Mid to late sixties promoter/entrepreneur. Manager of Woody Kern.

John’s partner Carole Ballard helped me with some of his background.

John Carlin was born in Nottingham in 1942 and died in 2002.

“Yes John was from Nottingham. His son still lives there and runs Kushi-ya, in Nottingham High Pavement. His mother, was the first female Manageress, in Boots Restaurants – way before our time. Her name was Eileen Carlin. Now, there’s a lot to this family as there is also a story about his grandfather who played for Nottingham in Cricket. I have a grandmother clock which was given to his Grandfather in appreciation with the plaque. It’s lingering in a rather damp place sadly, so I really must sort that out. He was Bag Man to some guy in the War, he joined up early, to be his bagman and from there he met Laurence of Arabia? I forget his real name. Later on, this Uncle either bought or sold Lawrence a motorbike which I believe may be still around and somewhere we have the receipt. This was the first Brough Superior made”.

In 1965 he started, along with David Atkinson and Andre Camilleri, a music production company called “ACC Promotions” that featured Britain’s premier disco music at the time, Soul! John and his pals were mods and his production company worked at places like The Dungeon in Nottingham which was the mod club of the day.

John wasn’t a DJ however.
“John ran Discos at the Dungeon. When I mean he ran them, he wasn’t the DJ, he employed DJ’s to play, he organised the discos, took the money, sorted the bouncers, etc etc. It was a company of a number of DJs under his management. John was very good at managing. He also started Silver Computing which I believe, is still running today”.

I can put in a description of The Dungeon here.

John would dance to songs like James & Bobby Purify – Let Love Come Between Us. “the boys who taught me to dance on stage at the Brit in Nottingham” John Carlin. The Brit was one of the three “Boat” clubs by the banks of the river Trent. While the Brit did have groups like The Who and Pink Floyd play there they were predominantly a soul club etc.

“He wasn’t in a band himself, he ran discos for a while and one of the first to do all night discos in Derby, Nottingham and Skegness. He was also one of the team who was the inspiration for Quadrophenia, but that’s another story”.

(I can explain the Quadrophenia story here)

Andre commented.
“Dave Farmer(on the left), a great mod from Nottingham and myself seen here posing outside one of the first ever Levi retail shops in England, it was situated on the corner of Lumley Rd, near the Clock Tower In Skegness. This photo was taken in 1966 and it looks as if we’d just been in the shop and bought some new gear, if you notice everything we’re wearing is the latest Levi gear. Happy carefree days!”

Andre Camilleri
“The Levi shop behind was I believe one of the first to be opened in the UK and only stocked their goods. After Brighton, Skegness was one of the biggest Mod destinations in the UK so they were very busy. Me and mate (John Carlin he was 19 and I was 18) ran the disco at the Seaview Hotel on Bank Holidays we would have up to a thousand Mods through the door over the weekend and scooters used to be parked from the Beechcomber Bar up to our at club so to say that we had fun would be an understatement. I truly believe that our generation has had the best of times”.

Andre Camilleri commented in 2017.
“People talk up how great Northern Soul was but we were playing Soul, Stax and Mowtown at least three years before Wigan Casino.
John Carlin and I ran various successful discos (sixties term) and allnighters all over the east of England in the mid 60s one of the main ones being the Skegness Sea View Hotel which was one of the main Mod events each bank holiday from 1965 to 1968.
We only played the latest American Soul and Mowtown at our venues many of the records being imported in straight from the States and interestingly enough we even supplied Pete Stringfellow at the Mojo in Sheffield.
We were also in the forefront of equipment commissioning and designing one of the first sets of twin record decks in the UK, made for us by Carlsbro Sound in Mansfield”.

Description of Carlsbro here maybe.

Woody Kern (I can put in a paragraph to give a little history here) (1968-1970)

“He was friends with Mick Wheat and the lads and he became their (Woody Kern) manager and roadie early on, before the album. He used his van, which he bought specially to transport them to gigs”.

In 2010 John commented
“For over two years, in the late 1960’s, I had the honour of spending most of my waking hours with the four guys, who were Woody Kern. All four are fine musicians, not just my words, but those of John Peel. Steve Harris, one half of the boiler room, died in January 2008. In my last communication to him I said, “Woody Kern was a great outfit”, his reply was, “Yes we did not realise just how good we were”.

“the singer was thought to be called Woody, which of course he wasn’t. They had organised a photo shoot, in a field, which was covered in hops. They were going to have her lay down or something like that… They had this Lucy woman who was supposed to turn up, in a scantily clad dress and do this arty farty landscape picture (hence he wouldn’t wear the dress) but something went wrong, I think she refused to do it or something, and then they couldn’t get the van out of the field. I’m not sure but I don’t think they were supposed to be there? No permission? Anyway, Steve just put his face in front of the camera, and they shot it, and used that”.

When Steve Harris died in 2008, John commented.
“Woody wouldn’t wear the dress, Steve couldn’t take his eyes off Lucy’s tits and we got locked in the hop field. Happy days. Bye Steve”.