In 1964 Carl Leighton Pope was 18 and hanging out with the likes of Roger Daltrey and Rod Stewart in London.
Working five nights a week at the Marquee Club, the hottest venue for new acts, he came across up-and-coming bands like The Who, the Yardbirds and Moody Blues.
“I was a mod, I rode a Vespa, bought my clothes in Carnaby Street and followed the cool bands,” says Carl. “We didn’t have credit cards or bank accounts, but we had money in our pocket and lived for the weekends. Our entire lives were based around music; it defined who we were, who we hung around with, what girls we knew, what dances we did.”
Half a century later Carl is a renowned producer and promoter working with acts such as Bryan Adams, Van Morrison and Michael Buble. Carl has drawn on his own memories of Soho, rubbing shoulders with rising Sixties stars, to create lively new musical Carnaby Street, which comes to Bradford next week.
Set in the heart of Sixties London, the show is the story of Jude, a Liverpool lad who arrives in the Capital with a guitar and a handful of dreams. The era-defining soundtrack includes My Generation, Roll Over Beethoven, Go Now and Keep On Running.
“I’ve often been asked to write a book about my life. When I sat and thought about it I realised it was music that defined my life,” says Carl, who teamed up with Bob Thomson to create Carnaby Street.
“This is very much a story, not just a song-led concert musical,” says Carl. “It’s taken me 16 years to write. I reached back and wrote about the people and places I knew. The guy Jude meets in Carnaby Street is me. All the characters are people I met at that time.
“Bob and I had stand-up arguments about which songs to include but in the end it was what suited the action. When Jude gets to Carnaby Street you get In Crowd, because he’s part of that, and when he’s trying to get his girlfriend back it’s When You Walk in the Room.
“It was a fantastic time to be young. I was hanging round with start-up acts like The Who and Mick Jagger in the Marquee; I remember having a laugh with Roger Daltrey and someone asked if he was in a band. ‘Yeah, we’re called The Who’, he said. ‘Rubbish name’ came the reply.
“The music business was small back then, everyone bumped into each other in Soho. There was no social media, it was literally word of mouth.”
For a young image-conscious mod, clothes were important to Carl. “This was a time of great change. There was a sense of optimism, everyone had a job, we listened to new records and wanted to look good. Music was the biggest identity statement. Before the Sixties everyone looked the same; my father looked like my grandfather - but he didn’t look like me. I come from a big Welsh mining family and I’d visit them and think ‘they all look the same’. They’d never seen anything like me before.”
In 1972 Carl opened a recording studio and managed a band called Sassafras. After they split in 1977, Carl joined NEMS agency, signing acts such as Dire Straits, Simple Minds and Patti Smith. He formed the Performing Artists Network Agency and represented acts including Journey, Styx, REO Speedwagon, Huey Lewis and UFO.
Under Leighton-Pope Organisation he has toured acts such as Bryan Adams, Bonnie Tyler, Van Morrison and Billy Ocean. Other signings include Hayley Westenra and the Gypsy Queens.
He says Carnaby Street has a wide appeal because everyone knows the music. “I was in the audience the other night, people around me were singing every word. Sixties songs were simple three-minute hits that told a story. The people who were writing songs weren’t great poets, they just drew lyrics from their own lives. When Paul McCartney wrote Please Please Me you can bet it was something a girl once said to him.”
Carnaby Street runs at the Alhambra from Tuesday to Saturday. Ring (01274) 432000.