Teenage Fentons - A Falcons Offshoot (Part IV)

The Falcons were happily playing for gigs around Ipoh and were proud and thankful they were the only band with a manager and had instruments provided for. Everything was hunky-dory until the day Robert called the group for a meeting. Things were to change drastically as he told us that his father wanted him to stop as our manager to concentrate on his family business. It came as a shock to us.

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Together we formed another band called the Teenage Fentons (image). A friend agreed to manage the band and would provide the necessary instruments for us. We started practicing as a new band playing songs mainly by the Shadows as we just had a new Fender Stratocaster. It wasn’t long before we were offered gigs to perform at dances and as guest artistes at talentimes.

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In the 60s, it was common that a band performed live before the start of a screen musical and we were offered to play at the Shaw Brothers chain of cinemas. The Shaw Brothers are two movie magnates with cinema halls in Malaya, Singapore and parts of South East Asia. We had our fair share of fun and fame although we were only paid $40 for a night’s gig. After a few changes with our band members we decided to call ourselves The Drifters.

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Image/original article (edited): Joseph Chin Collection, Ipoh, Malaysia.