Ready Steady Go!
Ready Steady Go!
Ready Steady Go! was a seminal 1960s pop show that featured the top music acts of the time. The British pop scene had begun to evolve with the solo teenage singing stars (Billy Fury, Tommy Steele, Marty Wilde, Adam Faith) giving way to female solo singers (Dusty Springfield, Lulu, Sandie Shaw) and groups, many from the Merseyside area round Liverpool (The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, etc.). With the pop scene becoming ever bigger and the British sound in particular so globally successful, it was obvious that television producers had to invent new style shows to cover this phenomenon. Ready Steady Go! began in 1963 on the independent TV station Associated Rediffusion, and the BBC’s Top of the Pops debuted the following year. These two shows dominated the TV music coverage of the 1960s in the United Kingdom. Whereas Top of the Pops followed the simple (but highly durable) for-mat of simply featuring artists performing their hits in the charts, Ready Steady Go! featured a mixture of live performances, interviews, dance instructions, and competitions.
Bio
Ready Steady Go! was first broadcast on August 9, 1963, and initially ran 30 minutes. Billy Fury was on the first show, but more representative of the upcoming guests were Brian Poole and the Tremoloes, who were currently popular thanks to their version of “Twist and Shout.” The following year the show expanded to a 50-minute slot and entered a golden period. Top acts were booked every week, and they performed to a studio audience of 200 or so teenagers. Initially located at the Kingsway Studios in London, it soon outgrew its home, and production moved to the airier Wembley Studios. The show’s main presenters were Keith Fordyce, an established TV face who came across like an affable uncle, and Cathy McGowan, a fashionable, pretty ingénue who quickly struck a chord with the viewing audience. The producers of Ready Steady Go! were determined to find a new face to front the show and advertised in the music press for potential presenters. McGowan’s sister sent in an application on her behalf and, despite the fact that she had no experience whatsoever in the field (she was a secretary at the time), she landed the job and enjoyed virtual overnight success. McGowan was understandably nervous on screen at first and a little overawed by her surroundings, but she quickly got a handle on the job. Fordyce may have been more professional, but McGowan was younger (roughly the same age as the fans) and far trendier. She was someone with whom the audience could identify. The fact that she was on screen talking to the likes of Mick Jagger and John Lennon resonated with the home viewers, who could almost imagine themselves doing the same job. Such was her impact that in 1964 she was named TV personality of the year by the Variety Club of Great Britain, a prestigious honor. Cathy McGowan’s presence in the show was one of the factors that made Ready Steady Go! such a success.
Of even more importance, though, were the ramshackle, fast-paced style of the show and the consistently good lineup of acts, chosen mainly because of the individual tastes of the creative crew rather than any chart position. A spin-off magazine was launched to cash in on the success of the program, which was also ideally situated to cover the emergence of “mods” and their music. This meant that, apart from local bands, the show also featured American artists (including many African-American artists). A Motown special in 1965 was hosted by show regular Dusty Springfield and featured all the leading Motown acts of the day (Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, Temptations, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas).
The last edition of the series (headlining The Who and subtitled Ready Steady Gone!) aired December 23, 1966. The show had been groundbreaking and influential, and the surviving footage provides a priceless archive of some memorable moments and important performances. The rights to tapes of the series were acquired by pop artist-turned-entrepreneur Dave Clark in the 1980s.