwriting, not so much in the singing—at least, first off.

I would get off the train, and armed with my ‘address book’, I would wander around all these little music publishers. They would listen to a few bars of each song, inevitably pushing ‘Fast Forward’ on the tape when they didn’t like the song. I asked one of them once what he was looking for. He said: ‘Well, if I don’t hear a “Hit” in the first eight bars, I don’t accept the song.’

At one point, I found myself climbing up a narrow set of steps in a very run-down part of Dean Street in the West End, and at the top, there was a smokey little room in which a couple were banging out the words for a French (or was it German?) version of ‘Puppet On A String’.

My songs didn’t get anywhere, of course, but it was interesting to see the background of so-called ‘hits’.

Another publisher said my songs were ‘too nice’. I asked him how he would judge the Herman’s Hermits song ‘Silhouettes’, and he admitted that if it had not been from Herman’s Hermits, he wouldn’t have accepted it!

View attachment 29655

Alan G. in his songwriting years. Image Credit: Member Alan G.

Having been around so many little publishers, it was with some surprise that I found myself in a very posh establishment. I sat down on a comfortable settee in a plush reception area, and an attractive young lady came over and asked me if I’d like tea or coffee while I waited. It was Dick James Music, and they were the publisher at the time for The Beatles!

Finally, I got three of my songs accepted by Chappell Music. They were ‘Country and Western’ songs. They told me they would ‘do a demo disk’ of them. They also suggested that they would have a word with a bloke by the name of Tom Springfield, saying that he may be open to collaboration since the words of my songs were ‘pretty good’, and Mr Springfield ‘didn’t like writing the lyrics’, apparently.

Of course, nothing came of it. Chappell Music moved premises shortly afterwards, and I suppose my songs were consigned to rubbish.

Fast forward to 2023, and we have Facebook! And YouTube! Perhaps you’ll see me singing those songs after all! We’ll see.

I was also ‘nearly famous’ in an advert for the R&I Bank in WA (which became Bankwest in 1994).

I’d been in a play at Castle Hill, and there was a bloke there named ‘Parker’—I don’t know his first name—and he’d been in an advert for Kodak, I think. He was a chubby chap, and his kids had ‘dared him’ to do an advert for TV. He auditioned and got the part—he was to hold up a fish and pose for a photo when a shark would jump out of the water and grab the fish. He earned a fair bit of money from that, as it was shown quite a few times. I thought: ‘Well, if he could do it, so could I!’

I was also on TV—Channel 10—with Kerry Anne Kennerley showing off an ‘eye-blink’ sensor device for people with Cerebral Palsy that I’d chosen to complete as my final year project for a B.E Degree at NSW Institute of Technology (now University). On the program, I mentioned that it could be easily adapted for use by truck drivers to rouse them if their eyes closed during long trips. The consequence of that was that The Sydney Morning Herald put it on their front page (‘Mr Gent says that it should be made compulsory for truck drivers’—I never said that!) and the Vice President of the Whistler Corporation in the USA (they held the lion’s share of the GPS/Radar detection market over there) saw the advert, treated me to lunch at the Boulevard Hotel in Kings Cross, and gave me a ‘letter of intent’.

I was to get 4 per cent of all net sales, which amounted to somewhere in the region of $200,000 in the first year! Before this gelled, the company ‘changed direction’; the bloke I’d seen resigned, and in the end, the project was shelved!

Almost rich—not quite!

After the first play in which I performed, called ‘Re-Electing Roger’ at the Henry Lawson Theatre group, I was introduced to Gough Whitlam and his wife. He said my performance as a drunk (I don’t drink, by the way) was the best he’d seen outside Parliament! At least I was able to thank him for abolishing Tertiary Education fees that allowed me to complete my Bachelor of Engineering degree.

Incidentally, it was quite fortuitous that I was able to sit down and chat with John Howard quite recently in Penrith Plaza in NSW when he was assisting the Liberal candidate there. I was able to thank him for his ‘input’ for my Postgraduate degree (Doctor of Science Education). It gave me some sort of ‘closure’ in each case.

In some ways, being ‘almost famous’ is good enough. Fame and fortune do not always augur well for us mere mortals. Human nature seems to result in a bad outcome for some, although we always say, ‘That won’t happen to me!’

Note from the Editor: A huge thank you to member Alan G. for sharing this fantastic tale with us all! Do you have your own ‘almost famous’ story? Let us know in the comments below.

You can read more from member Alan G. below:
Bluetooth Anti-Theft Adapter: Enhance your home security for under $20.

have you said buggar like the toyota ad.?