I began to write about Birmingham groups in Mersey Beat, starting with bands like Gerry Levene & the Avengers. I wrote about groups from all over Britain who weren't given any publicity in the national papers at the time - the Hollies, Herman's Hermits, Freddie & the Dreamers, the Dakotas from Manchester, Dave Berry from Sheffield, the Animals from Newcastle and so on.
Ma Regan was a promoter in Birmingham and she decided to start her version of Mersey Beat which she called Midland Beat. Then a young guy from Bristol came to spend a week with us to see how we produced Mersey Beat and he launched one called Western Scene, which I wrote a column for. Then another similar publication started in Scotland - Scottish Beat and others sprang up all over Britain. There were about 24 papers based on Mersey Beat which emerged after we'd been going for two years, so I reckon that at the time we were the most imitated newspaper in the world.
There were quite a number of groups from Birmingham and I have one or two books about the Birmingham music scene. They had some great artists ranging from the Moody Blues to Ozzy Osbourne.
