IN the USA in 1956, preachers urged their congregations to turn their backs on rockn'roll because it was the Devil's music, while the establishment on both sides of the Atlantic - coolly named The Pond in those days - were out to break the music and its perceived anti-social effects.

My father blamed "those Yanks" for the heinous musical visitation and for once conceded the "dreaded trades unions" had a point in preventing most of the perpetrators of this outrage coming to our shores.

At that stage, Britain did not have any established rock idols and none to compare with the first wave of rock from the States, epitomised by Elvis, Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Fats Domino. In the early days, having invented rock, America dominated and the mystique of American rock stars was probably enhanced by our Musicians Union and its allies.

They introduced an embargo on US acts touring the UK unless a reciprocal tour of the US could be undertaken by a UK act.

As we had very little to offer in that respect, all too few "trades" were accomplished in those early days. Not just in rock, for it was hard to see the US wanting to swap Bob Hope for Arthur Askey, Count Basie for the Morton Fraser Harmonica Gang or Frank Sinatra for Ronnie Carroll.

So rock remained "underground", caught on the fluctuating airwaves of Radio Luxembourg, while, in his own domain, my father continued to seek new ways to stamp out the music, once conceding in a moment of exasperation: "Well at least any woodworm we had, would have long since left with the vibration of that racket going on."

My mother lamented the lack of a musical instrument in our house, saying: "We have brought this on ourselves by not bringing the boy up on classical music".

They were still the days when "sheet music" - a four-page score of music and words to play on your piano, accordion etc - made up the established Top 20. So you would see the song "Que Sera" at the top of the charts and under it a list of names such as Doris Day (who made it famous) plus numerous others who recorded it, probably the likes of Anne Shelton, Alma Cogan, Yana, Lita Rosa, Eve Boswell, Ruby Murray, Sabrina and Frank Chacksfield and his Orchestra, not to mention Dorothy Thornhill and her Town Hall Stompers.

Eventually record sales replaced sheet music as the real Top 20 and I recall a Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers record blaring from Cassiobury Park fair, Whitsun 1957 - starting a song saying "no" 19 times before revealing "I'm not a juvenile delinquent".

Juvenile delinquency, as it had been re-branded, was suddenly topical back then and it was thought rockn'roll caused this rebirth. Frankie spelt it out, also underlying what we didn't know then, namely that lyrically we needed Bob Dylan, for he sang that it was "easy to be good, hard to be bad and stay out of trouble and you'll be glad".

Ironically Frankie did not follow his own advice for he died of drug addiction within three years.

Here again, in the absence of hard information about these stars, we had unsubstantiated rumour and so it was "known" that in order to keep his trademark falsetto, Frankie had undergone castration. In that respect, suicide from an overdose seemed a logical follow-up but in fact the voluntary castration "news" was without foundation; a story started probably by the same people who later reckoned Brenda Lee was a 32-year-old dwarf and not a 16-year-old schoolgirl singing sensation in 1960.

The purveyors of pop and rock were aware the establishment on both sides of the Atlantic wanted to stamp it out. So as a result they made, and we now have the legacy of, those rather embarrassing films featuring parents meeting "the nice, polite Mr Domino" and deciding Fats was not the Devil's right-hand man and the music was really "quite nice" as they clapped to the beat with fixed smiles, while the children looked delighted at the parental endorsement.

After three years of being almost "underground" the new music came on mainstream television (1957) with the introduction of our programme, "Six-five Special" although under the adult supervision of comperes Josephine Douglas, Pete Murray and Freddy Mills. It featured essentially limp British interpretations of the real thing.

My father actually watched this programme, I think because he admired the looks of Miss Douglas as opposed to the past courage of Freddie Mills.

Eventually, my father hit pay-dirt. After much ruminating, he came up the view the music was distracting me from my studies. As we entered 1958, I was banned from listening to the radio or playing music until completion of my GCEs.

l Oliver Phillips is a former assistant editor of the Watford Observer who has retired to rural France.