music

Music's always played a big part in my life and my earliest memory is listening to the radio. 2-Way Family Favourites and Housewives' Choice, which my mother listened to every week provided part of the soundtrack of my childhood, introducing me to, among much else, Nellie the Elephant, The Laughing Policeman and Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, always played as the grand finale. Then, in 1962, I can't remember what prompted me to turn the radio on at 4.00 one Sunday afternoon, but I know that I heard Pick of the Pops with Alan Freeman for the first time around then. I'd been aware of Saturday Club in the background of busy Saturday mornings, but not really listened to it; on Sunday afternoons, though, my parents tended to fall asleep over the papers after Sunday lunch, so I had the radio to myself.
I looked at a list of the top twenty number one singles for 1962 the other day and was overwhelmed with memories; I could remember almost every line of every song. I know that memories of things experienced when young go very deep and stay there, certainly these songs, the only pop music I listened to then are virtually imprinted into my DNA. The first Number One I remember ever hearing was Frank Ifield's I Remember You and I can recall every note, every yodel. Other singers I remember well from that time were Roy Orbison, Del Shannon and Neil Sedaka and their songs were always in the charts.
Anyway, that was it; I discovered Radio Luxembourg soon after, and then of course, the tidal wave of the Beatles crashed on to the scene, drowning everything. Nothing would ever be the same again. We had fierce debates at school over who was the best Beatle, and then, when the Rolling Stones appeared, the class was divided into camps, Stones versus Beatles, and we spent our breaktimes arguing passionately. When With the Beatles was released, I remember going round to a friend's house on a dark December afternoon to hear it for the first time as her older sister had just bought it, and we sat round the dansette record player on the floor, listening to it in silence, over and over again. I still know every line, every note, of every song, by heart and I suppose most people of my generation do.
The next major development was pirate radio which opened up our musical horizons further and we used to spend our breaktimes talking endlesslyabout the songs and DJ's we'd heard on Radion London. I don't think our teachers had the faintest idea that our minds, our whole beings, were being gradually colonised by music. I can only speak for myself, but I was totally obsessed with music, with clothes and boys coming second (although they were important - I was a teenager after all). I'd started going out to a club where Motown and soul held centre stage - my schoolfriends and I were mods, or thought we were, and danced around our handbags to Sam and Dave and the Temptations, among many others.
Bob Dylan, though, was always there, and, although the only music of his I knew were his hits, Tambourine Man and Blowing in the Wind, I knew that he was special. I bought a book of his songs complete with music, and, as I was learning the piano at the time, I doggedly laboured over Chimes of Freedom and many other early songs - I hadn't got a clue how they should sound as I'd never heard them, but they moved me deeply and I played them (very badly) over and over again. Then gradually his songs could be heard on the radio more often, and Highway 61 and Blonde on Blonde became part of the soundtrack of my life.
My horizons opened up further as I discovered bands such as Jefferson Airplane and the Doors. America music of the hippy era was what me and my friends were listening to now and soul became deeply unfashionable and a bit of a joke. West Coast music was now of central importance and we began to think that music had the potential to change society. Almost nothing else mattered. But when punk and new-wave hit the country in the mid-Seventies I found that it was more to my liking; the Clash, Talking Heads, Television etc. and I've realised that this is the music I enjoy the most. I've always retained a love of the short, snappy pop songs that I grew up with in the early Sixties and have returned to them.
I'm pretty eclectic in my musical taste, all the same, and I'm listening to Patti Smith and Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers a lot at the moment, but am also enjoying Rufus Wainwright and Richard Hawley, about as different as it's possible to be. There's classical music as well, of course, but that's another story......