IT WAS billed as Oxford’s biggest barbecue and beat night.
Hundreds of youngsters flocked to the Magdalen College School sports ground in East Oxford to enjoy an evening of loud music in September 1964.
The event was organised by the Seven Club, a newly-formed North Oxford youth club, to support a £30,000 appeal for a new meeting place for the city’s pensioners.
The Oxford Mail reported: “Irresistible beat echoed across the silent meadows and teenagers jostled, twisted and shook in a huge marquee to the sound of five Oxford pop groups.
“The organisers of surely the biggest barbecue ever held in the city were the 60 or so young men and women aged 17 to 19 who in the three years since the Seven Club was formed, have already raised money for pensioners, deprived children and Oxfam.”
The teenagers had succeeded in enlisting support from 10 firms and organisations in the city, and five of the city’s leading pop groups had agreed to give their services free.
They were the Falling Leaves, the Blue J’s, Strangers, Jokers and Night Wreckers.
Members of the Oxford Pensioners’ Club were delighted with the support.
Membership secretary Miss M W Ray said: “I think these youngsters are absolutely marvellous.”
Chairman Fred Ingram commented: “Some of us are prone to criticise the youngsters, especially Mods and Rockers, so it is nice to see the other side of them for a change.”
The organisers were also thrilled with the response.
Linda Merry, a 18-year-old former Milham Ford School girl, who started the Seven Club with a few friends as a girls-only club, said: “We have been looking forward to this for months. It has been really marvellous.”
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