TERRY POULSON

Terry Poulson was born in Bury St Edmunds on 21 March 1944.

Band timeline:

The Kingfishers Skiffle Group c57

The Vapour Trails

The Unit Four

"I was born on the 21st March, 1944 in Bury St.Edmunds, Suffolk. When I was thirteen, I persuaded my dad to let me stop piano lessons (forced on me by Mum) and take up the guitar instead.  I stuck with it, and having bought Bert Weedon's "Play In A Day Book" , which I think every budding guitarist started with, I did start to be able to play.

I soon joined a Skiffle group, comprised of lads from The Youth Club. We had 2 guitarists, a washboard player, a tea chest base (A tea chest with a broom handle and string), a drummer and a vocalist. Those humble beginnings were the start of me playing the guitar, on and off, for 56years.

I somehow managed to pass my "Eleven Plus" and was offered a place at Culford Public School, just outside Bury St Edmunds. It was a brilliant school, but to be honest I really didn't enjoy it. I was from a working class home and the vast majority of pupils were from wealthy backgrounds, and even from  abroad.  I vividly remember on speech day, all the Jaguars, Rolls Royce's, Mercedes, etc. bringing the parents to school, while my dad and I cycled home together. To be honest, it didn't bother me at all, I think I was much closer to my dad than many of these rich kids who were shoved out to boarding school.

 However,almost without realising it, I left school with a good education and 5 GCE passes. We then moved to Felixstowe in Suffolk, where my parents had always wanted to live, and where we used to go on holiday from Bury. At first, I hated it, I knew no one at all, having left all my friends behind, and I think that was one of the most unhappy times of my life.

 So, I used to mooch around the house all the time, until my dad came home one day and told me that he had arranged for me to attend an interview at a shipping office at Felixstowe Dock. At this time,1961, Felixstowe Dock was tiny, just a dock basin that had a few cargo ships calling there each week, mainly Carlsberg Lager, Timber, Strawboard, and a few general goods from Holland. 

It seemed like a dead end job, but I was too lazy to go to night school, which I would have had to have done, to achieve my desire to become a research chemist at Fisons Factory in Felixstowe. After a while though, I actually started to quite enjoy the work, I felt that I was good at it, and I was not to know then just where this small beginning would lead. As most people now know, Felixstowe port started to expand, and gradually, more and more companies started to open offices there. As there were only a handful of people with shipping knowledge at the port, me being one, I was regularly offered new jobs and always for more money. 

One of the other great benefits of this job was that I gradually started to get to know people and make a few friends.One Day my life changed dramatically for the better, when I was offered the chance to join a band called  "The Vapour Trails" as their rhythm guitarist. We played sixties music  and eventually I became the lead guitarist. I equipped myself with a Red Fender Stratocaster, a Vox AC30 Amplifier and a Watkins Copicat Echo Chamber. I was all set to be the next "Hank Marvin" and I used to play probably a dozen Instrumental Songs at each of our gigs, and I loved it. If I say so myself, I became a pretty good guitarist and I was eventually head-hunted by another band called "The Unit 4" from Ipswich. They were a great band, and by now we had moved on from Hank Marvin to The Beatles and the mersey sound. We eventually went on to play in Germany at "The Top Ten Club" in Hamburg, shortly after the Beatles had been there, and although I was a mere boy when I went there, I came back a man. The "Reeperbahn" was like soho in London, only much worse, so you couldn't be there for 5 weeks, as we were, and not gain an education." Courtesy of Terrypoulson.com 2017