When
I was 18, I met a girl who changed my life. She introduced me to folk
music, and even though the romance was over after a few months I
remained smitten and I listened almost exclusively to folk music for
the following 3 years.
I
grew a beard, started wearing clogs and woolly sweaters. I bought a
rocking chair. I didn't smoke then
otherwise I would have bought a pipe.I embraced my very distant Irish
roots and lamented the fact that of the 4 countries that make up
Great Britain, England alone had no real living musical culture.
I
didn't play an instrument back then. I didn't write songs, but I
lived in the music and the stories. It was easy to imagine myself as
a travelling minstrel and that would have been my choice of
occupation had I lived in the middle-ages. I remember saying if I get
old without having made any money, I could always grow my beard long
and be a folksinger. That was my reserve plan - I knew I'd never have
a pension worth talking about.
So
while I was immersing myself in folky custom and song, I missed out
on the youth-music movements of the time... I was an 18 year old
middle-aged man who frequented the folk clubs on sunday evenings.
That
all changed when I joined a rock-band.
At
22 I'd taken up the guitar - practicing loudly at home with
the windows open. A friend of a friend, who was a bass-player, heard
my noise and told his other friend, who was a lead-guitarist - and
they invited me to a rehearsal. They were looking for a singer, so I
sang. They were so impressed that I had the balls to just get up and
sing that they asked me to join their blues-rock band That was the
start of my wild days of sex, drugs, rock 'n roll and an unusually
late bout of pubescent rebellion. I stopped listening to
folk music, it didn't fit my new image. I can always go back to it
when I'm over 50, I thought.
I
wasn't a great rock-singer. I wasn't a good front-man. And I
admit that blues wasn't really my music - if anything
I preferred jazz, which motivated me to introduce sax into
the band. I could only play in one key, but that didn't matter
because you could impress people just by posing with it. I lived the
band lifestyle for a couple of years - lots of parties - I learned to
smoke. I heard a lot of music artists I'd missed out on: Rolling
Stones, The Kinks, Talking Heads; but also Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Lou
Reed, Crosby, Stills and Nash... songwriters that would inspire me to
this day.
At
24 I became a songwriter myself. The band dispersed when the
bass-player headed off to university. I headed off to the Greek
Islands. I'd spent a few months learning Fleetwood Mac songs so I'd
have something to play, but I really wanted to write songs. Living as
a hippy on an exotic beach would inspire me I thought. And it did. I
was popular because I had a guitar, but when I started writing songs
for people I'd met, I became a star. My first songs were simple, but
they were personal and my new friends sang along. Everyone wanted
their own song. I wrote every day. Those songs became became the
element that defined that whole 3 month island experience, for me and
everyone who were part of our intimate group. But they also defined
me. I was tanned, my hair bleached white by the sun and spiked with
salt and sand. My jeans were torn. I wore a scarf around my head. I
carried my guitar slung loosely over my shoulder. I was a traveler,
a minstrel, a hippy, a punk - lazing on the beach by day, singing
around camp-fires by night. I drank lots and ate little - I was
thinned to the bone. I lived my music and my role.
On
the journey back home, hitching the 3 thousand miles with a
half-English half-German girl 10 years younger than me, we stopped
off in a German town where she had friends. they were school-kids
still, and I was a fascinating aging hippy. I visited their school,
they learned my songs, I got groupies.
On
a side note: I went back to the island a year later - but then I took
my sax. But that's another story - another me.
Back
in England I lived the glory a little longer, squatting in London
with a few island friends. But once I headed back to my own home
town, it was over. The inspiration, the people, the lifestyle all
changed. The songs I wrote had no place here. I tried writing new
ones - songs I hoped would lead me to a career as a recording artist.
But it was not to be. There was no soul in what I wrote. I stopped
trying, focused on my sax-playing. I was a musician, but
not a songwriter.
Fast-forward
to 1990. I moved to Amsterdam. I was in love again. I started writing
love-songs and I was getting good at it. I discovered structure and
sequence. I crafted lyrics as a poet.
Later
I started working at a school, joined the "teacher's band",
played sax and harmonica - sang sometimes. A colleague turned 40, had
a party, bring a guitar we're making music. I used the opportunity to
sing a couple of my latest songs and made an impact - a new
period was began. The band dumped most of the covers, and we
started playing my numbers. I donned the guitar again - I became the
singer - they became my band.
It
was a prolific period. I wrote deep, meaningful, multi-interpretable
lyrics and catchy, memorable tunes based around jazz-chord
progressions. We played some gigs. I wasn't rich and famous, but I'd
reached a maturity in my songwriting. And I wouldn't become rich and
famous because we were all too old to aim for stardom, and we all had
kids and steady jobs. And if truth be known, I was too self-conscious
to really enjoy performing.
This
period eventually came to an end. I changed jobs - different school,
different people. I joined the schoolband there too but as sax
player. They never knew me as a songwriter, and I didn't feel like
singing the songs they wanted to play. I pretty much stopped writing
too - felt I was repeating myself.
I
started learning piano and didn't touch the guitar for years. The
piano was for playing, not writing. My old songs lived on though,
thanks to the enthusiasm of Geert, bass-playing teacher from the
first school. He adopted them and cared for them, and put them to
good use in a variety of musical projects involving other novice
musicians.
Now
and again I'd visit and put in a guest appearance - the master
playing his own songs... but Geert would have to remind me how to
play them, which chords I'd used. Telling me how to play my own songs
because I'd forgotten.
The
years have flown. I've passed 50. The idea of being an old bearded
folk-singer is not too unrealistic any more, though my beard is grey
so I'm not quite ready for that. My son is grown, his beard is dark.
He plays piano much better than I, and his guitar playing is getting
that way too. Through him I'm rediscovering all the great songwriters
of former years, and not without a little regret I wonder were I'd be
now if I'd let the minstrel I was at 24 continue. Other paths - other
lives.
I've
not written a song in nearly 10 years. I do my writing now on blogs
and in my diary. Lately I've taken to writing children's picture-book
stories as an independent publisher. Now and again I see something
that inspires me to sing... but it passes before I do anything about
it.
And
now, just when I was thinking that the minstrel had laid down his
lute for good, I stumble upon the phenomenon of storytelling. An
enthusiastic group of international aficionados of this
forgotten craft, come together in cultural cafe The Mezrab and tell
stories to each other. An event I haven't been aware of in my 20
years in Amsterdam. Ancient tradition comes alive in modern city -
storytelling is the new rage. I felt like I was back on my Greek
island - campfires and mixed cultures. I feel inspired as never
before - not since Greece. Inspired to get involved, to tell stories,
to write stories... and it occurs to me that here is an audience that
my songs were written for. My songs are stories after all - I should
sing them.
