26th September 1969 was a Friday. I was 15 and getting ready to fail my GCSEs the following summer. Yup, I am what they call a Late Developer… always have been, always will be! I was probably playing Subbuteo up in my room, or kicking a ball in the garden, or belittling my sister, or strumming on my first guitar, or being a goodie two-shoes and setting the dinner table, there behind the lace curtains in suburban north London. The lupins were over, but not of course, the weeping willow.
That day my father did something unexpected… he bought me a freshly released album - Abbey Road by The Beatles. This was a Big Deal – he never understood me, and he certainly didn’t understand The Beatles. But he’d heard the news that day (oh boy) and he knew well enough what mattered to me, even if not why. Years later he was aghast when I sold my orange Mini, and spent the entire proceeds on a second-hand Guild D50. ‘A car for… a guitar? What are you thinking?’
He arrived home from work and handed me a large bag with a broad smile on his face. ‘Go on, open it!’ he said. I don’t know who was more delighted – me, with the present, or him, for the joy he could see on my face.
Release day for a new record is special. There’s a quiet before the storm. Before reviews, charts, airplay, fan consensus - when it could turn out to be a triumph or a disaster. We’d already had Sgt Pepper, and then The White Album focused on ‘songs’ rather than amazing new production techniques. But then there was Yellow Submarine – had they lost their touch? So the expectation, the tension, the wonder, the sheer importance of this in my life – we knew we were in the middle of music history. Momentous!
Not many people will ever listen to my new album (though a few thousand have clocked in to the first video) - yet the day of its release (this Friday) will be as magical for me, myself, as that day in September 1969.
I will wake up at 5:30, the early summer sun filtering through like a lemon drop. In my Long Covid stupor, around 6:30 I will summon the energy to fire up my phone, and stretch for 20 minutes, listening to a podcast. I’ll have a shower. I will empty the dishwasher. I will feed the robin. I’ll have a breakfast of fruit, cottage cheese and toasted seeds. Coffee. Then I’ll settle down in my studio.
First thing – has the distributor done their job? Is the record actually live? Is it really on Spotify, Tidal and Apple Music? Is it there on Bandcamp where people buy the CDs?
I’ll pull up my website and change the ‘Coming soon!’ type banner. I’ll press ‘Post!’ on this blog, and I will update the copy dotted around the site. I’ll change my Linktree so that people can easily find everything that’s changed - music, films, this blog etc. I’ll go live with it on Soundcloud. I’ll launch my next video – Satellite Love – on YouTube. I’ll give that an advertising kick in the pants. I will try and add a couple of videos to Spotify – a new thing I’ve not done before. I will submit a track to BBC Introducing - a route to get new music heard for independents. But that’s a fool’s errand – it’s OK outside London. But the submission numbers are huge in the capital, so it’s barely worth the effort. I might put a post on LinkedIn – a sheer act of rebellion, where my profile has gradually morphed from bigging up my erstwhile career, to saying ‘Look all you suits! I got out!’. I’ll post on Instagram, wondering if I’m overdoing it…
I will go for a stroll with my earbuds in and listen to the album once again, imagining I’m coming to it fresh; trying to second-guess others’ first experience of it.
Apart from giving me immense and deep satisfaction, there is always the question – isn't this all hubris? Is it worth it? Why not just write and maybe record for my own enjoyment? What’s the point?
It’s a perennial conundrum for artists like me – on the one hand, belief in the work, and the need to create and share. The absolute imperative to drive through with whatever level you have of support, approval and ‘validation’. On the other, the fear that you’re a fraud, that no-one cares a fig, that you are a talentless self-plagiarising hack with no original thought. That it’s all self-indulgence, and you’re simply curating your life, trying to paint a patina of a unique identity.
That’s the usual model. This time feels entirely different. The illness, with its huge impact on my life, the time it’s taken, the struggle to record. The genuine belief that the making of the work is all that matters. The respect for all the musicians, engineers, artists, photographers, videographers, designers – their contributions, my love of being with, working with, creating with, others. The deep warmth of a job done to the best of your abilities.
I really did seriously badly in my GCSEs: it wasn’t what mattered to me then. I was inspired just in time, the following year, by two wonderful idiosyncratic teachers – John Lewis and Ivan Marks. John was in his 80s and was a member of the Bloomsbury Set (yes, Virgina Woolf et al), a communist with 7 separate doctorates - some honorary from the USSR. Ivan was in his 30s - squat, long-haired, short-sighted, cynical and saw counter-cultural politics in everything. They taught in my strait-laced, religious school – and were clear outliers: outlaws even. Each in their own way showed me it was OK to follow my own path, and to trust it. The path would widen, split, become focused at different times and in different ways, with different themes. Just like everyone of course. I’ve so loved the ride, and now – as ever - I’m enjoying and celebrating this very moment, as I strut my stuff again – someday soon, live on stage!