Interview with Johnny Morris an old school DJ from the 70's

0:00 We're in Aberystwyth and the gentleman behind me, your name sir?

Right, there we go. Right ladies and gentlemen, we're in Aberystwyth and the gentleman behind me, your name sir? John. John, and your DJ name? Oh, John Spoton. Everybody knew me as John Spoton. John Spoton. Years ago, yeah. Alright, and just tell everyone now, we're in Aberystwyth, what shop are we in? It's the bag shop and fishing tackle shop in Aberystwyth, just by the station. Alright, now the reason I'm interviewing this gentleman... It's because you're actually one of the original DJs from this whole area, aren't you? That's right, yeah. And when did you actually start DJing? Must have been about the 1970s. Right. It's after I'd been to London. Yeah. I'd spent a few years in London with different groups. They've got these bags down. Go on, carry on. And came back and I started DJing them.

Yeah. Yeah, got it. Who's a manager of Aj Cutler, don't you remember Aj Cutler and the Wurzels? Yes I do, yeah. John Miles was their manager in Bristol. Yeah. And anyway, he said, oh my brother, he works in a garage and he'll make up a caron. Yeah. And that's how Smiley Miley started on the Radio 1 Roadshow. Because that's it, yeah, I mean, you basically helped start the roadshows for us, didn't you? That's right. Fantastic. I had my own roadshow then. Yeah. Then we had a console made, Ramper Roscoe, he's now in America. One of the biggest DJs there. We all have this console made. I've still got the console by the way. I know, I've got to get that off you sometime because I did go but the shed was locked. Oh well I'll have to open the shed again. There's dust all over it now. We had a fellow from Huddersfield called Matt and he made up the console for us. A DJ console using

2:43 Is it two or three in there?

Stanton Arms and Rusco Decks. Yeah. And he was a guy who invented Orange. Wow. And he was behind the Orange amplifier. Got you. He was a German fan. He used to come down and stay with me a lot in Borth, where I'm from. Yeah. And he also invented the Matan after himself. He's passed away now. But these are the old people of the entertainment business. This is how discos, the mobile discos really started. Got you. In that era, early 70s. Mm-hmm. So, Matt was behind all the Orange amplification and which all the big groups, they still use the Orange now. Yeah. On stage. But he was the one who invented the Orange amplifier and put it all together. Wow. And he always believed to keep it simple, keep everything simple. Yeah. So that anything that went wrong is easy to repair. And the same with this console I've got. It's a massive thing. Because how many decks? Is it two or three in there? Two decks. Yeah. And you also have a quad pot. Yes. You could take the...

Pink Floyd also used to do this on their gigs. Yeah. Take the sound around the room. Got you. So if you had quadraphonic sound, you could take it to each corner kind of thing? Not quadraphonic sound, but you have a quad part that takes the top around. So when you're dancing, one minute you hear the treble on one side and... Got you. Wow. It's like a joystick. Yeah, got you. And it wasn't actually quad sound, it's just you're making up your own quad sound from records that you had. Wow. And of course, because when you started, It was all 7-inch singles and it was like three and a half minutes and you had to work, didn't you? Oh yeah, well we used to blend and the thing about the Rusco decks was that they had instant start. The BBC used to have them as well. I'm not quite sure, I haven't been down to the BBC for a long time in London but even on the roadshow they were good because you could turn your decks

Thank you for watching. See you next time. But I was looking through my photographs. I've still got the photograph from the Radio 1 Roadshow when we, the first day we started up in Scotland. Can you bring that in sometime? I'll have a look at it. Yeah, sure. I've got it on my computer. It's on the internet. All right. On the history of the Roadshow and it shows Tony Miles, who is Smiley Marty myself, with his Ranger. I was just pulling the Radio 1 Roadshow and I was pulling the Goodyland. Yeah. Excellent. And that was the first date up in Scotland. We used to start up in Scotland, do six weeks, and then we'd have a different DJ every week. Can you name check who you've worked with over the years? Every disc jockey. Davey, Travis, Noel Edmonds, Emperor Roscoe,

5:54 For Robin and we often see Robin in London when we're actually raising

Thank you for watching. Robin from the DJs, he's trying to raise money for the old airman because there's nothing in London to represent the airman that died in London. Right. And he's trying to raise money for that. Nice. For Robin and we often see Robin in London when we're actually raising money. Cool. We often see stars, you know, shoulders with stars and everything. Yeah. But it was... But there are a lot of old people I don't see now. Well, we see Les Reed sometimes. He wrote a lot of stuff for The Beatles and he comes to the show. I'm trying to think what else we used to do. We used to go down to John Lennon's house a lot. Wow, crikey. That was the old days. And I used to be really friendly with a guy called Bill Prince who used to do the pretty things. Wow. And he phoned me up and we were reminiscing the other day about the days we used to go...

Thank you for watching. Thank you for watching. Well, we've got some fond memories from the Radio 1 Roadshow and the early days. I've still got that deck that Matt built and it's still in my garage. I don't know what happened to yours and what happened to Dave Lee Travis' deck, but I've still got mine. How are things in America? Haven't seen you for many years. I bumped into a mate of yours from Hull the other day who does a lot of your PR in this country. I was with PJ Proby up in Hull and he's a mate of yours. But all the best. Mike and hope to see you sometime. Alright, nice one. Practice and enjoy. Ta.

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.