大象传媒

Several Avids have been in touch asking about Brian Matthew's rather mysterious sidekick, Phil 'The Collector' Swern. So I decided to catch him at the end of a SOTS session. Phil told me that he first met Brian back in the early sixties, little knowing fate would bring them together on SOTS decades later. At this point, he was a schoolboy living in Wembley. "I used to come up to town every weekend to see what was going on in the studios - at the Paris, or the Playhouse, all the 大象传媒 studios around London - to go and watch the shows being recorded. Easybeat was one of the many that we went to see, down at the Playhouse Theatre on Northumberland Avenue. I was still at school, and the tickets were really hard to come by. So I got chatting to the commissionaire on the door. I used to take him packets of cigarettes every few weeks, and in return he gave me tickets for Easybeat.

Phil "The Collector" Swern with just a small portion of his huge record collection

They needed a new producer, Brian said 'how about that funny little man who sits with Alan Freeman?'

- Phil Swern on meeting Brian Matthew

"Funnily enough, the theatres weren't that full. They were for Easybeat, but not the other shows. Quite often they would record them early in the evening, or even late afternoon. I had to skive off school to see them. So they'd be half full, but you'd see all these big names. Easybeat I think was recorded on a Wednesday, 6 o'clock or 6.30. Saturday Club was, in fact, live - they had one live band a week, actually in the studio on a Saturday, with Brian.

"I do remember seeing a programme called the Talent Spot. It was the very first broadcast in front of an audience given by the Beatles - they were premiering their single Love Me Do and PS I Love You. That show was amazing, not many people remember it. It used to go out on a Tuesday afternoon on the Light Programme at 5 o'clock. Lots and lots of artists got their first break. I saw the Hollies there, Brian Poole & the Tremeloes, Gerry & the Pacemakers."

So how did the fan become the producer? "I met Brian a couple of times at Easybeat, but I don't think he'd remember that. When I was producing at Radio 2 with Alan Freeman, we'd wait outside the studio for Brian to finish recording Sounds Of The Sixties. We nodded and chatted a bit. So when my predecessor (Roger 'The Vocalist' Bowman) came off the programme, and they needed a new producer, Brian said 'how about that funny little man who sits with Alan Freeman?' I wasn't 'The Collector' then - that was Brian's name for me. At the end of the very first programme we did, he suddenly credited me as Phil The Collector, and it's stuck ever since."

Between hanging out at Easybeat and working with Brian, Phil developed a huge record collecting habit, and made a few hit records of his own. But more on that another time...