Monthly Archives: September 2012

What I said back then:

So, as I get closer to the end, I notice that there are common threads and themes coming together with these; I thought they were random, but maybe they’re not, really. And here we start with libraries again – Inverness library this time. It didn’t exactly have the widest selection of music, and I used to look through it, wondering if I would like some of the stuff I didn’t know. After a while, it occurred to me that it wouldn’t cost me anything to find out about some of this odd-sounding stuff, and I chose the one with the surrealist painting of penguins on the cover. And I’ll be honest, I didn’t really listen to it properly at first – I think I thought it was tedious and repetitive – but I didn’t mind having it on in the background, and I made a tape of it for playing in the car, so I must have liked it a bit. Then, after we moved to Perth in 1988, we finally invested in a new-fangled CD player. One of the problems of the new technology was the lack of anything to listen to on it – for a long time we owned one Peter Gabriel CD, which was a bit limiting, really. I can’t be prevented from buying music, though, and I scoured the record shops (Oh, OK; record shop) of Perth for bargains. So, one day there was this PCO CD at bargain price, and I snapped it up before I remembered that I didn’t really know if I liked them or not. But I had made a wise choice; this was very accessible, and beautifully recorded, and I loved it. I loved it so much that I got out the old tapes and listened properly to them, too. And I discovered that I loved them too. It wasn’t tedious and repetitive, it was glorious and had much hidden depth – music from all over the world mixed together by someone who knew what he was doing, and played by people who were having a ball doing it.

So, in 1990, working mostly in Glasgow, I decided that we should try to go to a few Mayfest events (in researching this, I discover, to my horror, that Mayfest no longer exists. What is the world coming to?) – and joy of joys, here was a rare live PCO performance in the City Hall. I hoped it would be a bit of fun; I wasn’t prepared for such a joyous evening. Live, this music took on a life of its own, entrancing all who heard it, even those who plainly had been dragged along by an enthusiastic partner. There was a university music class sat in the row behind me, complete with tutor, who were all raving about it at the interval, and never before had I been in an audience which quite so neatly encompassed all ages and types. What even the live recordings on ‘When in Rome’ hadn’t captured was Simon Jeffes’ effortless dry English humour – between numbers, he would deliver some laconic aside or other, which would invariably have the Glaswegian audience falling out of their seats. My clearest memory is of his opening remark; he swung the stand mike round to address us, and smacked himself squarely on the forehead with it:

“Oops.”

I saw them once more in concert, at the Festival Hall in the mid – nineties; by then, I owned most of their recorded output, and would foist them on anyone passing – few people got it (but advertising agencies certainly did; PCO music is everywhere…) at first, but I like to think I planted a few seeds along the way. And then, one day in late 1997, I had one of those ‘blood draining from the face’ moments. I opened my newspaper to see an obituary for Simon Jeffes staring back at me. I had to sit down, and I don’t remember before or since being so upset by the death of someone I didn’t know. I hadn’t even been aware he was ill, and he had so much music left to make, I know it. I was even sufficiently moved to write a tribute to him, and send it to his company. I have no idea if they ever got it, but it felt like something I had to do. Since then, I have filled most of the gaps in my collection, bought videotapes and visited websites; I have this idea that there really should be a proper musical tribute, with perhaps a concert version of the orchestrated pieces used in ‘Still Life at the Penguin Café’; there’s no point in hoping to hear them play again, since Jeffes was the PCO, but I have my memories, and they are as strong as any other two of the 40 here. Except, perhaps, for the last one…

What I think now:

Ah.  This one’s a bit jarringly out of place, isn’t it?  Well, Inverness library is in roughly the right place, and living in Perth and working in Glasgow will be along in a bit, so here is as good as any.

Also, for all its length, I don’t think the original gets over the sheer joy PCO music engenders.  Why do I like this weird stuff?  Because it’s not weird, it’s elemental and thrilling as well as cerebral and intimate.  What’s not to love?

Since then:

They’re back!  Simon’s son Arthur has dusted off the PCO music, and under the name Penguin Café, is – in his words – ‘revisiting’ it.  I’ve not heard much, but I think it’s wonderful; it’s not the same, but this music was never meant to be preserved in aspic – like all good music, it can and should be interpreted.

I love the idea that the Penguin Café lives, and I’m looking forward to hearing more.  The children of artists don’t always follow through on their parents’ legacy, but young Arthur Jeffes just might.

What I said back then:

Nothing.  I’m not certain that I crossed them off the list – perhaps they weren’t on it in the first place.  Which is daft.

What I think now:

All good things have to come to an end, pill of course, and university life is undoubtedly, in spite of the often unhygienic living conditions and the frequent inexplicable hangovers, a good thing.  I drifted for a bit, listening to The Smiths, then I landed a job selling books.  I never intended it to be a long-term thing, but I stuck it out for five years in the end.  One momentous thing which happened early on in my bookselling career was that Zoe and I decided to get married (I asked; she accepted, it was more romantic than I’m making it out to be).

We considered our parlous financial state, and quickly came to understand that we couldn’t hope to afford to live in Aberdeen, Europe’s booming oil capital.  So, less than a year after I started, I was applying for a transfer to Inverness, which – fortunately – worked out, and explains why, the first time I heard ‘Faron Young’, I was heading back to my temporary home, a B&B on the shores of the River Ness.  I was immediately struck by its quirkiness, and resolved to find out more, which almost certainly involved a trip to yet another branch of ‘The Other Record Shop’.

Over the years, this oddly-named and enigmatic band take quite a hold of me – I loved the silly pop singles; I find myself eagerly anticipating  new releases, and they are still with me when I’m thundering in and out the back roads of Hertfordshire ten years later, trying to get to work at something approximating a civilised hour.

I even bought two copies of Jordan: the Comeback; one for me, and one to press on an unsuspecting work colleague as a Secret Santa present; I don’t know her all that well, but I know she’ll love this.  To this day, ‘Jordan’ is somewhere around the top half of any top ten album list I certainly don’t ever make, not being Nick Hornby.  It’s pretty close to perfection, and is one of the vanishingly few double albums you can say that about.  Tough to listen to, though, because once I start, I have to listen to it all; it’s a little like a symphony in that it loses some of its meaning broken into smaller chunks.

Except, perhaps, for ‘Scarlet Nights’, a study in perfect.

Since then:

Just a brief mention for the post-Sprout career of Paddy McAloon, a man beset by obstacles and difficulties his whole life, it seems.  Please take the time to check out ‘I Trawl the Megahertz’ – it’s not quite like anything you’ve heard before; strikingly odd, and to these ears, a masterpiece.

What I said back then:

Even now, it’s still hard to believe she’s gone. Probably because she would spend long stretches of time out of the public eye anyway, I still expect to hear something about her from time to time. The first time I encountered Kirsty was in Belgium, oddly. Tracy Ullman’s version of ‘They Don’t Know’ was ubiquitous, even in Begium, in 1983, and we kept hearing it during our holiday. I had a feeling that it wasn’t an original song, but was surprised to find that it was also recent, and written by the woman who wrote ‘There’s a Guy works down the Chipshop swears he’s Elvis’ I decided to enquire further – the daughter of Ewan MacColl surely had some interesting things to say. Then there was a cover of a Billy Bragg song (‘A New England’), which really sparked my interest, since one of the few decorative features in our spartan flat had been a huge Billy Bragg poster.

Every now and then there would be a new song, or a sighting – she was the musical interlude on the early French and Saunders shows, and she more than held her own through ‘Fairytale of New York’. But nothing prepared me for ‘Kite’ Her clever tales of whimsy and wordplay grew overnight into something much, much more substantial. Kite is simply magnificent from beginning to end, from the double whammy of ‘Innocence‘ and ‘Free World’ through to the songs written with Johnny Marr; every one a gem. How it managed not to be a global colossus of an album is truly beyond me. And after that, she was always there – magical songs like ‘My Affair’ and ‘Walking down Madison’ mingled with intriguing covers and odd influences. She took long breaks and always seemed to be between recording contracts, so that new music was always sporadic at best. But I enjoyed what I had heard of ‘Tropical Brainstorm’, and had made a note several times that I really ought to buy it one day, when it happened.

My habit when I come home, if there is a TV on, is to call up teletext, and check the news headlines. One evening I did this to be greeted with the headline ‘Singer dies in boating accident’.   Anyone I know? I wondered, and pulled the page up. Rarely have I had the physical sensation of the blood draining from my face and my knees going weak, but I did then. As I say, I still don’t believe she’s gone, and I still expect to hear some new music from her any day now. But what we’ve been left is a magnificent body of work in anyone’s language, and one day I’ll get myself down to Soho Square and sit there for a while, thinking of Innocence and the Free World…

What I think now:

Teletext?  There’s one for the teenagers…

I still feel the loss, which is strange, considering I never knew her.  Zoe once told me that she found it hard to listen to her songs, just too sad, but I’m grateful that I don’t have that problem.

I’m lying – I cannot get through ‘Soho Square’ without the room suddenly becoming dusty: ‘kiss me quick, in case I die before my birthday…’

Since then:

Well, I did go to Soho Square.  I took some photos – pigeons shivering in the naked trees, that kind of thing.  I even elliptically included the bench into ‘Going Back’, in one of the bits of part 2 which will survive the cull which is coming.

And I still believe in Innocence and the Free World…

What I said back then:

Nothing.  Another one which didn’t make the cut…

What I think now:

That first flat.  No, hang on – I did that one.

This is, in the beginning, another Raeburn Place memory.  The aforementioned three blokes in a flat didn’t have much in the way of interior décor; in fact, I think we only ever put up one poster, but it was a big one.  Where Zoe’s flatmates had a room dominated by the disturbingly blue face of Phil Collins (oh, yes – names can be named if necessary), we had a Billy Bragg poster.

A bloody big one, it was, advertising Life’s a Riot with Spy vs Spy.  Monochrome, I think – I would have remembered if it had those Penguin orange stripes on it.  I don’t know its provenance, although it was ours, not the flat’s, and I’m a little intrigued by it – it wasn’t exactly a mainstream release (although exactly the kind of record a bunch of students might be expected to own) and posters can’t have been plentiful given that Riot had – if I remember correctly – been initially a cassette-only release.

But there it was, the giant safety lamp metaphorically illuminating our dingy kitchen during that final year.  Many a culinary disgrace unfolded beneath its unblinking stare, including the famous middle of the night chips, the remains of which I will never forget scraping out of the drain in the week before we left.

So far, then, an entirely unmusical memory – we didn’t own any actual Billy Bragg music between us, I don’t think.  But a strange thing happened because of it.  If Billy ever came up in conversation, or appeared on the radio, my reaction was always the same: “Oh, I like him; he’s good”.

And, it eventually turned out, he was good.  I knew ‘A New England’ of course, but not his version, and then a couple of things happened – I heard ‘Levi Stubbs Tears’ on the radio one evening, and I remember staring open-mouthed at the radio as this novel played itself out over the space of three and a half minutes; then I heard ‘Greetings to the New Brunette’, and I was sold.

I became obsessed with learning ‘Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards’ – I managed it eventually, even throwing in my own improvised opening, much to my delight, only to find that he changes the words every few weeks, and my carefully memorised version is as current as an East German flag.

Since then:

There’s probably not a lot of Billy Bragg played in Prince George, but most of what there is would be emanating from my various electronic devices (or occasionally from my guitar) – a couple of years ago, my dad’s Amazon voucher was partly spent on the marvellous compilation ‘Must I Paint you a Picture?’ and all those fading memories of vinyl and cassette versions were restored to pin-sharp clarity.

I can still see that poster, though, staring back at me through all these years, making me think of the rain battering off our tiny kitchen window while I struggled to make something edible out of what was left in the cupboards.  It’s a memory which smells of the top deck of buses and sounds like the wind whistling through the crack in the skylight, and it still has the power to make me stop and smile.

On the strength of a symbolic poster I decided that this Billy Bragg must be a decent bloke.  Nice to know I was right.

What I said back then:

That first flat. It’s not something I remember being particularly fixated on; I stayed in halls rather longer than most people because I was quite comfortable there, but I was going to have to move out at some point, and find somewhere I could call my own student flat. And that turned out to be 15 Raeburn Place, above L’Aquila Bianca chipshop. It was a perfectly good flat, but of course having three blokes living in it, one of whom never came out of his room, meant that it was never going to be the height of sophisticated living. Still, we had our moments, and I do have many happy memories of that final year – and some very hazy ones of those final weeks. But this was the height of my ‘rediscovering music’ phase, and all sorts of things appeared on my red plastic record player (oh, we were poor in those days; we had to make our own entertainment). Some things I heard on the radio, and investigated further; some things I had recommended to me; and some things I bought or borrowed on a whim. Some of it was worthwhile, some of it was rubbish, and some of it was the Human League.

And then there was the odd occasion when I saw a name in the music press. (I should pause here to mourn the decline of the weekly UK music press, but of course I sentimentalise it – not everything was better when I was 20, and there’s no way that volume of newsprint expended on mostly ephemeral music was ever going to be sustainable.) At any rate, Everything But The Girl was one of those names which, once I saw it, I just had to know more about. There was no way it was going to be bad music with a name like that. Then I discovered that one half of the group shared – and still does share – my surname: this was a certainty. I’m sure I heard ‘Each and Every One’ before I rushed out and bought the album, but even had I hated it, I think I’d still have gone ahead. Fortunately, this was music which was easy to love, and I didn’t resist. Cool, jazz-tinged, and quite strikingly unlike anything else around at the time, it was like a breath of fresh air after all the noise I had surrounded myself with for so long. It also stands up to the passage of time rather better than most of the music of 1984, and is guaranteed to make me misty-eyed at the memory of Edinburgh, and Raeburn Place. I’m delighted that Ben and Tracey carried on doing what they wanted to do for all this time, and somehow the global success of ‘Missing’ seemed just reward for all that pleasurable music which reached me at just the time when I was ready for it.

What I think now:

I think perhaps I should have mourned the decline of the weekly music press a little more than I did; it doesn’t seem to me that there’s anything better out there now.  I do, however, mourn L’Aquila Bainca.  I went there in May – it has been replaced by (shudder) a Domino’s Pizza.  Is nothing sacred?

I also would like to take a moment to consider EBTG in the context of Twitter.  Unlike some I could name, Ben and Tracey are both avid tweeters.  It pleases me greatly to be able to eavesdrop on the lives of people I feel connected to in that strange way enjoying music allows; I know we have something in common, because they made that music, and I like it.  Now, that doesn’t mean anything more than that – I’m not their friend, and they’re not mine; indeed, it’s an odd, one-sided relationship, since they have no idea who I am.  But it allows something which I think is important: for all that some famous people shun interaction with their fans, and others use social media as a revenue stream (you know who you are, faceless corporate tweeters), there are those who take enough of a leap of faith to be able to say – here I am, just me; I’m going to tell you bits and pieces about my life, and in return, there’s a door minutely cracked open, through which you might just be able to reach me.

And if that’s so, I’d like to say thanks.

Since then:

When we moved to Canada, so much of my life was dislocated that I felt the need to have some of my old favourite music around – that which helps me focus on how much has changed, and how life went on through the various upheavals.  One of the first things I did was download and burn to CD a copy of ‘Eden’.  It’s part of the ‘leaving Edinburgh and really growing up’ phase of my life, and it helped keep me sane during the craziness of building a new life.

One of the songs on ‘Eden’, ‘Tender Blue’ was another of those I improvised over, like ‘Damnation’s Cellar.  I’m not going to post another short story here, I don’t think: it’s not really polished enough, although I quite like it.  If anyone really wants to read it, you know where to find me.

What I said back then:

I hadn’t thought about this for years, I suppose, until I started to trawl my memories for this project. I guess this is not an uncommon tale – a lot of people must go through this particular rite of passage; I wonder if everyone has quite such a conscience-pricking song to go with it.

One of the apparent benefits of doing a four year honours course was that we got invited to go on Linguistic Weekends – well, to be strictly accurate, a Linguistics weekend, held at the Shap Wells Hotel in early 1983. The idea was to spend the weekend hiking in the lake district, discussing linguistics, and generally socialising with like-minded students from several other universities. As may be imagined, rather more hiking and beer drinking went on than anything else (although I do remember a heated discussion about whether the ‘-man’ in ‘chairman’ was semantically redundant) and a splendid time was had by all.

Except that I had something else on my mind at the same time. Those who know me will know that Zoë and I have been together for what must seem like forever to those looking in; even in 1983 we were a pretty longstanding couple. Just before we left for this weekend, we shared a slightly alarmed phone call to discuss the faint outside chance that she might be pregnant. Now, I can look back and laugh now (actually, I’m not sure I can…) but it was a massively scary thing then. I was suddenly faced with the possibility (remote thought I was assured it was) of having to become a fully-fledged grownup. And shortly after that, a parent. I did the right thing, and refused to panic. Much. Needless to say, there was a lot of thinking going on that weekend, and eventually, once we hit the bar, slightly more drinking than was actually required just to be sociable. The next morning we were to set off bright and early to climb something or other, and I was surprised to be mostly hangover-free, although there was a certain fuzziness, and something lurking which I wasn’t quite able to think about.

Still, cold crisp air and a long walk should sort that out…

We piled into various cars, and set off. The radio was turned on, and out of it came ‘Tunnel of Love’. I caught the words, which I probably hadn’t listened to properly before now:

“A room with a view and a kid on the way/Hope you make it to the church on time”

I remembered what I wasn’t thinking about…

The PS is that, of course it was a false alarm, and yes, I did grow up quite a bit that weekend

What I think now:

I don’t know that there’s much to add – I know I hesitated before including this one ten years ago, but it’s such a vivid memory that it has to be here.  And we’ve now been married 26 years, not the mere 16; I’m not claiming that this song has had any part in that, of course…

However, one curiosity to muse upon, only tangentially linked with this.  I was back in Aberdeen in May, and my dad and I generally sat and watched BBC4 in the evening – The Specials were featured twice in different programmes – commemorating 1982, I think.  Dad was puzzled as to why he had never even heard of them, and asked me if they were really such a big deal.  It would take a separate memory to cover it, but they were a big deal, and we knew it at the time, even if Aberdeen never felt like a ‘Ghost Town’.

And I wonder if there is a parallel today – are the 18-year-olds of today listening to music which challenges their worldview or asks awkward questions?  I don’t know, but I suspect mainly they aren’t.  And I wonder what’s changed?

Since then:

Well, I don’t own a copy, but that’s not so surprising.  And I’m now actively wondering if there are 50 completely different memories I could have included…

What I said back then:

So, when I came out of my all-consuming heavy metal phase, there was this band. Everyone was ranting on about them and how they were going to change the world, but I couldn’t see it. I remember making some sarcastic, cynical remark about “Oh, Manchester, so much to answer for” in ‘Suffer Little Children’ – but I was doing that ‘not really understanding’ thing again, and I should have learned by now. The music was everywhere in ’84, and into ’85, and some of it must have started to get through. At some point I borrowed a copy of the first album, and properly listened to it. I suddenly realised that here was someone of my generation able to write powerful, almost poetic lyrics in an English idiom – something which seemed, despite the punk outburst, to have died off around the time the Kinks stopped having hits. Add to that quite wonderful musicianship, and I was suddenly hooked, just like everyone else.

I don’t pretend that these songs spoke particularly to me, or on behalf of me or my generation, but they resonate with me like almost no others. They bring back memories of that most uncertain period in my life, when I had left University and was watching everyone else get on with their lives while I wavered and failed to decide about anything, finally ending up in a job I wasn’t particularly good at. I was prone then, and am prone now, to singing ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’ at times of stress (you have to hear it, it doesn’t work written down), and several others, including ‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Any More’ or ‘How Soon is Now’ at appropriate moments – their words spring fully into my mind when required, always the sign of a great lyric. And I picked up Douglas Coupland’s ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’ because of the Smiths title, and found it stuffed with those same wondrous verbal tags – certainly the only novel I’ve ever re-read in order to find all the Smiths references. Sometimes I don’t feel a particular child of my generation, but I listen to the Smiths and I realise I could be a child of no other.

What I think now:

Smiths music still has the power to move me, and some of Morrissey’s later work kind of does, too, although it lacks that resonance which is associated with a particular time and place in my life.  I was always an outsider with it – slightly older than the core audience, and a little cooler towards the posturing – but I think that makes my appreciation for it stronger; I had to work at liking it, and the work paid off.

Sometimes, when you think you don’t like something, you’re wrong.

Since then:

One of the regrets of parting with my vinyl collection was that I no longer had a copy of ‘Hatful of Hollow’, but it’s now available digitally, and faithfully reproduces those slightly better versions of the great early songs.  I don’t actually own a copy of a Smiths album, although I certainly used to; perhaps I should rectify that.

I also own and love pretty much everything Doug Coupland has ever written.  This is not a coincidence.

There may well be a light which never goes out.  Or if there isn’t, there should be.

What I said back then:

Oh, this is an oddity. I had a punk phase (well, OK, a wannabe punk phase), and there will be evidence in the shape of the Buzzcocks along in a while, and then I had a New Wave phase, which lasted a bit longer, and was a bit more serious, and involved buying things like Magazine singles, and then I had a particularly ill-judged rock phase (yes, some gruesome evidence to follow…) during which, all traces of my past were obliterated or at least left in Aberdeen while I moved to Edinburgh. Fortunately, it didn’t last long, and it was a combination of the sainted John Peel and a Magazine song which opened my eyes.

I have no idea now why Andrew, Graeme and I were driving (in Graeme’s famous Escort) through bits of Morningside, listening to John Peel, but we were. On comes ‘Shot by Both Sides’ – again, I have no idea why; perhaps it was a personal message. Something in me aches with a painful nostalgia for the last of my schooldays – all of three years before – and the excitement of those times when everything seemed possible, and probably was. I quietly resolve not to be so blinkered in my musical tastes. Slowly, but surely, it works…

What I think now:

You know what?  That ill-judged rock phase – there’s been barely a hint of it so far, and I don’t think it’s about to make a sudden comeback.  There was a two or three year period back then when I narrowed my listening tastes, but there’s been very little long-term effect, as evidenced by this list.  Not sure what I feel about that.

I didn’t become a Howard Devoto fan; I don’t own anything besides this one song by Magazine, although I’m sure I had some tapes back in the late seventies.  I am vaguely aware that they’re back together and doing new material, but unlike some bands I can think of, I don’t feel any urgent desire to check it out.  It is what it is – a perfect, crystallised memory of a time and a place when I felt something in me shift.

Since then:

Well, John Peel died, of course.  Not, I’m sure, as a result of my elevating him to the sainthood.  I feel I should pause for a moment and reflect on him, although it’s hard to separate out specifics, since he was simply there throughout those formative years – late evenings, lying in the dark, listening to all kinds of bizarre noise because it was surrounded by simply the most comforting voice ever to take to the airwaves.  I heard a recording of a show from about 1978 recently, and it transported me back to my tiny boxroom in Aberdeen effortlessly.  John Peel was talking to me, and all was well with the world.

I also smile at the thought that my parents were not exactly approving of the whole ‘late night listening to a cacophony on the radio when I should have been asleep’ thing, but were utterly enchanted by ‘Home Truths’.  As, of course, was I – presented by anyone else, it would have been insufferably twee and middle class; presented by Peelie, it was just part of all of us.  Eight years gone, never forgotten.

What I said back then:

I can’t believe I have to admit to this. I’m not exactly embarrassed, but claiming to be young really isn’t going to excuse all of it. Ah, well, those were altogether more innocent times. For each of the years I was at university, I had my summer van driving to keep me solvent; except (for some reason) for the summer of 1981. I have no idea why I was unemployed that summer, laziness was almost certainly part of the deal, though. I wasn’t entirely idle, however – at least, I don’t think I was… I do remember clearly redecorating the hallway and stairs in my parents’ house. Now, I remember doing the whole thing myself, which is unlikely – it’s more likely that I did a lot of the cleaning and painting and my father and I did the actual wallpapering. But no matter – what I remember is those few days of hard work, with my radio permanently tuned to ‘Wonderful Radio 1’. And I kept hearing, over and over, a nagging tune called ‘Happy Birthday’. I hummed and whistled along, enjoying the jolliness and general amiability of the whole thing, and then I saw them – her – on Top of the Pops…

I finally understood what was meant by ‘schoolboy crush’. The object of my crush was no older than I was, already clearly a major pop star (so that’s another career choice closed off, then) and, well, just Clare. I’d like to tell you that I got over her very quickly, and chalked up schoolboy crushes to experience, but, well – have you seen Gregory’s Girl? And I heard her on the radio only a few weeks ago, and there was still a spark there – unless that was indigestion…

What I think now:

Well, I’m ten years older, so I’m able to view my youthful self with a more sophisticated eye.  Who am I kidding?  A schoolboy crush – whatever age it happens at – doesn’t just fade away; it sits with you probably for the remainder of your life.

Part of the story of ‘Going Back’ is about the consequences of having to deal with the object of your affections as an adult, and finding out the unvarnished truths which are part of every life, yet are invisible to the infatuated.  Part of the impetus for that, I have to admit, is my own unrequited schoolboy crush – more distant than Andrew’s, since it was on the pop star persona of someone I’d never met, but the feelings are surely the same.

And, of course, even then, I was aware of the ridiculousness of it all.  I wasn’t putting posters up or joining fan clubs, or whatever else might have struck me as sensible back then – I think it’s just as well Twitter didn’t exist, though…

Since then:

She’s not on Twitter.

What I said back then:

My Stones memory is not what you might expect. Not the music – although, of course, there are plenty of memories of the band who are older than me in individual songs: ‘Satisfaction’ in the gym at the exchange school in Germany; trying (and failing) to play ‘Angie’ on the guitar; ‘Miss You’ in the Drama Theatre at school; ‘Emotional Rescue’ in the car on the way to Edinburgh for the first time – but that’s not what I remember.

What I remember is standing on Leith Street in 1982. Lunchtime in the Potterrow refectory; I’ve wandered upstairs – probably in search of someone who wasn’t there, and the TV is on in the corner. The news peters out, and ‘Reporting Scotland’ takes its place. The lead item is the startling fact that the Rolling Stones are set to play three low-key concerts in Scotland – Aberdeen Capitol, Dundee Caird Hall and Edinburgh Playhouse. These are the kind of venues – probably the actual venues – they last played in about 1964, and although it must have been a slow news day, it’s hardly surprising that it’s at the top of the agenda. Tickets had already gone on sale, apparently, and I noted this fact as I turned to go back downstairs and resume my search. About half an hour later, something clicks in my brain. It would actually be something to go and see the Stones in a small(ish) theatre; after all, they won’t be around for ever, and even if I’m not such a fan, it is the kind of thing I could tell the grandchildren about. So I walk down to the West End – no particular sense of urgency, for some reason – and join the back of what is now a long queue, stretching up Leith Street from the Playhouse doors. And we stand and wait, and stand and wait. After about an hour, it is clear that this queue is not going anywhere, and one or two people start to drift away. Not long afterwards there is some kind of official announcement, and the queue dissolves. Ah, well. I’ve still never seen them live, and I still don’t own any Stones music, but it seems there’s no hurry…

Still, that would have been something, wouldn’t it?

What I think now:

I still shake my head at my dilatory younger self.  I’d have liked to have seen that, of course, but I don’t remember going out of my way to do anything about going to see them in the years after that.  I left out a couple of other Stones memories – of listening to ‘Some Girls’ in the Drama theatre at school (we did get through a lot of music while we were supposed to be rehearsing), and of seeing the controversial video for ‘Undercover of the Night’ on ‘The Tube’ one Friday evening, fresh off the train back home for the weekend, full of tales of my Edinburgh life.

Since then:

It does seem that there’s still no hurry if I ever do want to see the Stones live, although I wonder what kind of an experience it might be these days.  There are some tracks on my iTunes now, but they’re still not as frequently played as most, for no particular reason that I can think of.