Amber Mansions, Celestial Room Andy n Silver Strings

The image is of Amber Mansions, at the entrance of Orchard Road (left), where guitar groups played in the mid 1960s during Tea Dances at The Celestial Room on the floor above. Art galleries, quaint decor outlets, coffee houses and restaurants are terraced on the floors below. It was a place where the young nineteen sixties crowd would want to be seen at.

The Silver Strings was the guest band for many months at the Celestial and we had a taste of what tea dances were like when we performed there. It was a baptism of fire because it was the first time when the band had a regular weekend stint. We started off as a band that took over the resident one in between sets of 45 minute sessions. Sometimes there were as many as five sets per night.

Silver Strings in later years had Mike And Herb

 to sing their own original songs: 

'Don't Want You Around Anymore'

YouTube video from Audie Ng

The band's repertoire consisted of song hits like Apache, Kontiki and slow dance music like, Wonderful Land and I would take over with, When The Girl in Your Arms but heat up the Room with I Saw Her Standing There. The music would always be a mix of Cliff, Shadows, Beatles and Elvis, if we can manage. About twelve songs or more.

I first introduced a song that was popular in the living room at home. It became a hit when the TV  series Fireball XL5, a sci-fi marionette-based show, became popular with Singaporeans. The title song became our calling card for some time and fans were asking for "Fireball" when we came on stage.

The lead guitar was DAVE CHAN and not Dickie Tan (above).

I was unable to acquire past photographs. This image is from a 2009 magazine.

The music was fast, the dancing was fast and so was the business. The brisk and efficient club ran for a while raking in some for the boss. He just knew what to do with his band of boys and with this novelty T dance craze.

The person in charge of Celestial Room was Mr Quek Sin Bock, a rather robust business man, frank and full of good cheer. He loved the band and I remember we turned resident and acquired more and more gigs from other nightspots. We were known as "Andy and The Silver Strings" and performed at the venue in the mid 60s, way before other bands did.

The building has since been replaced by Dhoby Ghaut MRT. 

Images: From The National Heritage Board Archives and Personal Collection.

"We're gonna rock, rock, till broad daylight, We're gonna rock around the clock, tonight."