1. The Beatles - Eleanor Rigby
What is this? Started on a half-drunken and mildly euphoric Friday evening, listening to Tom Petty and to Paul McCartney and to Kate Bush, and thinking to myself that I love music and I love writing and sometimes, just sometimes, a friend or family member reads something that I write and says they enjoyed it. That's enough incentive on top of the self-satisfaction. So here's what this is...
Nick Hornby, fellow working class roots turned educated lower middle class Arsenal obsessive (ok, for me, 'former' obsessive) once wrote a book called '31 Songs' in which he described the autobiographical context of 31 songs that he associated with certain points in his life. It's definitely my sort of book.
So that's my inspiration. I worked out that I have 30 such songs, so it won't quite test your patience as much. Really, it's because I enjoy writing it, but if you get any satisfaction out of any it, then all the better.
So, to begin at the beginning....
The first time I picked up a record and listened to it and was, to coin a trite phrase, 'blown away' (there'll be lot of being blown away over these 30 songs) was in the cigarette smoke filled lounge of 94, Linden Way, North London, home to my family in the second half of the Seventies. The record in question was the RED album by the Beatles, a post-break-up compilation of their best stuff from 1962-66. At the age of 8 or 9, there's nothing like a melody. I think people, probably men more than women, grow out of melodies as they become adults and then start to find them increasingly appealing again, once they hit their forties. A bit like politically incorrect jokes. Anyway, The Beatles (and McCartney in particular) were the masters of melody. Although Eleanor Rigby struck me as the most unique and Michelle may have been my favourite at that time, every song etched itself into my mind, so they became unforgettable.
My mum didn't have the BLUE album, which covered the years 1967-70, because she went off them when they 'went a bit weird'. I'm not sure how much I would have enjoyed the later stuff at that age. Ten years later I loved the later stuff and with typically stubborn, opinionated and narrow-minded teenage contemptuousness, I refused to listen to anything the Beatles did before HELP! in '65. The first two sides of the RED album was just throwaway, childish pop. I love you, you love me, yeah yeah yeah pop. (I was about 40 when I started to like it again.)
My Mum had been a big fan, because she was 10 when Love Me Do was released. And a girl. And at the time, every girl loved The Beatles. She was living in St John's Wood during the 60s, which is where McCartney famously bought his London home, a short walk from Abbey Road; and towards the end of the decade, Mum worked in Courtney's the chemist on the High Street and McCartney was a regular customer, in disguise, and so my Mum has that link that I've always enjoyed knowing.
In addition to loving the music when I listened to it, this was also my first experience of the much-lauded kinaesthetic joy that comes with handling a record and looking at its sleeve as it plays. And the awe and mystery of how a flat vinyl disc makes those sounds. Even now, it makes no sense. A diamond stylus in a groove produces the sounds that it does? Nope, I haven't a clue. It shouldn't work, should it?
Finally, returning to the song itself. Eleanor Rigby. You can't underestimate the capacity for an 8 or 9 year old to be moved by pathos. I believed that this lonely woman existed and McCartney painted the picture and created the story with such simple genius. If I learned a lesson about myself in regard to this song (albeit unconsciously) it's that maybe I'm more moved by fiction than fact. I probably encountered several lonely people at that time: Nutty Anna, an old Greek widow with facial hair who knew no English and talked to us so fast that it seemed like she just kept repeating the nonsensical word 'shemagalla' as she pulled our cheeks and kissed us; Dorothy, who sold Avon and liked me and my friends to visit her in her flat so she could give us travel sweets and Tizer; Steve Adams, the boy in our class who was cursed with the full house of socially isolating afflictions - stupidity, body odour, a speech impediment and fatness. I didn't feel sorry for them, but I felt sorry for Eleanor Rigby. I know. I'm a bit of a bastard.
Nick Hornby, fellow working class roots turned educated lower middle class Arsenal obsessive (ok, for me, 'former' obsessive) once wrote a book called '31 Songs' in which he described the autobiographical context of 31 songs that he associated with certain points in his life. It's definitely my sort of book.
So that's my inspiration. I worked out that I have 30 such songs, so it won't quite test your patience as much. Really, it's because I enjoy writing it, but if you get any satisfaction out of any it, then all the better.
So, to begin at the beginning....
The first time I picked up a record and listened to it and was, to coin a trite phrase, 'blown away' (there'll be lot of being blown away over these 30 songs) was in the cigarette smoke filled lounge of 94, Linden Way, North London, home to my family in the second half of the Seventies. The record in question was the RED album by the Beatles, a post-break-up compilation of their best stuff from 1962-66. At the age of 8 or 9, there's nothing like a melody. I think people, probably men more than women, grow out of melodies as they become adults and then start to find them increasingly appealing again, once they hit their forties. A bit like politically incorrect jokes. Anyway, The Beatles (and McCartney in particular) were the masters of melody. Although Eleanor Rigby struck me as the most unique and Michelle may have been my favourite at that time, every song etched itself into my mind, so they became unforgettable.
My mum didn't have the BLUE album, which covered the years 1967-70, because she went off them when they 'went a bit weird'. I'm not sure how much I would have enjoyed the later stuff at that age. Ten years later I loved the later stuff and with typically stubborn, opinionated and narrow-minded teenage contemptuousness, I refused to listen to anything the Beatles did before HELP! in '65. The first two sides of the RED album was just throwaway, childish pop. I love you, you love me, yeah yeah yeah pop. (I was about 40 when I started to like it again.)
My Mum had been a big fan, because she was 10 when Love Me Do was released. And a girl. And at the time, every girl loved The Beatles. She was living in St John's Wood during the 60s, which is where McCartney famously bought his London home, a short walk from Abbey Road; and towards the end of the decade, Mum worked in Courtney's the chemist on the High Street and McCartney was a regular customer, in disguise, and so my Mum has that link that I've always enjoyed knowing.
In addition to loving the music when I listened to it, this was also my first experience of the much-lauded kinaesthetic joy that comes with handling a record and looking at its sleeve as it plays. And the awe and mystery of how a flat vinyl disc makes those sounds. Even now, it makes no sense. A diamond stylus in a groove produces the sounds that it does? Nope, I haven't a clue. It shouldn't work, should it?
Finally, returning to the song itself. Eleanor Rigby. You can't underestimate the capacity for an 8 or 9 year old to be moved by pathos. I believed that this lonely woman existed and McCartney painted the picture and created the story with such simple genius. If I learned a lesson about myself in regard to this song (albeit unconsciously) it's that maybe I'm more moved by fiction than fact. I probably encountered several lonely people at that time: Nutty Anna, an old Greek widow with facial hair who knew no English and talked to us so fast that it seemed like she just kept repeating the nonsensical word 'shemagalla' as she pulled our cheeks and kissed us; Dorothy, who sold Avon and liked me and my friends to visit her in her flat so she could give us travel sweets and Tizer; Steve Adams, the boy in our class who was cursed with the full house of socially isolating afflictions - stupidity, body odour, a speech impediment and fatness. I didn't feel sorry for them, but I felt sorry for Eleanor Rigby. I know. I'm a bit of a bastard.
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