Atoning for my misspent youth

It's fair to say that most people are not the same when they are 47 as when they are 17. I like to think I've grown up a little bit (god you must think, what was he like then?). In truth, I was pretty awful. aged 14 I threw myself lock, stock and two smoking barrells into Punk Rock, its ethics and its morality. I had the morals of a polecat (and probably the personal hygene to match). Strangely this never really seemed to put too many young ladies off. In my early teens, when I was at Finchley Catholic High School, the best source of local girls was St Michaels Catholic Grammar School down the road. Many of these girls got the 221 bus home with us. Often we'd congregate around Tally Ho corner and try and entice them with bags of chips or other suitable culinary delights. These early attempts were invariably doomed to failure. As the scruffiest and most objectionable kid at the school, with a poor acedemic record, I wasn't really at the games with the aspiring and clever young ladies at St Michaels. Then one day a miracle occurred. Bill Grundy decided to interview the Sex Pistols on the Today program.

All of a sudden, being a smelly oaf was cool. Pete Conway and myself, decided that this was an opportunity far too good to be missed and took our complete lack of musical talent seriously. We formed the False Dots. We were in a band. All of a sudden the ladies who had crossed the road and held up their noses, started to find us interesting. All of a sudden, the fact we were skint, scruffy and objectionable didn't matter. Sadly the school I was attending didn't quite see my charm in the same way and I headed on over to Orange Hill Senior High School. This had the added advantage of the girls being on site. Through circumstance and other reasons I won't go into right now, I ended up spending a lot of time hanging around with a few young ladies who lived in various squats in the Kings Cross/ Notting Hill area. Given that this would have not gone down too well at home, I kept this all rather quiet.

Although my grades improved at school as I developed better coping strategies for my dyslexia, my lyfestyle choices didn't help my grades. Band rehearsals, attending gigs and hanging around dinghy flats seemed far more attractive than actually working. I had a handy stream of spare cash from my rehearsal studio and other schemes I'd cooked up, so the paper round could be dispensed with. As the bands local fame and notoriety increased, we enjoyed a halcyon period where life was a complete scream. Life seemed to be one long party. All of those snobby girls from St Michaels now chased us. We didn't have to do anything at all. As an aside, let me share a little secret with you, which sometimes makes me giggle. Mike Freer's much feared favourite henchwoman Vanessa Gearson was a snobby St Michaels girl. She was credited with killing Iain Duncan-Smith's leadership of the Tory party. I get the feeling she doesn't like me and I've often wondered why? Anyway, I digress.

As with all parties, sooner or later they come to an end. In my case, this happened in 1984. The band was on the verge of major success, but we split up. I'd managed to have a steady relationship for two years at the time and this went as well. As if all of this wasn't bad enough, my health went. Oddly enough it wasn't my poor lifestyle which done for me, but a misprescription of a drug. When you wake up one morning throwing up blood uncontrollably, you know you are in trouble. When you spend six weeks in bed, you know things are serious. Now how does a brush with the grim reaper affect you?

It affected me in a rather strange way. I stopped drinking for six months. I started madly practicing the guitar for three hours a day. I started trying to write proper songs. I started to formulate a plan for my studio, to build it into the best studio in North West London.

So why is all of this relevent? What's it all got to do with the price of fish? Well on Tuesday night we had the first session of Sound Skool, a project run by YMCA at our studios. It gives young people aged 14-18, who are not in education, training or employment the opportunity to undertake a 10 week accredited course in Music Production, DJ'ing, MC'ing Singing or Band Skills. It's completely free and is held on a Tuesday evening between 5pm and 8pm. The courses are fully booked (in fact well over subscribed).

You can find out more about the Sound Skool project here -  http://www.facebook.com/soundskool
We are now looking for candidates for our next set of courses starting in September. If you are 14-18, not in education or training and have 3 hours free on a Tuesday night, get in touch.

I've got many things wrong in my life. I've made a stack of mistakes, but there are some things I am truly proud of. Helping to get the Sound Skool project off the ground is one of them. The great thing about running your own company is you can spend your profits on what the hell you like. I urge everyone who has their own business to put a little bit back into the community. The pictures on the blog are just a few of the young people who came down on Tuesday evening. To me that's a source of pride. When your dyslexic kids start misbehaving, coming home mashed, playing music you detest, talk to them, help them, advise them. When I started my band, my Dad let me have the use of one of his garages to rehearse in. He told me to rent it out and make a bit of money from other bands. I daresay he wouldn't of approved of much of what happened, he wasn't stupid, but he turned a blind eye. He ran me to hospital when I was bleeding to death, I probably knocked ten years off his life one way or another. He never saw the success we became, but we were turning the corner when he died in 1987. I believe that wherever he is, he's a bit proud of what we've done. I just know I'm lucky to have had such a wise father. I can't say thanks to him for what he did, but I can live in a spirit he would have liked. Have fun, enjoy life and give something back