Before there is success, there is nearly always failure.

We need to go back to the days when Howard was playing the drums for Joe Brown when they were touring around several cities in the UK performing in the Pantomime Aladdin. Howard believes it was whilst in Shrewsbury that he first met one of the characters Jack Le White who very kindly asked Howard back to his home and spend the weekend break with him and his family as Howard had nowhere to go that weekend as he was a long way from his home and family.

Howard met Jack’s eldest daughter Annette and basically, they fell in love and eventually got married

Jack Le White’s real name Jack Whitely was a well-known character actor and played the role of Grandad in the Liver Birds a very popular sitcom series on BBC 1 in the late 60s. His daughter Annette Whitely was also an actress.

Howard and Annette married in 1965, both were far too young and had to seek their parent’s approval to marry.

Their first child was born in December 1967, and it was at a period when Howard had just left working for NEMS (Brian Epstein and Robert Stigwood) and Howard without a job found it quite a challenging time.

Howard and Annette were also managing a Pop Band called Ruperts People who were also draining the Conder’s finances fortunately Miles Copeland, the brother of Stewart Copeland the drummer of the Police took over managing Ruperts People much to the relief of Howard and Annette and it was from that time on that a huge breakthrough into more prosperous times began for the Conders.

Howard’s first Aston Martin with Annette and daughter Charlotte

Howard recalls as a person who smoked during his early years, that when Charlotte was born, a friend said to Howard you really ought to stop smoking and Howard said, “it’s my life, I will do what I want to do” and his friend just looked at Charlotte as a baby of only a few weeks old and said, “Howard, what about her?” That was it, Howard stopped smoking from that very day.

Howard could see that through his selfishness, he was jeopardising the health of his new born child and he has never smoked since.

Howard, with the help of his wife Annette, decided to renovate the dilapidated basement of a very old Victorian House in Kingston upon Thames. But first Howard needed to find a way to make some money and having recently handed over the management of the pop band to Miles Copeland meant that most of the musical equipment including a brand new Ford Transit Van belonged to the Conders and there was one very special musical item that was quite rare in those days and somehow Decca Records had heard that Conder owned this specially adapted piece of kit and Decca needed it for a recording session for their newly signed band, The Moody Blues.

The Moody Blues

The conversation between Decca and Howard went something like this “Can we hire (rent) the Leslie Speaker which connects to a guitar from you for four days and would you deliver it to our studios?” Howard agreed on a price including delivery.

Although Howard had never rented any kit out prior to this, he did need some income and that was the end of the conversation but the next conversation with Decca Records was to be the beginning of a huge turnaround in Howard’s future. How come?

Well, Howard got another call from the lady at Decca Records whom he had received the initial call from the day before and she asked Howard if he also had several other musical instruments. Howard believes if he had not responded in the way he did, he would have missed one of the biggest opportunities of his life. Howard simply said to this woman “give me a list of all the kit you need for the Moody Blues and I will get back to you very soon”.

Before Howard shares the amazing things that were to change his life, he first wants to explain some of the backgrounds as to what the situation was and what they were facing.

Howard had started to become interested in learning about God for the first time in his life and he could see that seeking success at any price was the way forward as he recalled hearing certain scriptures read out in assembly time at school like “The Meek Will Inherit The Earth”, and Howard had come to a conclusion that only the strong could become wealthy and rise to a strong position in life and not the meek and mild people as they only get trodden on and abused by the stronger and more forceful in this world.

Howard soon changed his mind as he read more of the scriptures for himself as he could see his attitude was wrong and he changed his mind to the point where he said to God “I want to do things your way and I will learn to be content with less and bide my time Lord”.

At the same time all this was going on with reading the Bible and talking to Decca Records who were wanting to rent more kit from Howard and at the same time, his landlord of the apartment where his wife and new-born child were living was demanding the rent and Howard was explaining to the landlord that he was no longer in employment, but he had some money coming soon from Decca Records.
This was not enough to satisfy his landlord as he did not believe what Howard was saying about money coming due to him from Decca Records and his landlord gave him an ultimatum; “If you don’t pay the rent by next week then you have to leave the apartment”.

The next week came, and Howard still had no money to pay the rent, therefore Howard and his family moved out of the apartment and moved into a friend’s apartment with a view of renovating a dilapidated basement under his friend’s ground floor flat. Apparently, no one had lived in the basement for several decades and had needed new electrics, and heating, Also the ceilings had collapsed. It also needed a new kitchen and bathroom. It was estimated that the work would take months to do everything, and the big question was how much was it going to cost?

Howard was of the mindset that this basement will take a very long time to renovate and will need a lot of money to do so. But with his new mindset, he was at peace about taking one step at a time.

Now, the next phone call with the lady at Decca Records was to be crucial. Howard and his family had moved out of their rental as the landlord demanded and the good thing was that Howard was able to supply all the musical equipment that the Moody Blues required for their recording sessions at Decca Records.

This was to be the beginning of one of the most lucrative ventures of Howard’s life. The Conders prospered very much over the next few years until the beginning of the oil crisis in the early’70s.

After building a good relationship with Decca Records eventually, Howard asked them why did Decca give all their business for supplying rental equipment to him and not to have done what they did in the past and that was to rent from the various music shops in central London?

The answer to Howard’s question was simply that Decca was able to rely totally on Howard’s ability to always provide what they wanted and on time whereas in the past Decca would book the musical kit from various musical retail shops and then send a taxi to pick the items up and the shops would have sold the kit and the recording artists would be stuck without the kit and the recording sessions would not be able to go ahead whereas Howard was always reliable and never let them down.

What Howard had established was a most reliable service in a most professional way. A little anecdote worth sharing; On one occasion when Howard received a call in the middle of the night from the Moody Blues who were recording needed a new set of guitar strings (these midnight recording sessions were the norm in those days) and Howard said “No problems” and he took a set over to the Decca Studios and because Howard was only 21 yrs. old and looked much younger than that, he never declared that he was the boss of Conder Enterprises but only the driver so when one of the Moody Blues said to Howard “Please say thank you to Mr Conder” Howard replied, “I certainly will do that sir”.

Howard supplied most of the kit for the Moody Blues recordings from Bass Flute, Mellotrons, Martin six and twelves string guitars which were very special editions worth hundreds of thousands of pounds today. Howard lifted all these heavy items including Hammond B and C 3’s all on his own.

His wife Annette used to take all the phone calls and the orders and Howard would deliver them to the recording studios which included many of the top recording artists of that period. This was mostly all stored and conducted from their renovated once dilapidated basement apartment which was choc-o-block with the musical kit.

Howard’s accountants during this prosperous time were also Mark Bolan’s T Rex accountants who used to say to Howard “You would fall into a barrel of Sh-t and come out smelling of Roses”. In other words, no matter what Howard would put his hand to would prosper.

That worked in the late sixties and into the early seventies but didn’t work for him in the 20th Century for he found that people had changed to being very jealous of successful people like Howard and due to the onset of online social media comments about him or anyone who succeeds, sadly brings the worst out of some people. I think Jealousy is a fitting word to use.

By the time Howard was 23 yrs. old he opened the Howard Conder Music Centre at 8 Eden Street Kingston upon Thames in Surrey which was to be the next adventure for Howard.

Howard Conder Music Store in Kingston, Surrey, UK

The Howard Conder Music Centre came about as Howard and Annette’s apartment, as huge as it was, it was getting so packed with so much of the rental musical kit that they could hardly move about. Sometimes there would be three Hammond organs, a Mellotron 400, Fender Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric pianos and that’s not mentioning all the guitars like two very special Martin guitars. One was a 12 string and the other a 6 string D45 which were made in the 1940s which the Moody Blues rented both many times. Such amazing guitars many times.
Howard says that these guitars today would fetch hundreds of thousands of pounds in an auction.

So with all of these instruments filling up the Conder apartment, they thought it was time to take on commercial premises.

They found what was a huge furniture shop on three floors at 8 Eden Street, Howard took out a 21-year lease and it came with the 3rd floor of the shop next door which was used as a repair workshop. By the way, Roger Giffin worked from that repair shop where he made his custom guitars which have been selling across the world for decades now. His clients included Eric Clapton, Pete Townsend, and Jimmy Page etc.

As Howard was extremely busy running his rental company he didn’t want to be managing the new Music Store, therefore he took on his brother-in-law Derek Ratcliffe and between them they formed a company and used a new corporate entity to handle all the new retail aspects of the music business e.g., sales of Guitars, Drums, Woodwind, Strings, Sheet Music and any other music retail business. Meanwhile, Howard and his wife still ran Conder Enterprises which handled all the rental business.

When they opened the Music Store circa 1970, they had fourteen members of staff and the premises looked amazing. Howard was hoping that his brother-in-law would soon be able to get into handling the music sales as Derek had come from being a Woolworths Store Manager very much like Howard’s father was before being paralysed, therefore Howard felt reassured the day to day running of the new music store would be ok in Derek’s care.

Amongst many of the famous music artists of the late 60s and early 70s that used to conduct business with Howard were two icons and now Legends: Bob Marley and Johnny Nash. We will come back to this story later under the heading: “How Howard Conder met Bob Marley”.  

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