IT’S an intriguing question to which I have never found the answer – how old does something have to be before it is classed as historical?

The tentative answer I dreamed up long ago is this: if somebody doing something, or perhaps a series of events, happened long enough ago to be forgotten about, then I think they qualify as a piece of history.

We think we know what constitutes ancient history, namely the period from the beginning of recorded history to the Middle Ages, and we should all accept the definition of modern history as encompassing the period after the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment.

But what do we mean by recent history? I would suggest the 20th century would fit that definition, and I certainly class the 1960s as “historical” in the sense that the decade which contained John F Kennedy, the Beatles, and the Moon landing is one that made history. There was also a certain football tournament in 1966 which England still has to see as unequalled history …

It stands to reason that anyone under the age of 50 will have no personal memories of the 1960s, and even those who were there or have read up on the subject will not really know about a true Scottish marvel. In a complete departure for this column, today and next week I am going to tell the extraordinary true story of an almost completely forgotten phenomenon, namely the musical group The Beatstalkers, with this first part centring on the day they literally caused a riot in the streets of Glasgow.

Indeed, it could be argued that they were the cause of the second Battle of George Square. Don’t bother Googling it because it was never officially given that name back in 1965, unlike the first Battle of George Square in 1919.

To tell the story of the Beatstalkers’s most memorable gig, I have enlisted the help of one of the band’s founders, Alan Mair, who is still going strong and making music – his new single, released at the age of 74, is called Eyes to the Sky and is well worth a listen. He has loaned me his personal reminiscences of days in 1965 and I am very grateful to him.

Mair played bass guitar and sang, and it was he and guitar and keyboard player Eddie Campbell who formed the band in 1962. Really, they were just a bunch of school friends who were into the music and fashion of the day, but they were both younger and different from other Glasgow groups and began to stand out from the crowd.

By 1965, under the management of Joe Gaffney, their membership was singer Mair, Campbell, singer Davie Lennox, guitarist Ronnie Smith, and drummer Tudge Williamson, soon to be replaced by Jeff Allen who would go on to have a long career as a backing drummer for the likes of Bonnie Tyler and Van Morrison.

The National:

Like The Beatles, the individual members of the band had distinct personalities, but they performed together impressively and their fans had their own dances which The Beatstalkers encouraged.

The Beatstalkers were soon one of Glasgow’s leading groups at a time when the Scottish beat scene was thriving and the city’s various dance halls, such as the Barrowland and the Dennistoun Palais, were full of young people loving the music and dance of the day. Several bands were making a good living on the Glasgow scene without making it into the charts, and the likes of Dean Ford and the Gaylords – they would become Marmalade – The Poets, Pathfinders and the Blues Council were all popular.

It was a visit to London which changed everything for The Beatstalkers.

Mair takes up the story: “It was 1965 and The Who had just released Can’t Explain. We went to London to survey the music scene, not to do anything, really – just to be in London.

“The styles in London were unbelievable compared to Scotland. The girls were stunning – it was all miniskirts and hipsters. It was an unbelievable experience to go down King’s Road and Carnaby Street.

“The first gig we went to was The Who at the Marquee. Our jaws dropped – it was just a wow moment. The crowd was going nuts. Pete Townsend’s guitar sound blew me away, and Keith Moon’s drumming was something else.

“It was so electric. We’d never anticipated this mental chaos. The wildness of it – there was a different attitude coming from the stage. The Stones and the Beatles were established, but they were quite mild, in as far as being physically dynamic on stage.

“We were taken by the mod sound, and Townsend’s thing with smashing guitars – he’d started doing it that early. It was awesome.

‘WE felt like we had arrived. We became mods. Most bands in Scotland were still wearing suits, quite straight looking, while we started to form our own identity. That trip was so beneficial.

“As we headed back to Scotland, we were aware the whole pop-art thing was all over London, and we felt influenced by that.”

The band changed their whole approach to performing, and the results were sensational. In a matter of weeks, the word got around Glasgow that here was a genuine home-grown phenomenon of popular music. Scotland had its own Beatles, someone wrote, and locally they took off. There were no records released at that time, just a growing reputation spread by word of mouth.

By coincidence, concerts had started to take place in George Square. Chris McClure did one and Dean Ford and the Gaylords did another.

Mair recalled: “They were very sedate affairs, people just watched, and I think there were even tables and chairs with afternoon tea served. We were due to play one on a Friday, and everywhere we played, in the weeks before, we’d say, ‘By the way, we’ll be playing in George Square on June 11.’

“My mum said, ‘You should put an advert in the Sunday Post,’ but I said, ‘We know a lot of people are going to come – I know George Square is pretty big, but there’ll be enough people to make it a great concert.

“On the day we were waiting over at our manager Joe Gaffney’s office before going over to the gig. We heard there were hundreds already turning up in the square at 10.30am.”

The Beatstalkers used to get hassle from some of the infamous Glasgow gangs of the time – they were said to be jealous of their fame and looks – but some gangsters had their uses.

Mair explained: “Divot and Vinnie, a couple of guys from the Glasgow Tongs, said, ‘There’s probably going to be a bit of chaos so we’ll come down as bodyguards.’ We were in a van quite near the square and someone told us, ‘There are a few thousand people there.’ Then someone said, ‘The whole square is full.’ It was unbelievable – and there were only two policemen there.”

The National:

IT came time for The Beatstalkers to take the stage, and the gig just exploded.

Mair said: “The stage was about 50 metres from the City Chambers and we drove the van round, but we couldn’t get out and walk to the stage, so we drove right up to it. We saw the whole square was completely full, and it was starting to spread out onto the streets.

“When we walked onto the stage there was hysteria, fans were going mental, screaming, and the police were on their radios calling for backup before we’d even played.

“We did one song, but by the time we got to the end, the whole stage was moving from all angles with people fighting to get on. We started the second number with the Tongs holding everyone back – they were having a good time, really enjoying it, because it was better than a gang fight.

“We got to the third number and it was obvious we weren’t going to get to the end of it. Suddenly all hell broke out, total chaos, fans coming from all angles, police losing their hats.”

Word had spread quickly about the events in the Square and soon there was a police helicopter hovering above George Square and the press were arriving in numbers, especially from the Express and Citizen in nearby Albion Street and the Evening Times just south of the Square.

Mair remembers what happened next: “We couldn’t get to play our instruments. The fans just lost it and the only thing they wanted to do was get a part of you, grab your hair, and rip your jacket.

“People were getting crushed as well, we had to keep moving back on the stage, so they could pull fans out. By this time there were a lot more police and the chief of police said, ‘You need to stop playing. The stage is going to collapse.’

“There were mounted police as well, trying to control the crowds. Between us and the crowd there were two mounted police coming in – I was thinking, ‘That’s really going to help, horses trampling the girls who are on the floor!’

“We had to stop playing. The police said, ‘Get to the City Chambers,’ and our drummer went on the back of one of the mounted police horses. The music stopped, and the roadies were trying to keep hold of the guitars. The police got us into the City Chambers, although we all arrived there at different times.

“But it didn’t keep the fans back – they stormed the doors and were running all around the City Chambers. The crowd had blocked the roads and now George Square was at a standstill. We were really just thinking, ‘Wow, what the hell!’ It’s beyond anything we could have thought would happen.”

As their fans ran amok in the hallowed City Chambers, the band found a handy hiding place, as Mair recalled.

“The police started clearing several hundred girls out of the City Chambers. They hid us in the Lord Provost’s office; there were plaques on the walls to Lord this and Lord that. The police said, ‘We’re going to take you out the secret exit.’ It’s an underground tunnel but it’s carpeted with lights and everything – it’s not dark and dingy. It had a colonial, old-world style to it. We came up in another part of the city centre, and the press were already there. They photographed us, all bedraggled, but you can see us thinking, ‘My God, this is brilliant!’

“We went back to our roadie Willie Gaffney’s house to pull ourselves together. We stayed until the papers were on the newsstands. Somebody came to the door going, ‘Look at this!’ They’d done the whole front page on ‘Just who are the Beatstalkers?’

“It was in the Times, the Citizen, and then next morning it was front page of two of the Scottish nationals, and the Telegraph. Later that night when my mum came home from work, she said, ‘So, how did it go?’ I said jokingly, ‘Not bad.’ She said, ‘I told you, you should have put an advert in the paper.’ I said, ‘It was this not bad …’ and showed her all the front-page headlines with us all over the whole front pages.

“From that moment on, everything we did was in the press. We were welcomed – the Scottish press were saying, ‘Finally we have our own rock stars, we don’t have to keep writing about English music.’”

Next week I will tell the story of how The Beatstalkers came so very close to superstardom, of how they played alongside The Who and the Small Faces on television and how they coped with the adulation of fans – there more riots – before their moment in the sun began to fade and they did not survive as a group.