The most tragic consequence of the shortsightedness of the early television era is the fact that scant footage from the 173 episodes of Ready Steady Go! survives. Only nine complete episodes, one Motown special, and a handful of clips remain. That anyone would have wipe 120-or-so hours of The Beatles, The Supremes, the Stones, The Kinks, The Animals, Martha and the Vandellas, The Zombies, Dusty Springfield, The Ronettes, The Four Tops, Small Faces, or series mascots The Who performing at the height of their powers is criminal, and the pain only stings harder when you read Andy Neill’s new book Ready Steady Go!: The Weekend Starts Here.
Like Neill’s Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere—perhaps the definitive book about The Who—Ready Steady Go!: The Weekend Starts Here is a massive, LP-sized book blooming with fascinating details and a smashing bounty of B&W and full-color images. It tells the story of a program that brought the artists teens loved most to British televisions through a defiantly teen perspective. Aside from token oldie Keith Fordyce, the presenters, dancers, guests, and attitude skewed young. The existing footage looks something like The Lord of the Flies with better gender and racial balance and much better music and clothes. An unruly crowd nearly tears Mick Jagger apart. Cathy McGowan, the Stones, and their manager Andrew Loog Oldham lip sync to “I Got You Babe” with uproarious results. Dusty Springfield and Martha Reeves cut each other up while singing the goofy “Wishin’ and Hopin’”. Most radically, Ready Steady Go! eventually broke the accepted mold of British musical variety programs by allowing actual live performances instead of mere mimed ones. Performances from the likes of Otis Redding and The Who could be truly explosive.
Ready Steady Go!: The Weekend Starts Here fills in all the gaps around such provocative and rare footage. Using a semi-oral history format, Neill lets original players such as producer Vicki Wickham, Fordyce, Jagger, Oldham, Pete Townshend, Ray and Dave Davies, Donovan, Martha Reeves, Lulu, Bill Wyman, Colin Blunstone, Mary Wilson, Eric Burdon, and many others tell their tales of antics behind and before the cameras (unfortunately, key player Cathy is not among the commentators because she prefers a life out of the spotlight these days, but there are still a couple of old quotes and loads of pics of the photogenic presenter). We’ll never again get to see Dusty Springfield appear before the cameras with her teeth blacked out or Pete Townshend and Ray Davies star as Cinderella’s wicked step-sisters in an X-mas panto or John Entwistle committing an ultra-rare act of violence by smashing a confetti-filled bass at the climax of the Ready Steady Who special or Mike Evans and Roger Powell of The Action playing the show while tripping their balls off, but it’s still fun to know such silliness went down among all the world-changing creativity.
And through and through, Ready Steady Go!: The Weekend Starts Here is a joyous chronicle of open, unrestrained, and deliriously creative youth. This book didn’t just make me lament the loss of all that enticing footage; it made me wish I was 25 years younger and born 30 years earlier than I was. But everything kind of makes me wish that.
