The Shadows: Apache

Has there every been anything cooler, more bad ass, in British pop than Jet Harris smoking that cigarette?

Maybe Hank Marvin is too good natured to be cool or bad ass, but he manages to look as though he's just been got out of bed and is playing in his dressing gown.

And this is from 1960.

As well as recording hugely popular instrumentals like this  and Wonderful Land as a group, the Shadows also backed Cliff Richard - a much-traduced artist. Time to tell the story of how Marvin became the first guitarist in Britain to own a Stratocaster:

By 1959, Cliff, The English answer to Elvis, was a star. Hank was playing a Japanese-made Antoria guitar that he says had "a horribly bent neck," so Cliff decided to buy Hank a new and better instrument.

Unfortunately, an English musician could not easily buy an American guitar at this time because the British Board of Trade controlled imports from America, and no American guitars were available in the British shops. Cliff, however, was able to have a guitar privately imported, a consequence, no doubt, of having a top-selling single.

After spending the princely sum of one hundred and forty guineas, a 1959 Fiesta Red Stratocaster with gold fittings and maple neck duly arrived from the States in a plush red velvet lined case. That may sound cheap, but it is the equivalent of over three thousand pounds sterling today. This was reputedly the first Fender Stratocaster guitar in the United Kingdom, and with its clean Fender tones and fitted tremolo arm, it became the basis of the quintessential Hank Marvin sound.

And that guitar now lives with Marvin's schoolfriend and bandmate Bruce Welch in Australia.

One final point: Jet Harris died of a smoking-related disease, so don't try this at home kids.