It’s Radio Caroline’s 50th anniversary!! Radio Caroline was launched and set sail on its incredible journey as an illegal “Pirate Radio Station” at midday on Easter Sunday 28th March 1964 and helped mould and shape not only UK radio, but also the pop and rock music industry. In the multi-channel world of 2014, it is hard to conceive a world where UK citizens did not have access to pop music, but that was the reality in early 1964!!

Up until Easter Sunday in 1964, the youth in the UK could only access pop music by night courtesy of Radio Luxembourg, with its fading signal that came and went. Once the youth of the day had access to the pop music that had been withheld from them, the effect was seismic, putting Radio Caroline in the vanguard of the 1960′s social and cultural revolution.

The first track played on Radio Caroline was the Rolling Stones “Not Fade Away”, and unlike Radio Luxembourg’s erratic signal, Radio Caroline has never faded in or out or indeed away!!

Radio Caroline played a crucial and fundamental role in the revolution of the British music industry and made many of the great pop and rock names: The Who, The Hollies, Spencer Davis Group, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton would never have had the exposure they needed to survive and lay the foundation for the music of today.

However the life of the “pirate radio station” came to an abrupt halt in August 1967. As the idealised freedom of spirit of the hippie “Summer of Love” gave way to the shortening days of autumn, so the epitome of this free spirit, the pirate radio stations went off air and metaphorically sank ( to be replaced by BBC Radio 1 )!!. The 14th August 1967 brought an end to offshore radio with The Marine Offences Act, with one notable exception…..Radio Caroline. The station which started it all carried on as a lone flagship against the odds.

After a break in transmission at the end of the 1960s Radio Caroline returned in the 1970′s and has survived to this day. So let’s celebrate the 50th anniversary of Radio Caroline with this Record Press Top 5 Best Radio Caroline Songs –

Top 5 Best Radio Caroline Songs

1) Chris De Burgh – Ship To Shore

2) Status Quo – Caroline

3) Elvis Costello – Radio Radio

4) Neil Diamond – Sweet Caroline

5) Walker Brothers – My Ship is Coming in

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