Part Three

The Autumn of 1994 saw a lot of changes in my life – a lot of friends, including Ian Jones, whom I was still playing songs with, went to University, and I signed on the dole, and moved out of the family home for the first time, to a house with friends on the other side of town.

Keir and I were still in the midst of getting the band going. We bought a PA system, recorded three songs for a demo tape (that I still have a copy of), and played a couple of gigs, including the one at the Princess Charlotte mentioned in part two. However, getting personnel for the band was proving highly difficult – we’d tried several bassists, including my housemate Steve Howe and one Dan Foley, who may or may not still have the only surviving tape of our entire repertoire which we loaned him to learn the songs from. I’d give anything to get that cassette back, but I fear it is long gone. Drummers were proving even more difficult. We’d tentatively played a bit with erstwhile Lolita Street drummer Matt Ball, but he wasn’t really interested and soon moved to Leicester to pursue his theatrical ambitions. We put an ad in a local music shop and it garnered precisely one result - A gentleman called Lindsay (apparently) who rang up and said, "The band – I take it it’s ROCK?"

It wasn’t, so sadly he turned us down. Or did we just not call him back? I suspect it was the latter. Eventually, we found a decent drummer called Dean, who was a devotee of the Who, Weller, and all things mod. We had a few rehearsals with him in Leicester, with me and Steve taking it in turns on the bass. The best thing I remember was an absolutely storming version of the Beatles’ Don’t Let Me Down, and a long version of our own Universe Inside. It all finally seemed to be coming together.

And then…

… Not a lot happened, really. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where things went wrong, but go wrong they did. Keir and I drifted apart a little. For some reason, moving out of home had temporarily dried up my writing powers, and although Keir was still coming up with cracking new riffs and chord progressions, I couldn’t match it. One song from that time, called Forever, was a tribute to my then girlfriend Madeleine, and it was barely adequate – the sentiments were nice, and reading it back now brings back some happy memories, but it wasn’t of a high enough standard.

As 1994 became 1995, things drifted along aimlessly, and I saw less and less of Keir. People moved in and out of my house, I split up with Madeleine, met a girl called Jessica, saw her for a while, split up, drank a lot, smoked a lot, self-harmed quite a bit, and generally did very little productive. I was slowly spiralling down towards some deep depression, where I stayed in a terrible fugue until a half-hearted suicide attempt took me onto Prozac, via casualty and a solitary visit to a psychiatrist.

Slowly, things got better. Steve and his live-in girlfriend Liz split up, and she moved out. We listened to a lot of Oasis, and played guitar together quite a lot. The summer was coming, it seemed the gloom of the spring was lifted, and eventually, my song-writing muse returned from wherever it had been secreting itself. Behind Closed Doors, which was ostensibly about a friends anorexia, had a few morbid lines about self-harm - "I wear the scars with a mixture of pride and shame" – and self denial - "The home truths soured by self propagation, the real me disguised with jewellery and dye" – but in general the songs were less introspective than before, some nostalgia, but little melancholy.

If you’ve read my Britpop Saved My Life article elsewhere on this site, you may recall me mentioning an occasion where Steve and I were driving across the country running after a heavy electric storm. The incident led to a song called Chasing A Storm (some kind of sequel to Caught In A Storm, perhaps?) that although it never got put to music, seems now like some sort of rallying cry with a more forward looking, optimistic approach. Its closing lines are:

"Love can flourish in tomorrow’s smile

The air is clear

It’s a beautiful day to be alive"

Over that great Britpop summer of 1995, I didn’t write a great deal, as my diary from that era points out to me. I was too busy enjoying myself and learning to be happy again to write a great deal, although I was playing more and more guitar, and a few lyrics and poems did creep out through the nights of laughter and beer. Although this is supposed to be more about songs than poetry, I’ve found one that I remember writing whilst lying on the floor of Steve’s flat, that I’d like to show you, because in its potted-autobiography type way, it’s one of my favourites. It’s a bit pretentious, as a lot of poetry is, but there are a few lines that I’m quite proud of. Sadly, it has no name.

Can you still see childhood

Through the windows and walls of years?

The smells & sounds that tripped you

The strange new beauty that filled your eyes

Do you remember

The compulsion to grow up

Fighting with innocence and safety of being young?

Did you ever realise

That the walk through adolescence to adulthood

Kills the simplicity of youth

Leaving you a stranger

Stranded from the past

Walks in the street

The school

The ice cream van

The playground & the river

Hot sun

No desires

Freedom

Years of certainty with friends in class

A pleasure in learning when everyone was clever

Football on the concrete

Running on the grass

Then the first kiss

Exploration of what will become love & sex

Timid but thrilled by new sensations

And as the windows start to open

A door begins to close

All change in the early teenage winter

Puberty separates the friendships that awoke

Without the need to understand

Everything to prove

Everyone takes a stand

Taunts, hatred

Fear provoking laughter that hurts

Where once it would have just drifted past

Retreat into solitude and dreams

Wishes that cannot come true but have to

Home becomes the warm bed after a nightmare

And then the knowledge arrives

Fight back by joining in

Bury sensitivity with security

And pray for forgiveness

Survival takes a heavy toll

The scars fade but never heal

Ignore

Give thanks

Still alive

And no longer running

New school, new start

Another chance

Rediscover girls in a new summer light

Paled with understanding

First love?

When looking back, you’ll laugh and cry

But the feeling,

Raw and unshaped by experience

Will remain an undying beauty forever

Young & free

Friends and music, drinking and laughter

Bright nights

Cigarettes on the swings

Kissing and fighting, the magic of sixteen

The power in songs

Madness, mystery

A strange new world

The music is a journey into your soul

Discoveries within the melody

Secrets uncovered by words

And your dreams begin through someone else’s

Learning to write what is inside

Colouring your hopes on paper

Engraving your fears in ink

Create yourself from the inside out

Facing the world is easier now

But years ago,

Did you think you had to?

In a short time,

Childhood has evaporated

In the onset of adulthood

No time to say goodbye

No postcards or photographs

Memories peel and burn

Being young is out of sight

Can’t see the windows anymore,

But the mist is from a new dawn

And a lifetime of rediscovery begins

As you endlessly search for that

Purity and happiness of youth

That will now lie undisturbed

Forever

To be continued...