Music Got in Anyway

Music saved me, and shapes me and guides me - it's a drug, a friend and an obsession. My parents were my first influence. My mum loved the Stones and my Dad was into the Beatles. 

My Dad was 25, my mum was 19.

You can see they were fairly hip young dudes at the time, but the hip dudeness did not last long. My Dad's record collection consisted of Beatles records up until 1965, then no more. I guess my arrival blew it out of his system. 1966 saw the Beatles cement themselves into music history by surpassing all others, at least in the mainstream, both in song-writing skills, and experimentation. 

my Dad with a bunch of mates prior to my arrival

They were recording Sgt Pepper as I arrived into the world. The psychedelic revolution was nearly upon us; I think my dad stopped buying their stuff at that point due to a combination of them going a bit weird and him going a bit doting Dad. I was content, it seems, with baby food, plastic toys and nursery rhymes, at least through the rest of the sixties. I remember little, but as they say, if you can remember the sixties, then you weren't there.

My mum was a Stones fan; she also dug Dylan. She went to gigs – including Screaming Lord Sutch. She’d been into Elvis as a kid in the 50s – and once plastered her mother’s bedroom with Elvis posters because her mother had expressed a liking for some of Elvis’s songs. My Dad had been a rocker, but later he was more a Beatles fan. The Beatles seemed to straddle the different musical tribes – covering soul, country and rock’n’roll songs and writing in a style very much derived from Motown, they could have appealed to rockers or Mods – but in the end probably fell between two stools – which may have been why they went so enormous in the mainstream. After all it was all there. My Dad somehow got into country music and Rat Pack MOR. His purchases after my arrival were LPs and tapes by Johnny Cash, Charlie Pride, Rod McKuen, Neil Diamond, etc. And Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra.

His main love seemed to be for Johnny Cash – he had his 69 Folsom Prison LP, San Quentin, and a few others. I got into these big time once I worked out what the record player was for. I also ended up listening to, alongside the Beatles, Glen Campbell, a couple of country compilations, -------. But as I got into pop/ rock and listening to the radio – only The Beatles and Johnny Cash stuck with me, I began to hate country (having to put up with Plymouth Sound’s Country Music Show which was on after the south west singles chart – circa ’78 – ‘82).

Something stuck though – within about three years of leaving Plymouth the country began to come back into me again – notably acts like Nanci Griffiths, Steve Earle.  I guess it had never really been away.

I'm getting ahead of myself though. The sixties peaked while I was a baby and began to turn into the 70s as the 60s bands split or died. The guitar became like a weapon – wielded for conflict. I think this left my parents behind - who certainly never went beyond the changes in 67 - when the Stones went dark, The Beatles went heavy and transcendental, Dylan went electric, Hendrix - well, Hendrix went into a new dimension, and bands like Led Zep who carved out a whole new rock language. It all happened so quickly - those involved had little or no control and were chasing each other down what turned out to be a blind alley which led to stadium rock and Prog - many were left behind. Suddenly the 60s died and MOR country acts abounded, old 60s acts reinvented themselves as either hard rock or back to nature hippy dropouts with money, children and family values. Many 60s bands who couldn’t move on, or who went a different way – ended their careers there more or less, eg, The Kinks, The Zombies.

The number One record on the day of my birth was "Green Green Grass Of Home" - a song that has curses me to this day. Why couldn’t it be "Yellow submarine" or something by the Kinks?

In fact the world shook harder than it had ever done before - it was the year of political strife; anti Vietnam protests, centred in "swinging" London. Now we belittle this period as the period of flower-power, drugs and hippy protests. this doesn't even begin to describe what was really happening. Working classes stood side by side with students and demanded a better life. the better life they were promised a generation earlier when their parents had returned from war to a "world fit for heroes".

not twee; not pretty

They were still waiting. Their children wouldn’t wait any longer.

Both sides of the Atlantic had shifted to the left. The world had been run by former war heroes for too long. Out went Eisenhower, and in came Kennedy. Out went Churchill, and now, in was Harold Wilson, a forward thinking socialist.

I never quite saw the old world. I was among the first born into the new world. There was no easy pop scene for me to latch onto in 1971. 1972. it was all long hair, sweat, loud guitars, or worse, strummy acoustic guitars, and idiot violent drummers, or twee folksy girl groups; or the worst thing of all, chin stroking public school boys with too many keyboards and no soul whatsoever. Also, I have since figured out that my parents were actively shielding me from the world of music.

my secret weapon in the late 70s

My early influences were, I guess whatever they played on the radio station my parents listened to, which would later be Radio 2, or the local Plymouth Sound; though the station of choice seemed to be music free Radio 4 or sports reports on Radio 2. I remember Junior Choice, David Bowie's ‘Space Oddity’ and early favourite of mine, and ‘Laughing Gnome’ which wasn't a particular fave at the time. "Puff the Magic Dragon"; Bernard Cribbins. Presented by Ed Stewart. He was a dickhead of the first order (went out with a 13 year old while an adult), but we listened to his programme religiously - I associate it with getting ready to go out to the beach or countryside. We'd start with it on in the kitchen with the back door open, sunshine streaming through; then in the car.

It was the thin end of the wedge for me – a little chink in the armour my parents had built around me. And through that chink came the occasional treasure. It wasn’t long before the chink was pushed wide to become a yawning cavern and the music rushed in. 

The chink got a big push in the mid 70s. I discovered Radio One by accident between May 1975 and before November 1977 - probably during 76. I was sick and allowed to stay in bed instead of going to school. Mum gave me a Lucozade - so I was definitely ill. She tuned the radio to Plymouth Sound - the local radio where nutters and bigots rang in to have a rant - and left it on, when she went to work. Somehow I knocked the dial on the radio and ended up with Tony Blackburn presenting the mid morning slot. Found it very entertaining - I was young -  and much better than Plymouth Sound. When mum came home she seemed put out that I had enjoyed listening to Radio 1. And that guilt kicked in – just like when I was 3 in bed with my book. But for now Radio 1 was there for me with just a tiny knock of the dial.