6) The music doesn't stop for me....Teenage Fentons

So now it’s back to the grind of preparing to resit for my LCE for the second year but this didn’t deter me from playing music although my family didn’t approve. I was quite a rebel at that time I guess. One day, Michael and I met up with another group of guys. One of them was Kenny Ham, the brother of Thomas and Vincent Joseph, his cousin. Kenny, like his brother Thomas, played the rhythm guitar and Vincent played drums. Together we formed another band called the Teenage Fentons. A friend named Peter Lean aka Peter Mow Put agreed to manage the band and would provide the necessary instruments for us. This got us excited all over again. We started practicing as a new band playing mainly songs 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. In the sixties, it was common that a band performed live before the start of Musical Movie and we were offered to play at the Shaw Brothers Cinemas. We had our fair share of fun and fame although we were only paid $40 for a night’s gig. During this time too, there was an explosion of singers who really made names for themselves by impersonating and singing songs by Cliff Richard, Elvis, Matt Monroe and Ricky Nelson. In my hometown of Ipoh, some of the famous personalites were : Ho Kok Onn as the Cliff Richard of Ipoh and Les Lee as the Elvis Presley of Ipoh, Johhny Lee was the Matt Monroe of Ipoh and Richard Ng as Ricky Nelson of Ipoh. Our band was always the back-up band for all of them when they performed at the movie theatres like Lido and Rex Theatre. It was still early in the year and exams were still quite sometime away, so we were happy playing music without a care in the world.

Ho Kok Onn left Ipoh in the late sixties to start a business in Kuala Lumpur. Recently I heard he has a tyre shop somewhere in Petaling Jaya., Selangor. Les Lee and Johnny Lee (not related) have both passed on. God bless their souls. Richard Ng had an unfortunate accident and lost a leg. He can be seen in front of the Station Road Public Bank selling lottery tickets.