Chords for Jet Harris - The Searchers (From There To Here)

As regards Cliff, I never ever saw Cliff in the Two Eyes coffee bar.
Apparently he did play there, I'm told, but I never met Cliff until we did the
the tour _ _
when [F] I was with Mickey [E] Most.
And that's when Cliff [F] introduced [C] himself to me
_ [D] because I think I've said this before, I'd become quite famous
within the business, not publicly,
as being the only bass guitarist around.
A lot of bass guitarists around at the time weren't that good.
It was like _ _
[D] and they were [E] guitarists that didn't make the [A] grades so they played bass, [D#] but Jet was a [A] true bass guitarist.
[G] And Cliff came up to me and asked me if I wanted to work in his band, and I told him no.
Because I was quite happy with Mickey then.
[B] I [Em] was getting four pound ten shillings a night,
[B] which if you're getting on for thirty quid a week, [G] that was good money.
[E] But the tour was three weeks long.
About halfway through the tour, [F] this
_ [F#] Cliff Richards
[G] record started shooting up the charts.
So I had a word with the promoter, Arthur Howes, I said, hey,
I see he's got a record in the charts. _
_ Arthur is the one that said, well, I should join him if I was you.
So I went back to Cliff during the tour and said, yeah, I will play bass for you.
_ Because he wasn't too happy with _
_ Ian Samwell on bass because _
well,
_ I'm quite sure Sammy wouldn't mind me saying this, but Sammy wasn't very good at the time on the bass.
So I took the job and became a drifter.
[C#] Of course then we did,
[F] _ [F#] we only did two things a week then.
One was the old boy show on TV [F#] and a one night stand on a Sunday.
_ You know, I think I got 15 quid for the two gigs.
_ and of course then, Cliff started becoming bigger and we got more gigs and then
[C]
we'll take it from there.
I think it was Cliff that got us a recording contract with Norrie, with EMI,
The Shadows and we had them, I think two or three vocals that died a death.
And then we came out with Apache and that was it.
That's why I'm sitting here now. _ _
[Fm] But it was all great stuff [E] that you can only do when you're that age.
I [G] mean one particular [G] recording session, Hank was so [E] knackered, so tired, shattered,
I remember him laying, I forget which tune,
_ [C] it doesn't matter which tune, but I've seen him lay on his back in the studio playing, _ you know,
_ just to get comfortable. _
But as I [Em] say, we couldn't do it now.
It was like that [F] American tour we did, [G] we did
something [F#] ridiculous like 18 states [D] by road in a Greyhound [F] bus.
We [G] crossed paths again when Jet was touring with The Shadows _ and Cliff.
We actually, I remember playing in Bristol at the Colston Hall when they first got their Strats, their Fenders.
And we just got ours at the same time.
_ _ Shirley had the Precision Bass and I had the Fender Stratocaster.
They were both custom built, gold plated, which The Shadows wasn't.
_ And when we played the Colston Hall, The Shadows were so nervous of string breaking,
because if the string went on a Strat with the tremolo arm, that was it, it was out of tune.
You couldn't get it in tune for ages.
So they were so nervous, they had us standing in the wings with our guitars whilst they were on stage
in case a string broke on their instruments.
That's another thing I remember about those days.
_ I think Jet started on a frame as [E] Shirley did, but once we got the Stratocasters and the Fenders,
_ it became the fashion for all the groups to have the same sort of instrument.
[Fm] We were turned on to it by seeing Buddy Holly, of course, in _
[C] 1958.
Although at that time I was a guitarist, bass guitars fascinated me, absolutely.
I remember particularly going to see The Shadows.
No, going to see The Cliff and The Drifters, this was, must get this right, the delineation there.
At the Chiswick Empire, way back in the early Pink Jacket days,
and Jet was up there playing again that famous Star Bass, which I kind of like to go on about.
And I thought that was such a great instrument.
[E] We ran [G] home, told the others in our [B] skiffle group that we wanted the guy [E] to play bass.
And for the moment he'd have to play it on the bottom strings of a six-string guitar.
But eventually we did get one.
And of course, eventually I switched over to the bass guitar.
And I never started off with that Framus or even a Fender Precision bass.
But at home I have a Framus Star Bass hanging in my wall, a very, very early model, just like Jet's.
And I bought it because it is so, _ _ you know, [F] _ just, it's so typical of those times.
It's one [E] of those instruments that means an awful lot to me, the sight of it, it's such a romantic [F] sight.
I wanted one, I bought one, it hangs there and [E] it's [N] just a part of my youth.
I'm buying up my youth and that instrument and Jet Harris are very much a part of what bass playing was all about for me.
Jet's bass playing, both on record and live, just had an immense power about it.
And fortunately, there's enough footage left of them playing live on television that you can actually see that.
You know, Jet and Tony together, the Live at Kingston CD that's been reissued in the last few years with Jet and Brian Bennett.
Sounds like a steam train's coming at you.
It's just enormous, his bass playing.
And over the years, he's been much derided by subsequent players over the years that have said, oh, that was just simple rock and roll.
But again, they don't bear in mind that this was a new instrument.
It was a new sound, a new feel to this country.
It was a fairly standard instrument in America.
But over here, we always lag behind the times of America.
And Jet's influence is just enormous.
You can hear it all over the place.
[A] _ I saw [C] this picture of him.
It was in a book.
I think it was a Daily Mirror book, Me and My Shadows, way, way back.
And there was a black and white picture in there of him.
He'd got the quiff, of course, and he'd got a leather jacket with the collar up.
And he'd got this amazing looking instrument with four huge strings on it.
And he just looked so cool.
And I thought, I want to be him.
[E] And I have to say, I think Jet's recorded bass sound on his Fender Precision has yet to be bettered.
As well as his six string bass sound that he had on Diamonds and Scala Hara.
And of course, you've got Man with the Golden Arm, which was a six string bass.
Wonderful sounds and immaculately presented. _ _ _