My music influences..
Episode two; Germany and beyond school.
After my O levels I had a long sweltering summer stretched out before me. The summer of 1981. Time to find gainful employment and earn a bit of cash to take back to the 6th Form in September. I found a vacancy at a local fast-food restaurant, initially washing the dishes, then progressing to frying and flipping stuff with a wide spatula. The music of the time was morphing and changing like the wind. I still had no machine of my own to play anything on, so the cash from cleaning the dirty plates and cutlery had an end product in sight…….a brand-new Hi-Fi system.
As the funds were building my elder brother once more entered stage left, with an opportunity to join him at his army base in Germany. After his successful stint at university, he had joined the army in 1977 and was at that time posted to Dortmund. His offer was for me to spend a couple of weeks with him, as a sort of potential recruit, doing exciting stuff like driving tanks, firing weaponry and doing a host of other incredible things.
It was while we were chatting in his quarters after my arrival, I noticed how his record collection had ballooned. I began flipping through the large stacks of vinyl, marvelling at all the wonderful album covers of bands and singers of whom I had never heard. The Pink Floyd section had now expanded to cover their entire back catalogue to that point. But there was a host of much more recent releases to investigate. Clearly the army were paying him well and he was proudly driving around in a shiny new BMW 320. The music system inside was beefy enough to take all of the music played at an ear shattering volume. He had recorded a selection of his albums on to cassette, to be able to play them while on the move. It really is one of my abiding memories of the trip, as we ‘Blasted the Blaupunkt,’ scudding around Northern Germany.
At his suggestion I got myself a box of ten AGFA blank cassette tapes, which came in a handy plastic box and proceeded to select which of his albums I wanted to record for myself and take home. Top of the list was Pink Floyd, and their album Wish you were here. Fifty years later I still rate this as my favourite album by them. Then I just started selecting stuff that we had listened to in the car. An eclectic mix of new and not so new. Dr. Feelgood’s Let it roll, The B52’s album (the bright yellow one with Rock Lobster on it). A new band called Ultravox had just brought out an album to back up the success they had with their single Vienna. Amazing that it never reached number one, held off the top spot by the timeless classic ‘Shaddap you face’ by Joe Dulce!???
Years later I was watching the 2000 movie Almost Famous. There is a scene near the beginning when the sister of the young William Miller leaves home. As she departs, she whispers, so their authoritarian mother does not hear, that she has left something under the bed for him. He goes into the bedroom and pulls a bag from under the bed. Within are a host of classic albums. The ones I recognised were, Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys, Get yer Ya Ya’s out by the Stones, Axis Bold as Love by Hendrix, Wheels of fire by Cream and Tommy by The Who. As I watched the wonder on the face of the youngster as he placed Tommy on the turntable, I could feel the similarity and nostalgia with my own wonderment at all those albums I had discovered from my big brothers record collection. The film ends up following Wiliam and his journey to try and interview an up-and-coming rock band of the moment. The four piece combo in the film, ‘Stillwater’ played this stripped back rock, so reminiscent to me of the British rock band ‘Free.’ I have always wondered if Stillwater were based very loosely on Free, especially as the actor Jason Lee, playing the bearded lead singer Jeff Bebe, looks uncannily like Paul Rodgers did at the time he was the lead singer of Free.
Back to the summer of ’81. I returned from the two weeks in Germany, armed with my box of recorded cassette tapes. About another month of working and with a sub from my mother and I was able to purchase the integrated stereo system I had my eye on. I could now record my own records on to tape and take them back to school. Best I buy a few albums.
Back at school and my peers music tastes were open to some influences from my ‘magic’ box of AGFA tapes. We still had the Status Quo fan, but he was in a different house, so my common room were certainly not ‘Rocking all over his particular World.’ Someone had a new album by The Cure, Faith. The track Primary was a sure fire way to get the teachers to make an appearance, as did New Gold Dream by Simple Minds. There is a track on that album called ‘Theme For Great Cities’, which has always puzzled me; so unlike anything else they had ever created, I absolutely loved that track! I was just soaking it all up. Depeche Mode, The Human League and Duran Duran, all given a chance, before we once more rummaged through the AGFA box and returned to the extended joy of ‘Echoes’ by Pink Floyd.
I was aware of Michael Jackson starting to become a major star with firstly the Off the Wall album, follower by the behemoth that was Thriller. I was more interested in Love over Gold by Dire Straits, especially the track Telegraph Road. As I left school I was listening to Peter Gabriel, who had left Genesis, but not the face paint and dressing up, behind as he crafted a successful solo career. My first ever concert was seeing him live in Southampton in 1983. I love the fact that Genesis was formed by a collection of pupils at Charterhouse public school. We used to have an inter house music competition at my school and I suspect they would have done so at Charterhouse too. Imagine you are lined up to play the recorder or scratch out a tune on your violin, as your Houses entry in the competition. Then the next House has the formative members of Genesis, promoted by fellow alumni Jonathan King, doing something altogether more ‘progressive,’ as their entry…. that would have been my recorder in the bin then!
Bowie was now a mainstream sensation with the release of Let’s Dance, cementing his status with a charismatically perfect performance at Live Aid; well, until Queen came along. There was no real direction my music interest was taking me, as school morphed into work, and I listened to whatever was on the radio. It felt like I had nothing to get my teeth into. Bands and solo artists came and went, as I began my main working career in London. Loads of Dance music, which was never my thing.
I was waiting for the next important thing and by the late 1980’s one or two new bands were about to turn my head once more.
In Episode three of my music influences and tastes, read about what was to catch my eye and open a whole new world of music to me.
