BLOODY FINGERS - LEARNING TO PLAY
1975/6
My parents had put each of my older siblings through some sort of instrument training, and each had manifestly failed to be any good at it or enjoy it. If I close my eyes I can still hear the awful caterwauling of Dick's viola or the hesitant fart of Tom's trombone. Ro lived with Dad, so I can't really remember what she played....guitar perhaps...yes, I have a mental picture of her, cross-legged in front of a gigantic poster of David Soul, strumming a huge jumbo acoustic and struggling with strings the width of transatlantic telecommunications cables.
So they didn't bother with any lessons for me, probably on the grounds that the money would be better spent elsewhere. Naturally I decided I'd like to learn to play the guitar. I'd had a storming year as Lead Descant Recorder in the Ipswich Prep School Orchestra (Mrs. Passmore, where are you now?), so felt qualified to try and emulate my new love, The Beatles, who had had the temerity to split up some 6 years previously.
A
certain John King came to my new school, Northgate Grammar. He was a local
guitar teacher, now vanished to gawd-knows-where. A gaggle of about 10 of us
signed up for lessons - conducted in the music room once a week
after school if I remember rightly.
After two or three weeks of getting us all to slowly pluck one string with one finger in an effort to establish which of us had even the remotest sprinkling of rhythm and/or talent, John took a couple of us to one side and let us know that being taught in a group, or at least this group, was holding us back somewhat. Mother was summoned, the charges explained and reluctantly accepted, and one-to-one lessons began at JK's house in Marlborough Road, Ipswich.
A friendly-uncle type, considerate and quietly contemplative, he taught me classical guitar (A Tune A Day vol. 3), a few Beatles songs and some quite nifty Spanish pieces. I should explain that John was a very accomplished guitarist who performed concerts around the country and had recorded several volumes of his own and others' work. I was utterly besotted by his beautiful, fluid playing style - he made it look so damned easy. He was an inspiration as well as a source of great frustration; I simply wasn't prepared to wait until I was as good as him!
I quietly set about using my new dextrousness to write songs, drawing from the Beatles (them again) and whatever was in the charts. I was so impressed with 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen that I wrote 'Life Odyssey', a similarly eclectic mess which I eventually recorded in a fit of nostalgia about 15 years later. Other tunes from the time were 'GB' - a tribute to a girlfriend called Gwyneth Burnett, 'Changes' - my first ever composition, which mainly involved sliding an E chord up and down the neck and strumming with varying violence, and 'Christmas Blues' - famously premiered by school-chum and fellow Monty Python nut John Barclay and me on a yuletide busking session. This included a rendition during an impromptu set in the lobby of The Marlborough Hotel, to the unsure delight of astonished guests. All the proceeds of this misguided carolling-tour went straight to Operation Santa Claus, an annual charity-a-thon presided over by the late, great Radio Orwell - the last word in independent local radio, thankfully.
I soon found that taking a guitar to a party was a spiffing idea - whip the old acoustic out, do a few tunes and hey presto!......GIRLS! And girls meant relationships....and relationships meant...MORE SONGS!...MORE PARTIES!...MORE GIRLS!...MORE SONGS!.....and so the loop was joined.
I even went a couple of doors up to John Bowers' house and recorded about a dozen original, if somewhat obviously inspired songs on his ancient ¼" reel-to-reel machine. I called the set 'Hi There' (no really......oh come on, I was 12 for chrissakes!), and the tape was soon lost. I really really wish I still had it. I've got the words to all the songs still, but I'm fascinated by what the tunes might have been.
I also took my new-found chords
to 'Pathfinders', a local Christian youth organisation, to impress the vicar of
St. Margaret's daughter (hello Ali), and was able to be active in the meetings
which had previously just been preachy and dull. Now I was one of the ones
making things boring for other people....Result!
When I'd satisfied myself that I'd picked up the basics, and before I'd taken any form of exam, it was time to ditch my lovely teacher and strike out on my own with a newly-acquired electric guitar (right). I cried when I told him I wasn't coming back; I felt I was depriving him of the money and of the satisfaction of putting another hopeful up before the examiners. He was as kind and gentle as ever but I like to think he was disappointed that I was flying the nest.
Wherever you are, John, thanks for those lessons, and I hope you're happy.
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