Rock History & Me #3: An Affair With Caroline

The four of us sat at a small table in the college refectory, Cheltenham Charlie putting together another of his daft looking skinny roll-ups.

“Can you actually taste anything in that matchstick?”, says John Mayes, aka Daisy.

“Man yeah. My saviour”

Daisy and Sylvo shake their heads and grin, Cheltenham Charlie drags on the tiny fag, oblivious.

“They’ve put “Wardrobe” out as a single”, he drawled.

“What? Really?”

This didn’t seem right. Prog rock bands – proper prog rock bands – didn’t put singles out, it was unwritten law. Maybe Cheltenham Charlie had got it wrong.

“Where’d you hear that shit?”, I asked.

“Radio Caroline”.

Until that lecture break at college, I had no idea that Radio Caroline was still broadcasting – and indeed, it wasn’t “still” on air, it was back on air after a break. Its 1960s pirate station history was already the stuff of rock legends, and the thought that I could escape the playlists of the BBC and Radio Luxembourg and find something different was instantly exciting.

“Caroline? Really? What wavelength is it on?”

Cheltenham Charlie sang what was obviously a jingle by way of reply….”319, Caroline….”

And so began, probably that very night, a long standing love affair between me and the best radio station EVER. Here I was, taught by prog rock that there was a whole world of music to be found outside of the pop charts, appetite whetted and eager for something somewhere to provide access to new stuff. And now there was Caroline.

Love at first hearing. Radio Caroline was now broadcasting from the Dutch ship Mi Amigo, anchored just outside British waters off the coast of Margate. Instead of the bouncy prattle of Radio 1, here was a station with no playlist, ultimate freedom of what to play, giving me an endless supply of new music. This was the self-styled “album station”, playing album tracks, not singles, the DJ only speaking after every third track or so, and usually simply to tell you what you’d just listened to. 

Plenty of Caroline’s illustrious history is easy to find on the internet so I won’t bore you with it here, but it is well worth a read. I wonder just how many rock fans like me had their tastes – and probably their lives – influenced by that radio station and its small army of committed contributors.

What a revelation it was: new band after new band, decent music every night. And the thought that it was still an illegal unregistered station made everything just that bit more exciting. The large music collection which I have to this day is full of stuff I first heard on Caroline back then, just so many new bands and artists. I absolutely loved that radio station.

How much did I love it? Well, I carried on listening for many years, interrupted sometimes by “off air weeks” when the Mi Amigo hit difficulty or the authorities caught up with the owners. Years later, and well into married life, I remained an avid listener, still seeking new bands in those pre-internet days when there were limited ways to make such discoveries.

Final word…it’s not a coincidence that my daughter’s middle name is Caroline.

Phil