Introduction

The road is long, with many a winding turn, that leads us to who knows where? Who knows where?

Everyone loved The Hollies. They were the 'group's group'. Never confrontational or rebellious, always smartly suited, always smiling. With an unbroken run of immaculate pop singles which, while they seldom had that must-buy factor of the latest Rolling Stones or Beatles record, were hallmarked by tight harmonies and unfailing chart sensibility. Throughout the sixties and well into the seventies, everyone had - own up - at least one or two Hollies singles in their collection. When Tony Hicks' mouths 'Hello Mum' as the Top of the Pops cameras pan past him, even normally-disapproving parents were charmed. No one begrudged The Hollies their hits.

When 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother' and 'Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress' became global million-sellers, The Hollies were inducted into The Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. Graham Nash - by then deep into his second career as part of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, was reunited with other members of the outfit, Allan Clarke, Bernard 'Bernie' Calvert, Eric Haydock, and Terry Sylvester - although significantly without either Bobby Elliott or Tony Hicks, all on stage together in the March 2010 ceremony.

Rock History tells how the origins of The Hollies can be traced back to post- war Manchester, and two gawky five-year-old pupils at Ordsall Board Primary School. Born within two months of each other, Allan Clarke (born 5 April 1942 in Salford, one of six children) and Graham Nash (2 February 1942) started out as school friends. Hanging out together as fourteen-year-olds, they bought their first guitars inspired by the Skiffle fad. Although born in Blackpool, Graham spent much of his childhood within 1 Skinner Street, Salford, a now- demolished back-to-back Coronation Street terraced house with outside lav. 'I have so many great memories of growing up in Salford' he told me. 'And first being turned on to the magic of music in Salford. I didn't leave Salford until I was eighteen. So I have lots of great memories of the struggles and the joys and the heartaches of doing something that was different from anything any of your family had done. Nobody in my family had been in a band before. Ever.'

When his parents gifted him with a Dansette record player as a reward for passing his eleven-plus exam, Graham's first purchase was Gene Vincent's 'Be-Bop-a-Lula' on a big old 78rpm disc; 'I wanted that, and from that moment wanted nothing else.' Meanwhile, Allan failed that same exam but recalled amiably, 'I was working six days a week and getting £1-19s-11d, then going out at weekends and getting five quid for singing four songs'. For the two friends were by then serving their musical apprenticeship together by playing local dates on the Manchester club circuit as The Two Teens. Then they were The Ricky & Dane Young duo, and briefly, they were also The Guytones - a play on the name of their Japanese guitars. Caught up in the generational energy-wave of Rock 'n' Roll, they were performing Lonnie Donegan, Everly Brothers and early-Cliff Richard covers, so hungry to play they'd have done it for free but enjoying the as-yet-slight financial rewards too.

Competing in a pre-X-Factor talent contest, they played the Art Deco Hippodrome Theatre on Wednesday 19 November 1958, in competition with Liverpool's Johnny & The Moondogs. 'Johnny' Lennon later went on to greater things! Allan and Graham became half of The Fourtones, then through a torturous process, pacting eventually with Eric Haydock (born Eric John Haddock, 3 February 1943 in Stockport) and drummer Donald Rathbone (born October 1942 in Wilmslow) as The Deltas, until - with Fender guitarist Vic Steele (born 8 May 1945), they finally evolved into The Hollies. It was for a December 1962 gig at the 2Js that The Deltas rebranded themselves with a name not entirely unconnected with their taste for the songs of another formative influence - 'Buddy Holly didn't swivel his hips or grease his hair, he wore glasses, he was one of us.' (Allan)

Thereby hangs a tale. Along with Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers were vocal models for the burgeoning Hollies sound. A vital influence, there's an argument that Everly harmonies also template those of Simon & Garfunkel, Status Quo and many others. And before The Hollies even got together, Graham and Allan managed to see the brothers when they played the Manchester Free Trade Hall on Wednesday 13 February 1957, as part of a UK tour. They even waited outside their Hotel at 2:30 am to catch a glimpse of the duo. 'We idolised them', Allan tells me. 'We tried to work out where they'd be staying. We decided it must be the Grand, which was the poshest place to stay (Graham recalls it was the Midland Hotel). So we went there and hung around on the pavement outside. Eventually, they came out and chatted to us. They must have stopped talking with us for about twenty-five minutes.' Graham takes up the tale: 'they came out of a Night Club, slightly inebriated, and instead of patting us on the head and signing an autograph, they talked to me and Allan for twenty-eight minutes. it changed my life.' Sure it did, six years later Don & Phil came calling, and the two Manchester graduates wound up writing eight of the twelve tracks for the Evs' May 1966 album Two Yanks in London. Phil Everly was also the first artist to record Albert Hammond's 'The Air That I Breathe', which The Hollies lifted for their own number 2 hit in 1974.

Manchester has an important niche in pop history. There was a healthy club scene, with the Twisted Wheel, the 2Js (later the Oasis) and the Bodega. In that first wave of Beat Groups, as well as The Hollies, there was Freddie & The Dreamers (with former-Fourtone Derek Quinn) and Herman's Hermits. Later there were the Factory years of Joy Division and New Order, plus The Smiths, then The Stone Roses and the Madchester exploits of Happy Mondays, before the all-conquering 1990s Britpop of Oasis.

The Hollies started out as very much part of the Beat Boom's first wave when even the idea of the Beat-Group as a self-contained writing-singing-playing musical unit was still a novelty. There had been The Crickets, The Shadows, Johnny Kidd & The Pirates, but it was the advent of The Beatles that normalised the idea that a group could be a magical auditory Lego as unique as a retinal- print, each member an integral component playing interactionally to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. But before they broke into chart-dom, they were sitting up there in Manchester reading the Music Press - just as I was, and imagining themselves on its pages. 'That's what you did. You imagined yourself on those pages, ' Graham told me. 'Yeah, every time you'd get Disc or New Musical Express, you could picture that's what you could do. And you dreamed, and you'd pull yourself towards that dream, and it happened with me. I was fortunate to have it all come true.'

The face of music was about to undergo a seismic lurch, and there was an urgent need to be a part of that newness. 1962 closed with business as usual - Elvis Presley enjoyed a run at number 1 with 'Return to Sender', but way down beneath him, the world was shifting, as The Beatles made their very modest chart debut with 'Love Me Do' up to a high of number 17 (27 December). Into the New Year, there was 'Please Please Me', and nothing would ever be the same again. For British teens, 1963 was when everything changed. Throughout that year, the Beat Boom was strictly a local UK phenomenon. This was a special time. It would never come again. For US teens, that firebreak in history didn't happen until The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show with 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' in 1964.

But first, the relentlessly London-based music industry was shocked out of its complacency, sending talent-scouts and A&R men scuttling up to the sudden Pop gold-mines of the dark industrial north-west of England in search of the next Fab Four. Things were starting to fall into place. Tommy Sanderson worked at music publishers Francis Day & Hunter; he had his ear to the ground. He was given a nudge by a Manchester radio producer. As a result, as early as January 1963, he and Parlophone's staff producer Ron Richards - George Martin's primary assistant - headhunted The Hollies when they played a lunchtime stint at The Cavern Club. 'Every time we played there, it seemed we would have something stolen', laughs Bobby Elliott. 'One time, we had a Vox amp stolen. Given the fact that there was only one exit to the club, it amazes me how they even got the stuff out!'

Ron Richards was so impressed with what he saw that he invited The Hollies to audition in London. Guitarist Vic Steele didn't want to risk turning professional, so group manager Allan Cheetham invited Tony Hicks (born 16 December 1943, in Nelson) to audition instead. Tony had started out playing with the local group Les Skiflettes, who graduate into Ricky Shaw & The Dolphins when Tony was still just fourteen. They had 'three Truvoice amps and wore pale blue jackets and black trousers, white shirts and red ties. Cliff Richard & The Shadows were obviously an influence, as was Eddie Cochran' (according to Bobby Elliott's autobiography). By the time Bobby joined on drums (30 September 1961), with Bernie Calvert on bass, they were simply called...