And the beat goes on

KENNY Potts is a Spennymoor legend, they reckon, and though he was a very popular bus driver, it's not for that reason alone. In the 1960s - the singing, swinging, still-ringing Sixties - he was lead guitarist with a group called the Downbeats.

Now he's 64, losing his hair, though (like Sir Paul McCartney) it may be the least of his worries. Ten years ago he had his first heart attack and has had his scares since.

Once a month, however, Kenny's back on stage and once again striking a chord, a tonic with no need of a prescription.

"It's been an absolute life saver, to be honest,"

he says. "I'd forgotten how much fun it could be."

Vintage Sixties Live regroups at Tudhoe Victory Club, near Spennymoor - part grey party, part Retrocentre, part six-string soiree. A Thursday night, and the place is lifting: three hours of senior moments.

Some wear comfortable cardigans, the daring have shirts outside their Marks and Sparks trousers. One chap's wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "Sex, drugs and sausage rolls".

It's so faithful and so fabulous, so redolent of the days of Stones and of stoned, that you half expect a bloke in a mucky white jacket to come shuffling in, selling shellfish from a basket, half-a-crown a catch.

For the generation whose lives turned at 45rpm, the second Thursday at the Victory Club may be the best thing since Phyllosan - or Viagra, and delete as may be inapplicable.

A similar Sixties club has now opened in Newcastle: it's called Ready, Steady, Gone.

THE sessions were started nearly two years ago by Alan Prudhoe and Alan Leightell - Big Al and Little Al - who both played in groups in the 1960s. Big Al was even offered a job backing well known singer Jess Conrad - £20 a week and as many women as he could handle.

"They're still falling at my feet," says Big Al, also 64, "but that's because they can no longer stand up unaided."

Little Al, 60, recalls that every village had its own group; bigger places like Spennymoor might have had six. "We're just amazed that there are so many people alive who want to play it again," he says.

Their website, recalling North-East groups from Coasters to Concordes, Vikings to Vipers, has had more than 50,000 hits. Twice as many have watched clips of the grey gigs on YouTube; letters arrive from around the world.

"We even had an email from a band in Brazil offering to play," recalls Little Al.

"We told they'd be welcome, but they'd be paid the same as everyone else, nowt."

They'd been to a Shadows nostalgia night in Northumberland, noted how everyone wanted to play hot air guitar like Hank, wondered if others might still carry a tune as well as they carried their years.

"We were amazed," says Big Al. "It's gone far better than ever we could have expected. There are people who hadn't picked up a guitar for 35 years and it's like it was yesterday.

"Folk just come in off the street wanting to play, say they're the Rolling Stones, and do we have a spare bass guitarist.

It began as something once a month and now it's almost a full-time job."

They're nights of reminiscence, too, of nostalgia meets neuralgia, of groups and of groupies. Someone remembers a young lady nicknamed Railtrack, so called because she was laid all over the country.

They recall how Big Jim Tate once get snowed in at Tow Law WMC, was told he could sleep behind the stage but found it cold comfort when the committee switched the heating off.

They recall, too, the Sixties days when it was possible to play seven nights a week, and Sunday lunchtime, without ever leaving Sunderland. Sometimes they could earn as much as £10 a night.

"We used to do Redhouse Club every Sunday dinner time, us and the strippers,"

says Big Al.

"We never got applauded, of course, not in Sunderland, but at least the lads put their papers down when we were on.

When the strippers came on, they started reading the News of the World again."

Little Al himself was a Shadows-style guitarist with a group called the Astronauts.

"We call them groups as a matter of principle," he says. "In our days, bands were what you had at Durham Big Meeting."

Phil Steele was Bruce Welch to his Hank Marvin. "I was all right," says Phil, "but when Alan Leithell played Hank Marvin you couldn't tell the difference.

Close your eyes, and you still can't."

Over-60s they may be, pale Shadows they're not.

THE idea established, they set out to find Kenny Potts who hadn't (as they say) been over clever. "There were people flagging down buses in Spennymoor, asking if the driver had seen Kenny," says Little Al.

The Downbeats were among the region's top groups, not least because of 14-year-old Alan White, a drummer whose only previous gainful employment had been delivering The Northern Echo around the doors in Ferryhill.

"They'd be queuing outside the clubs at five o'clock, just to hear Alan play the drums," says Alan Prudhoe. "If he'd not been playing the drums, he'd have been far too young to get in."

The group had a 2,500-member fan club in the UK, twice as many in America, physically resembled the Beatles, made three records after becoming the Blue Chips, once won a talent contest in which the prize was a management contract with Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager.

Already with the Animals' manager, they had to turn it down.

Alan White played subsequently with Eric Clapton, George Harrison and on John Lesson's LP Imagine. He's had 30 years with the band Yes, is said to be a multi-millionaire and is married to Tyrone Power's granddaughter Kenny Potts went back to being a hospital porter and, eventually, to driving buses. "Driving a bus is all I ever wanted to do," he says.

"I'm just happy to be back on stage again. I was a bit apprehensive, but the lads told me I'd be okay, and people seem to be enjoying themselves.

"I never thought I was anything special, but people still come up to me in the street, shake my hand, tell me how much they remember the Downbeats. I know it's my generation, but I really believe that the music of the Sixties has never had an equal."

THE night begins with a letter from the Victory Club, for whom it's a big winner, congratulating them on being so big a hit.

Someone does Elvis, Wonder of You, then there's a brilliant, post-umbral Foot Tapper, by the Shadows and Needles and Pins, a hit for the Searchers.

The audience, by and large, is the generation for whom BP was petrol - now it's a biannual test at the GP's - and LSD was pounds, shillings and pence. Most of them, anyway.

In the Sixties they got needles and pins from sitting cross-legged on the rug, trying to impress the girlfriend. Now it's the first sign of a coronary.

Someone even essays a guitar version, riff with the smooth, of When I'm 64. For some the musical milestone is imminent, for others a memory. One or two in the Victory weren't even born in the Sixties, nor possibly their parents, either.

"I think the appeal is that this music is so liberating," says Big Al. "It was the first era when people realised they could make music of their own, that's why there were so many groups."

All around the tables there are little personal name-that-tune contests, too, though they rarely last two bars. It's a bit like those reaction tests, thump the green button, in long-gone amusement arcades.

Eagerly applauded, the groups play She's Not There, These Boots are Made for Walking, Yesterday Man. Yesterday's doubtless the case, but on the r e s o u n d i n g second Thursday, they're top of the pops once again.

■ More information on www.vintage sixties live.co.uk