#john rostill

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Check out those early ON-J dance moves! Sign her up for elaborate dance routines in a musical straight away!

Two songs that link Elvis Presley with Olivia Newton-John and The Shadows. Let Me Be There originally recorded by Olivia in 1973 and If You Love Me, Let Me Know from 1974.

Both songs, particularly Let Me Be There, started to appear in the Elvis live shows thereafter and can be heard on several of his albums. I don't think he made any studio recordings of them but clearly he liked them. I don't know whose versions I prefer. Usually I'll always go with an Elvis version of a song but Olivia's originals are hard to beat.

Olivia had been engaged to The Shadows founder member and rhythm guitarist Bruce Welch and he co-produced her studio version of Let Me Be There along with other ON-J collaborator John Farrar (who I think is also playing guitar in the "If You Love Me..." video, it certainly looks like him). The main Shadows connection however is that both songs were written by Bruce's former band-mate John Rostill.

John was the third bassist for The Shadows and was with the band from 1963 to their temporary split in 1968. He died in 1973 and didn't live to see these songs achieve great success in the USA or being performed by Elvis.

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The Shadows The Sound of the Shadows 1965 Columbia Graphophone ——————————————————————— Tracks: 01. Brazil 02. The Lost City 03. A Little Bitty Tear 04. Blue Sky, Blue Sea, Blue Me 05. Bossa Roo 06. Five Hundred Miles 07. Cotton Pickin’ 08. Deep Purple 09. Santa Ana 10. The Windjammer 11. Dean`s Theme 12. Breakthru‘ 13. Let It Be Me 14. National Provincial Samba ———————————————————————

Brian Bennett

Hank Marvin

John Rostill 

Bruce Welch

* Long Live Rock Archive

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"Here we are then. They're not my cup of tea but I hope you like them - The Shadows!" - unknown announcer welcoming the band to the stage (as recounted by Brian Bennett).

The Shadows (L-R John Rostill, Hank Marvin, Brian Bennett and Bruce Welch) pictured in 1967, colour coded with their Burns Guitars. Not really colour coded though as I think the scratch plates on these guitars were a dark brown.

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Wonderful Land by The Shadows. One of their record 5 UK instrumental Number 1's. Written by Jerry Lordan and originally released by The Shadows in 1962, staying at No. 1 for 8 weeks. After Apache, which was also written by Lordan, this was probably The Shadows best known hit (although I think they should also have tried to get a catchy one word title for this).

This performance was broadcast 31 January 1970 and sees The Shadows using their 'other guitars'. Hank Marvin is most closely associated with his red and white Fender Stratocaster but here he and bassist John Rostill are seen with their black and white Baldwin-Burns Guitars. If you watch John, on the left, at the start of the clip it looks as if he wasn't expecting the backing track to start when it did. As far as I can tell Hank is playing live but its hard to tell at times as he can just play note perfect every time.

Rhythm guitarist Bruce Welch is missing as he had temporarily left the group. Other long time member Brian Bennett is on drums.

Completing the line-up is Alan Hawkshaw seated at the piano. Many won't realise he was in The Shadows for a while but may be familiar with his name and the music he composed for UK television shows such as the music from Countdown, the theme to Dave Allen's comedy shows and the library music that was used as the themes to both Grange Hill and Give Us A Clue.

John Rostill died in 1973 and Alan Hawkshaw in 2021.