1971 Rod Stewart meets Big Bob Knight

The Nags Head Wollaston.

From the late 1960s to early 70s, the Nags Head was like no other place in the world. It hosted the biggest bands, had Radio One DJ's appearing weekly and was talked about all over the country. 'Big' Bob Knight, landlord, disc jockey, local legend was the brains behind the Nags phenonomen. Born in Earls Barton in 1933, Bob was brought up in Rushden,"one of my earliest memories is of being buried alive under a pile of rubble during the war years." On leaving school he was working as a clicker in a shoe factory when he was called up for national service in 1951. It was the time of what has become known as 'The Forgotten War' - Korea. "I spent a year there with the Royal Norfolk Regiment, we took over from the Glorious Glosters. I'd been transferred from the Northamptonshire Regiment and sent to Bury St Edmunds for training. They told us we were going to Korea, I didn't have a clue where Korea was! I was 18 and being sent to the front line. We had no idea what lay in store for us. A vivid memory is on arrival at Seoul and being transferred onto a train to take us to our camp - and a train pulling into the station as we were about to leave, full of injured American servicemen. That was a waking up call I can tell you. All these guys lying on stretchers with limbs torn apart and blood and guts everywhere. Frightening. Because I was a big lad I often got lumbered with humping things around. One time I was on a patrol with about a dozen others, making our way through a terrain that was mountainous, boggy, because of all the bombing that had been going on, and I was carrying this big heavy wireless on my back! It was scary and then all of a sudden I thought I heard these Chinese voices. I told the sergeant but he said 'no, no way, they're nowhere near us'. I was convinced but he refused to acknowledge it - until we went over a brow of a hill and spotted about four hundred of the Chinese coming towards us! We turned and ran like hell, tumbling back down the hillside to our jeeps. We'd spend the days and nights camped in the trenches, every so often giving the Chinese a burst of about 400 rounds out of our Vickers machine gun, working it in an arc, back and for, firing non stop. Just to let them know we were still there!" The 1st Battalion Gloucestershire Regiment, the 'Glorious Glosters', were so called because of a heroic three-day stand where they held off a Chinese force ten times its size. Fifty-nine were killed and 526 captured during the battle for the Imjin River, April 22-25, 1951. Bob; "It was only recently when we saw a 50th anniversary celebration of the war on television that I realised that the Glosters had suffered one of the worst defeats in the war. Wiped out." On demob Bob went back to the shoe factory and soon found the mundane work soul destroying. He left and became a lorry driver for a number of years, returning to the shoe industry when life on the road became tiresome too. "It was then me and a bloke called Don Planner, who used to run the West End Club in Rushden, started a disco. We were earning little money at work so we started doing it in our spare time. Concentrating mainly on the Tamla Motown stuff that is still my favourite music. That's how it all started. We went over to the Nags in Wollaston and done a few there and after a few months, the landlord said to me he was thinking of packing up. 'Why don't you put in to be the landlord?' he said. Well I had a good friend who ran the Blisworth Hotel where we also ran a few discos and he said 'I'll give you a few tips - take it on'. We took it on, Planner and me as tenants. And it all went from there. I used to do the Railway Club on the Monday, North Park on Tuesday, Nags Head on Wednesday, North Park again on Thursday, Friday the Nags, Saturday the Nags and a few others in between. Rushden Windmill Club as well. We used to play all sorts of music there. The Wellingborough Railway Club used to attract 500 to 600 people every week for about ten years, that was a Motown night. I was the first person in Northamptonshire to have twin deck turntables. They came from Japan. I used to share them with a bloke from Bedford. I used to have them on a Friday at Rushden and he used to use them on a Sunday at Bedford. Nobody had twin decks. Everybody just used too have one. We were the first discos in the area." The natural progression was to start putting on bands and branch out from the Motown discos that Bob had made his name with. Bob's protege Steve Hadjuk; "I knew Bob from Rushden, initially from when I used to deliver his newspapers! One day he caught hold of me and in that gruff voice of his, told me in no uncertain terms to tell my boss at the shop to stop the order. 'If he can't get the papers to me before 9 am he can keep the papers!' I then got to know him when they had bands on at the West End Club. He'd asked me to do some roadying for him when I was about sixteen and I started DJ'ing a bit - Motown. After a while I told Bob, 'look I'm not really into this, I've got all blues and rock albums.

That's what I'm into. I'm not enjoying the music'. Because he was a very forward thinker he said, 'well, why not do a blues night in the lounge downstairs?' I encouraged people to bring their albums along, one guy brought Captain Beefheart, another Frank Zappa. We started off with about five people in there, next week about twenty, the following week about forty or fifty then after that, they were spilling out into the yard because the people couldn't get in! Bob looked at it and thought maybe we should move this upstairs." Regular Ken Marsh from Rushden; "Audience clientele didn't change much, you could guarantee who you'd see there. The uniform was typical of the type of hippie era around that time. Plenty of hair. Plenty of denim. Plenty of colour. It was about the birds and music definitely but I think the scene and the ambience of the place made it all the more special" Bob was an entreprenuer way ahead of his time, contacting various agents to get the stars of Radio One to appear at the pub. Bob; "I had Dave Lee Travis, Noel Edmonds, Paul Burnett, and then I had John Peel and we just hit it off as friends. He loved it and stayed for four or five years." More and more people flocked to the Nags Head. The Friday John Peel night was a massive hit. Steve Hadjuk; "When transport became an issue for punters travelling from across the county, Bob took the matter into his own hands." Bob; "United Counties stopped running the bus from Wellingborough because the kids going home were making a nuisance of themselves. So I put a bouncer on the bus. Then I had to send a car to bring him back. So I bought a bus. I used to run it to Wellinborough to pick the punters up and then drop them off again at the end of the night." All the regulars were fond of Bob's pink double decker bus. Andy Bartlett; "You'd spend a lot of time acquainting yourself with a young lady throughout the evening - thinking you were going to be alright, walk her home and get to know her some more. And just as you'd think you were doing alright, they'd be whisked away on the bus! That was irritating!" Steve Hadjuk;" Bob was very loyal. He's paying me for being the DJ, we've got the bands on when John came, it would have been very easy for Bob to say 'thank you very much, we've got John Peel now, we don't need you'. Instead he said, 'right, you open, John will do his stint, the band will then come on, and then you finish.' He could have ditched me but he never did. John settled in nicely and wasn't just showing up and playing a few records and then going home again. He got involved in the running of the night." Bob;"Sometimes, we'd take £20, sometimes nothing.

Most of it was £40 plus a percentage on the door. Course, John was straight, there was no fiddling. He would plug the Nags every week on his radio show, he'd plug it in his column in the Melody Maker." Steve Hadjuk;"For the first few years I was a bit star struck because I'd been listening to his shows for ages. Bob wasn't because he wasn't into it. John Peel? Yeah, alright. That's where the magic was. Bob and John instantly hit it off. Bob's a very honest guy, he'd tell you what he thinks, and John liked that. At the time John Peel wasn't the cult hero that he became in later life. But the regulars still took it all in their stride. John Peel was such a relaxed guy, milling around with everybody. He'd stand at the top of the stairs at the Nags and stamp your hand. You'd walk by him as you went in. He was just one of the gang. But to Bob he'd become one of his closest friends. Bob; "He was a genuine bloke. He'd come and stay with me at the pub because we'd got three bedrooms. He'd sometimes stay the night then go back to London to do his radio show or he'd go up to Liverpool to see his beloved 'Reds' play. I went to all his birthday parties. When I got married he came to my wedding. Got a christmas card off him every year. We just hit it off." Good judgement and some good luck led to a few scoops for the new promoters on the block. Steve Hadjuk; "Alexis Korner came up on two or three occasions. One time Alexis rang up and said I've got this band my friend's son is playing in it. Paul Kossoff, son of the actor David. They want to rehearse, they've got a record coming out, I'll bring them up to support me'. They were called The Black Cat Bones, the forerunner to Free." Mick Austin was a familiar face around the scene; "I saw so many great bands at the Nags, Free being my favourite.You did'nt have to go to London to watch class bands. The first gig I ever saw there was Alexis Korner when he brought The Black Cat Bones with him, and low and behold they returned a couple of months later in their own right as Free. I'll never forget them, they were great. I remember Big Bob having a blazing row with a very young Carl Palmer (Atomic Rooster)? Little did we know just how big Mr Palmer was going to become!

Some of the bands who played there have long gone but the individual musicians are still out there today playing. - Free, Blodwyn Pig, Bronco, Paladin, Uriah Heep,Formerly Fat Harry, Medicine Head, Burning Red Ivanhoe, Audience, Stray, so many........A pint of beer and a vodka & lime came to 7shillings and sixpence. Women could walk home safely and you could smoke your bloody head off without anyone complaining!...Now look at me A grumpy old man...GREAT DAYS." The night which is still talked about is when The Faces came to play. John Peel asked Rod Stewart, who was a friend, to play as a favour. Bob Knight;"Peely said 'I can get the Faces to come'. Bloody hell I said, that'd be a good night! So we booked them, all the contracts were signed, all the kit came in at dinnertime. Mountain of it. They had a great big lorry full of kit. They only used about 10% of it because that's all they could fit in! So the kit was there, the fans were there en masse, the atmosphere was incredible. John Peel was there. But The Faces weren't!" Kevin Marsh remembers the disappointment; "The lead up to it was incredible because the excitement was so intense. The rumours started going round that they hadn't turned up. We waited and waited. Something you thought couldn't happen, and it didn't happen. It was just absolute disappointment." What should have been the biggest night in the pub's history ended in bitter disappointment. Steve Hadjuk helped John Peel to carry his records to his car; "a set of headlights then pulled into the car park and I'd never seen John lose his temper like he did that night. 'You have let me down! This is my friend's place' he bawled at them. The look on the guys faces, he said a few more bits and pieces to them and then got in his car and went. Billy Gaff was the Faces manager at the time. He promised that the band would re-arrange the gig, and they said, right, the only date we can play is on Thursday but we'll do it and we'll do it free. But John Peel couldn't make the night because his show was on the radio. So it was down to me and it was fantastic." Pete Marshall from Corby (a big Rod Stewart fan) remembers an altogether different side of the Nags Head and of Big Bob. Pete: “John Chapman and I went over to Wollaston on the first night that the Faces were meant to appear. When they didn’t show, the management announced that everyone with a pass-out stamp on their hand would be able to get their money back - so Chap and I stumbled back up the stairs to collect ours. We were about to make our way back down to the pub bar, when suddenly I realised that I’d lost my wallet. I turned to go back in, but Big Bob and one of his DJs were barring the door. When I told Bob that I’d lost my wallet - and was only going back in to look for it - he swore at me. Then, completely without provocation, he punched me in the face! As I reeled backwards I bowled John over (he was standing right behind me) and we tumbled downstairs - ending up in a heap at the bottom. We were both too drunk to argue our case, and so I just looked at Chap and said indignantly: ‘There was ten bob in that wallet!’ Because his foot was stuck in the banister and he couldn’t get up, John merely shrugged his shoulders and offered me a cigarette, saying: ‘Never mind. Have a No 6’ (which was the 1970’s equivalent of a Woodbine.)
No one was really sure why Rod and the Faces failed to show up on time. Bob thinks it was confusion over the Nags opening times where Steve just reckons that they got lost. But whatever the reason the gig was back on and this time it would go ahead. Steve Hadjuk;"It was kept mainly a secret. We tried to keep it local because if we'd have advertised it it the whole of Wollaston would have been flooded. John wanted that as well. I don't think he even plugged it on his radio show."

Bob Knight; "It was absolutely fantastic. We had so many people, we had to let the people in who had tickets from the first show and everybody was there at six o'clock that night. Well the kit was all there, set up - but it was before! And I couldn't stop biting my nails!" Steve Hadjuk;"You couldn't move. If you wanted to go to the loo, God help you! They were so close to the audience and I remember there were so many in there that Rod Stewart shouted back to the roadies to pass a crate of beer forward. They were the first band I ever saw who had what they called a tea break in the middle of a set! The bar was right at the back. You couldn't get there. The Faces asked to put the lights on and they were passing about twenty pints down over the people's heads to the guys at the front. And the band were talking to them, having a drink and after about ten minutes or so, they said, 'right, ok everybody happy? right, get the lights down again' and they kicked back in." The gig was a massive success, the punters had had the gig of their life and it was fun to hang out a bit with the band as Steve Hadjuk recalls;" It was about two in the morning, which was late in those days, we sat around in the lounge just drinking after the gig - we just wanted to keep up with the Faces a bit - a bit awesome really - I was getting a lift home with Don Planner - I was on a real high. They had come in the lounge, started giving autographs and albums away. They were fantastic. Ronnie Wood sat there picking his toenails - it was that relaxed!" For many bands gigs come and go, what city, what venue, but that gig at the Nags stayed with Rod and the boys." Years later when Steve was making his way in the music industry he attended his first convention when the Nags legacy came into play. It was for the Phillips Record Company and Rod was guest of honour. He was dressed in a satin suit, and we've all got our suits on, I was a rep then. And we stood up at the bar and he about ten feet away talking to the likes of the Managing Director, Chairman, and he turned round and sort of looked at me, then said, 'I know you, don't I?' Well, yeah, I said, 'Do you remember the Nags Head Wollaston?' 'Yeah' And he totally ignored the directors after that! 'How's it going?' 'What's happening?' Because of that, whenever I saw Rod and The Faces gigs after that, I was always invited backstage. Not because what I am, but what the Nags and John Peel had done for them."
 Taken from 'Alive In The Dead Of Night' by Clive Smith and David Black.