September 7th – I know, I'm a day late with this...it was my birthday yesterday and I was busy opening presents; OK? Two events today that pinpoint
both ends of the spectrum when it comes to the music industry…don’t know why I
wrote that, dislike the description intensely; it’s not an industry it’s
creative art. There, that’s set the record straight. Right.
I think it was the event of his death that probably first made
me aware of music and its performers and the truth that neither is forever.
Yes, of course, genres move on, develop, mature into bigger (not always better)
renditions of what’s gone before; that’s what makes music the live and
untameable animal it is, no, I’m on about individuals and what they bring (or
remove) to and from the table of musical entertainment.
I was just 10 years old (1958) and into my fifth year of
schooling. We had a playground that sported a length of iron railings at the
bottom of a slope and it was here we used to play kiss and run and which also formed one end of the British Bulldog Safehouse (B.B.). It was
our third day back at school (that’s the bugger with having it in
September…always too short a time to enjoy whatever presents I got before I had
to forsake them for the vagaries of formal education) and I was walking across
the playground, having just arrived, when I passed a gang of the older boys in
earnest conversation. Well, I say older, I mean they were only just 11 but the
distance that put between them and those kids who were only 10? Immeasurable.
One of them gobbed on the floor before continuing;
…It was dad said, said
he’d taken a plane and it’d crashed…dad said it was a terrible thing and mum
said, ‘Just think of his poor wife’.
Another of the boys continued;
Buddy Holly, blimey…
Those three words stuck with me and I repeated the tale to
Stuart Kerry, one of my mates as we met up to play ‘B.B.’
No, the bottom didn’t drop out of my world or anything even
vaguely momentous. I knew of Buddy Holly, who was born on this day in 1936, I liked
very much his work, had bought several of his singles and was a real fan of Peggy Sue and That’ll Be the Day, but I can’t say this was the day the music died
for me. What I can say is, on that morning, I first understood with just this one
piece of news that no-one was spared; no matter what, death claims all; no
fear, no favour. There’s a cheerful little soul I was, and now you can see why
I get so few party invites…life-and-soul of the wake, me.
22. That’s all Mr. Holly was. 22. No parent should have to
bury their own kids, should they? Given that, I can only offer an inadequate
and belated thank you for what he left me in his will, Rave On, Words of Love
and for me probably his best work ever, Love
is Strange. Listening to that my birthday is Everyday…cue for another song
of Mr. Holly’s.
Those who know me and my chequered
(some would say nefarious) past know that I’m was and still am, at heart, a
rock drummer; and that statement carries with it all the baggage that occurs to
you when you read it. Slightly flaky,
I believe, are the words used by many musicians to describe the temperament and
honour of drummers; set of grand wankers
are the words used by drummers to describe all other musicians. Yes it’s true,
drummers can be flaky but when you look at the dweebs they have to work with
it’s hardly surprising; enough to make a saint shag a rat. We’re a breed apart,
drummers, probably further along the evolutionary chain than other beings and
possessing a sense of humour that, at best, can be described as dark and do an excellent line in irony.
Drummers tend to gravitate in lumps, they usually hunt in packs, usually
six-packs, and they are fiercely loyal to the highest payer… Such a one was
Keith Moon, who died this day in 1978. Where’s the dark humour and irony? Well,
Mr. Moon was an alcoholic who O/D’s on the medicine he had been prescribed to
help him kick the drinking habit. 32. That’s all he was. Just 32 and one of a
kind in the world of drumming; I don’t think there was another band that could
have used his style of percussion to the degree that The Who did…don’t know of another band that would have put up with
his antics with more patient aplomb than The
Who…as drummer’s go he was probably the one most affected with the Holy
Trinity of drummers; insecurity, inventiveness and inebriation.
I share my birthday with both these events and the giant
personalities they describe, so causes for both celebration and commiseration…but
then, I also share my birthday with the eventual fatal shootings of Barry Sadler
(Green Beret pop song?) and Tupac
(Shakur?)…make of that what you will as you break out the Bolli…
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