The Saturday list #412 - Ten life hacks I learned through being in a band

When, aged fifteen, I announced to my Dad that I was starting a band with my mate Pete Conway, he was horrified. His first reaction was "all pop stars are layabouts and drug addicts, is that what you want to become?". His second response was "You can't sing and you can't play an instrument, how are you ever going to start a band?". In answer to the first question, being a professional layabout didn't sound like the worst job in the world. My Dad would work until 7.30pm every night and come home covered in dirt and engine oil. He'd be cream crackered, have his dinner, have a bath and then drink Guinness and smoke fags, whilst watching News at Ten. My Dad generally had one weeks holiday a year, a Pilgrimmage to the Roman Catholic shrine of Lourdes. He'd take me along, and I loved spending time with him, but all my mates were going to places like Majorca to swim and go to theme parks. My Dad was such an amazing story teller, incredibly intelligent. I always felt it was a criminal shame that he never really had the time to do anything creative. He would have been a wonderful blogger. So yes, I quite liked the idea of being a professional layabout. In answer to his second question, we got jobs, saved up, bought instruments and learned to play. By the time we were ready to start, it was a year later. Our first band reheasal was 14th February 1979. It took us another year to get to the point where we actually had anything that was worth playing to anyone. In 1985, my Dad came down to watch us play at The Grahame Park festival. A day of glorious sunshine. He brought my cousin. a Roman Catholic missionary priest along, who was on a break from his work in Africa. Afterwards, I went for dinner at my parents. Dad apologised to me. He said he'd not realised how serious I was about music and how much work I'd put into what we'd created. 

Over the course of my life, many of the things I learned running the False Dots have come in very handy. I thought I'd share these with you. 

1. You won't achieve anything without the tools to do the job. The first challenge for the False Dots was to actually get instruments. You can't learn to play the guitar without a guitar. If you want to play punk rock, that meant also getting an amp. Pete Conway got a job at Dewhursts butchers and I got a paper round to buy the equipment. This is true whatever your profession. If you are a plumber, it is plumbing tools, if you are a website designer, it's website design tools. 

2. You need to learn to operate the tools of your chosen trade properly. Having procured the gear we needed, we spent a year practicing together, in my bedroom. As soon as we'd mastered a few chords, we started writing songs. They were all rubbish, but gave us the opportunity to practise and develop our technique. It kept us motivated and the progression in songwriting and playing was an incentive to work harder. You have to put the hard work in, but try and make sure that you can see progression, as this will help keep you going.

3. Build a team that can help you deliver your goals.  Having learned to play and written some songs, we set about recruiting band members. One of the biggest lessons I learned is that people move on. Having started the band with Pete, he left on the day of our first gig, not turning up. Luckily, by then, we were a five piece band, so managed to do it. A good team will see you through such calamities. This is always much harder than you'd think. The story of The False Dots bears testament to this.

4. Set yoruself clear goals and have a plan to realise them. Once we had a working band, our goal was to do as many gigs as possible. We achieved this and built up a nice circuit of gigs in London as well as touring in Scandinavia. Our set was very much geared to playing live and we thoroughly enjoyed doing gigs, Whilst we never earned enough consistently to live on, we did quite well in periods. In any walk of life it is good to set goals.

5. Make sure your goals align with a plan to ensure you make the most of your talents. One of the biggest failures of the False Dots in our early incarnation was to not align our goals with a proper plan to make what we were doing a sustainable income. As we were pretty good as a live band, we had the first building block, but as we didn't understand the music industry properly, we failed to ever move beyind small London gigs. When we made demo's it was always to get gigs, rather than to secure record deals that would have taken us to the next level. A few times we touted demo's to labels, but in a very chaotic way and in hindsight, it is not surprising that they had little interest. Ted Carroll at Chiswick records liked one of the tracks that we'd done with a synthesiser. Rather than develop this interest, we ended up dropping the track. A deal wasn't the priority, but it should have been. I always advise young musicians to envisage where you want to be in three years time, how you'd like your career to progress. You then build a plan around achieving that. You may not get there, but if you have no plan, then the chances are infinitely smaller. The same is true of any walk of life, whether your dream is to buy a home, go travelling to Australia or open your own business.

6. If you lack passion for what you do, you are much less likely to succeed. The thing that has sustained the False Dots for 44 years is a love of what we do. People sometimes ask me if I consider my band a success. I do. I thoroughly enjoy the gifts it has bestowed on me. It has also ensured that my business, which is Mill Hill Music Complex music studios always has the interests of musicians at its heart. If I didn't have the band, I may have given up on the studio a long time ago. I love having a studio, but the band is my passion. It gives me the fire to do all of the other things. I know people with passion for all manner of businesses. They are people who have successful lives. They may not be the richest people, but they are the happiest and that is what I measure success as.

7. Use your time productively. This is the most important lesson. The False Dots rehearse weekly. We have five types of rehearsals. The first we rarely do, this is where we integrate new members. This involves playing through the songs in the set and concentrating on playing them correctly. The second  is rehearsals for gigs. This involves playing the songs once through as we would play them at the gig. If there are any problems, we then revisit the song at the end. The third is songwriting rehearsals. We tend to play an abridged version of the set to warm up, have a break then spend an hour or so sorting out a new song. The fourth is the pre production rehearsal, similar to the third, but we concentrate in avery focussed manner on the transitions etc in songs. The final reheasal is the post gig rehearsal, when we don't have much on the horizon. These are relaxed affairs, where we generally try a few new ideas on old songs to keep them fresh. I think it is really important to ensure that you maintain focus on the job in hand, whatever that is.

8. Listen to the experts and learn. I am lucky in life, luck is my super power. I have had some wonderful mentors. When we started, our drummers Dad was Hank Marvin. He gave me some wonderful tips on how to present yourself as a guitarist. We did our first demo with Alan Warner of The Foundations. Alan has always been a wonderful mentor. He is always receptive to ideas and always has something interesting to say. Boz Boorer, Morrissey's former musical director is another great influence. He is producing our album and his influence is invaluable. Whatever your chosen field, finding a suitable mentor and good advisors is a surefire way to improve your chances of success.

9. People have their own agendas and stab you in the back, get over it. One of the main reasons that The False Dots failed to reach their potential in their first incarnation was because certain ex members simply saw the band as a stepping stone on their own path. They saw a successful, gigging band and used it as a way to open doors, leaving the band in the lurch at the worst possible time. The first couple of times that this happened it was devastating. Experience taught me to get over it and always have a plan B in the back pocket. I didn't appreciate that even though they'd used the band, they'd helped us realise goals. One ex member sarcastically commented to me when they left "I suppose that next month you'll be out with a brand new line up and the same name". I replied "Yes, why wouldn't we?". It actually spurred me to not cancel the forthcoming gigs and do just that. It is hard to deal with friends letting you down, but it is part of life. Don't let it destroy you.

10. The time to stop doing something is when you don't enjoy it. I stopped playing with the band between 1990 and 1998. I just lost all passion for it. I felt what we were doing was stale and realised I was just going through the motions as I felt I should. Stopping was liberating. I had time to do other stuff and not having to worry about keeping a band going was a big weight off my shoulders. I fully intended stopping forever. In 1998, I was persuaded to have a jam. We'd opened our recording studio and the idea of "properly recording the old numbers" appealed to me. When I started playing again, I realised that I needed to be in a band to be fulfilled. Initially, it was just a very occasional thing, but over the last few years, I came to realise that the band has something and we should be playing regularly and making records and videos. Stopping was the right thing. So was starting again. If it isn't working for you, put it down, whatever it is. Get your energy back and start again.

The band are recording a new single. We made this little documentary about it, to give you some idea of how we do this and how much fun it is.