I couldn’t have been all bad though ’cos I owned up and dug ‘em all up.
Later on I did excel in one athletic sport. High jump. Before the days of the Fosbury Flop, I broke the school record doing the Western Roll. To me, if you’ve got to jump over a fence then you can’t expect there to be three soft mattresses the other side. You’ve got to land on your feet. Makes sense. Fosbury Flop? Bollocks. But there you are. When I broke the school high jump record I landed on my feet. Sensible jumping I’d say.
The finalists were me & Geoffrey Geeves. It couldn’t be decided in school hours so the showdown high jump was set up in the playground, after school.
Among the crowd, Maureen Clarke was watching.
I knew she had her eye set on classmate Alan Watkins, but she had a pretty face and I made that final leap for her. Interesting ain’t it? She was watching but she never knew. I won the contest and never saw her after or since. She inspired me to win it though.
But jumping, playing football, goin’ up the Spurs, fishing, even girls (for a while) were about to take second place.
It was Little Richard who turned me onto Rock ’n’ Roll. I was listening to Radio Luxembourg one night around 1956 and he came on. I was gone! This was the most exciting music I’d heard in my entire life! I went to school next day raving about him but nobody had heard of him. ‘Just wait ’til you do. He sings a song called ‘Rip-it-up’. He makes Bill Haley sound like Perry Como!’ I wouldn’t shut up about him. Not long after, me and my mates went to see ‘The Girl Can’t Help It’. Little Richard sang ‘Ready Teddy’ in the film. This was real Rock ’n’ Roll. My mates had to own up.
And I decided I wanted to be in there playing it.
I was about to find out that taking up music wasn’t as easy as taking up fishing or football. But once took up, it was gonna be impossible to put down.
I tried the piano, but couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Then all the time other Rock ’n’ Rollers were coming along and the feeling of wanting to do what they were doing became an obsession. It was where I was heading. I had no choice. Fats Domino, Jerry Lee, Larry Williams, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent and (although he wasn’t Rock ’n’ Roll but most definitely as exciting in his own way) Lonnie Donegan.
With him came Skiffle groups. Washboards, tea-chest basses and guitars. Guitar! ‘Now I think I’d get on alright with that,’ I remember saying to my Mum who really did want there to be a musician in the family. ‘Mum, I’d like to learn to play the guitar.’ Mum promised she’d get hold of one for me if I promised to learn to play it. I did and she did.
It was an old Spanish guitar she got off my Uncle Alf. It was the same guitar she remembered having round the house when she was a kid. I went over to Uncle Alf’s in Hackney to get it. I can still remember the smell of that guitar now. Uncle Alf had done it up. Filled all the cracks up with filler and given it a fresh coat of varnish. I arrived home proud. All I had to do now was to learn to play it and I was away. It looks pretty easy watchin’ ’em play on the telly, I thought. I could strum alright so I was halfway there. It shouldn’t take long.
‘How long does it take to play a guitar?’ It’s a question I’ve often been asked. When they find the answer to ‘How long is a piece of string?’ perhaps I can answer it. If one bloke knows two chords and his mate knows none, his mate thinks the two-chorder can play the guitar. But he don’t think so when he meets someone who knows four chords, and so on. In music you never stop learnin’. The advice I always give is to play every day even if it is only five minutes every day. Now that don’t sound long but you can bet your boots that once you’ve actually taken the step of pickin’ up the guitar you won’t put it down for at least an hour. Time flies when you are playing. Learn a new bit every day. Never think of the tenth step after the first, think of the second step. You’ll reach the tenth step sooner than you know it (as long as you don’t bang your head on the landing floor!).
I thought it was goin’ to be easy but I pretty soon owned up that although my strummin’ hand was reasonable, the noise that was comin’ out was rough. It needs tuning up, I decided. But how do I do that? My Mum got close. She tuned it to a piano chord and I began to play it by stickin’ one finger across all frets at different intervals to change to different chords. This didn’t sound bad but I had a feeling it wasn’t right. The guitar players I saw on the telly made different shapes with their fingers on the fretboard. I had to find out why.
Skiffle groups were beginning to spring up all over the place and there was one down our street. Bob Weston over the road had one. There was talk about how good he was on the guitar. ‘There’s the man to tune your guitar,’ Mum said. ‘Catch him on his way home from work and ask him to tune it.’
I waited at my front door one evening and waylaid him. He tuned it and impressed me with the few chords he casually strummed.
I came runnin’ in. I had found the key. Eureka! But when I ran my fingers over the strings it didn’t sound as good as my Mum’s tuning. (The proper guitar tuning is not tuned to a ‘chord’, so it doesn’t sound very musical when played ‘open’, I found out later.) I was more confused than ever. I got hold of a chord book next, and things began to look a little clearer. Then after study and right ‘shapes’ were played, it began to sound like a guitar.
But Mum really started me off. She figured out how to play the chords of ‘Bring a Little Water Sylvie’. Then she left off for me to carry on. I struggled with these chords. But I now knew how. And it was just a matter of time and practice.
My next-door neighbour but one, Johnny Wright, played the banjo and he taught me a few chords. I began practising like mad and I began to get quite good on the guitar. Now, as it happened, Mum noticed an advert in the sweet shop window round the corner that said ‘Guitarist/Banjo player wanted for the Horseshoe Skiffle Group’. That was Bob Weston’s Skiffle group, over the road. ‘Go and have a go,’ Mum said. I didn’t think I was quite good enough yet, but she kept on and I did.
I not only passed the audition, but I knew I had really impressed ’em with my guitar and banjo playing. (I had bought an old banjo for a shilling at a jumble sale.) I was in the group! Mum was right. I must be better than I thought I was. The first paying gig I ever did (‘playing jobs’ you called them in those days) was a hall over the top of the Britannia pub, Edmonton. Everyone remembers their first gig. We got paid as well! I felt a bit guilty about it. It wasn’t that we didn’t play well. We played alright, but in my experience you got paid money for doing something you didn’t like doin’, not for something you loved doin’, and would have done anyway. It didn’t make sense. Nevertheless I got used to it.
The band got better and we did more and more gigs in and around North London. The personnel changed as the band progressed. An electric guitar was added and I wanted to put Rock ’n’ Roll songs into the act. Little Richard’s ‘Rip-it-up’ was the first and it didn’t sound bad. Skiffle had been a big help to me, but I was ready to move on.
I was now a Rock’n’Roller.
Skiffle had played its part, and an important part. It got me started.