Rock 'n' roll nostalgia heads to the Eastbourne stage

Director, producer and performer Trevor Payne said: “The show has developed right along with our audiences and we never take for granted the fact that they expect the best from us.”

A fun, fast, two-hour production takes you on a memory-jerking journey through the history of pop music, from the Skiffle bands and Juke Box Jury of the 1950s and 1960s, through to the Beatles and swinging London via the Summer of Love and the spangle-studded Glam-rock era of the 1970s.

Trevor has written a book about his time with That’ll Be The Day, filled with some extraordinary stories from 35 years on the road.

He put his time to the very best use when the pandemic forced the show off the road.

He sat down and wrote his autobiography, Last Man Standing, which came out last December.

“To pass the time I wrote a book about the whole thing, right from the beginning from when I started back in Worthing where I grew up. It is my biography. It goes all the way through from Worthing and then there is 20 years until we got to That’ll Be The Day and it’s really how that formed and how it has become what it became.

“For the first 20 years we did all sorts of stuff, going out to the Far East and the Middle East and all over Europe which was a lead-up to doing what we are doing now.

“It is all in the book.

“It is called Last Man Standing and the reason why is because I know the DJ Mike Read who wrote a book called The South Coast Beat Scene and he interviewed lots of guys from all the bands that were around Worthing and Bognor and so on.

“Somebody pointed him in my direction and I got to know him and we got together and did Cliff the musical in the West End. We only had a limited season. Mike and I and another guy wrote it and another guy directed it. I look back on it and think maybe we could have done it better!

“But Mike interviewed lots of people from these old bands on the south coast and his book is pretty thick.

“And he found out, about 20 years ago, that I was the only one left that was still working in the business full time out of all those guys in all those bands.

“So that’s why I called the book Last Man Standing. It is a story of perseverance. It is what you need in this business. So many guys just gave up but I managed to keep going. I have kept diaries since 1964 and so I had those as a starting block for the book. And I took Mike’s advice. He just said throw everything at the wall and then sort through it all into categories and so on. He said don’t just start at the beginning and think that you will remember everything.

“And it has been interesting doing it in a lot of ways. When you look back on all the things that have happened in your life, you realise that you went one way when you could have gone another, that you took this direction rather than that direction.

“Sting said that making music for a living and surviving in music is a success in itself because it is a difficult business. And that’s what I think.

“I have been in the business for more than 50 years and it is hard to survive without having to do something else but it has worked out well for me.”

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