Stick with me on this. Although it may seem like it, this is not a blog about my band and music. It's just that it is the best way to illustrate what is going through my head right now. Life is strange. I was chatting to a former musician in the pub on Friday night. Nice chap, used to play the Trumpet. He stopped playing when he was twenty two. Why? He just wanted to do other things. I was thinking about what I said and I reflected on when I was twenty two. Specifically the 24th August 1984, two days after my 24th birthday. My band, The False Dots were playing at Hendon Rugby club. I can recall nothing of the actual gig and playing, but I can recall that I was in a pretty bad place mentally. My mind had been in turmoil for a couple of months. In February, everything had seemed brilliant. The band played at Dingwalls, we acquired a manager and were promised a record deal with EMI records. We went into the studio and recorded a demo. It was pretty good, it was the first professionally produced demo we'd made. The manager said "Don't worry about anything, I'll sort it all out". We had a residency at The Bald Faced Stag in Burnt Oak, which was actually great as they paid us and it kept us focused, whilst our new manager "sorted things out". He sorted us out a gig at The Pindar of Wakefield, which is now The Water Rats. We played with several other bands and were by far the best band on the night. Various record company people were there. I think we were as on the button as we have ever been.
I expected the phone call to sign a record deal. None came. The manager didn't answer the phone. Eventually I went around to his house and asked him what was going on. His answer stunned me. Bascially they weren't interested in a band lead by a black woman. I was absolutely gob smacked. He also informed me that he was no longer interested in managing us. Some of the things he said were actually quite vile. He said that as far as he was concerned, he had thought that Venessa, our singer was the only real asset the band had and the labels didn't like her image. I queried how they could have drawn that conclusion after the totally brilliant gig they'd seen. He said "There is a big difference between entertaining a bunch of losers in a shitty London pub and having a hit record".
I'd told the band that I was going to see him. I was sharing a flat with Venessa and Bill, the guitarist. I went home with the weight of the world on my shoulders. I didn't feel able to share his comments with Venessa. They were horrible. I was angry, upset but most of all devastated. I passionately believed he was wrong about the band. One of his comments was that our material was not commercial and the quality of songwriting was appalling. As I was the main songwriter, this also was a blow. As a 22 year old, this had a bad effect and I dealt with it by going on a bit of a boozing binge. The net result of this, was that when I returned, my then girlfriend threw an alarm clock at me and I had to have 19 stitches in my head. We split up for a couple of weeks. We got back together. The next gig was at The Hendon Rugby club. It was two days after my birthday. I can recall sitting on my own, after the gig and feeling as bereft as I've ever felt in my life. I felt totally alone. I just wanted to sit there and be left alone. I think the gig was pretty good (as I said I can't remember), but I felt terrible about life.
I felt that I had to make a decision, that would affect the rest of my life. Should I walk away from music and the band. I was deep in thought. I looked around, everyone else in the band were having a great time. All our friends were there and having a great time. I was sitting on my own, having the worst time imaginable. That moment is seared into my brain. I made several extremely bad decisions that night. We did one more gig with Venessa in the band, but that line up and in my mind, The False Dots were over. I replaced the band with some rather unhealthy habits. My relationship ended. I was 22 and I ended up back at home, then my health collapsed and I spent several months in and out of hospital. At one stage I couldn't get out of the hospital bed for several weeks and had to learn to walk again.
I was lucky in that my employer was sympathetic. By March, I had got myself mentally together. I got a room in a shared house. I hadn't had a drink for six months and the money I saved, I bought a port-a-studio. I enrolled in a professional songwriting course. I had taken all of the managers comments and worked out a plan to address every aspect. I realised that the songs could be a lot better, so the course would address that. My playing was sub-standard, so I'd practice every day for 1-2 hours. EMI records didn't like my lyrics or the subject matter I addressed. I had a choice. I could write stuff that didn't mean anything to me, put together a bland band that met their current whims, or I could accept that The False Dots would always be outsiders, an indie band. I decided to chase my dream. My dream had never been to be a guitarist in a manufactured band. It had been to do gigs playing music I liked. We had always wanted to set up our own label or be on an indie label. So that would be the goal. I thought about the other criticisms of the band. I realised that they were based on the premise that we should be a bland pop band, chasing chart success. That wasn't us. I was gutted that Venessa was no longer in the band. I thought long and hard. I realised that when the False Dots did our next gig, we had to be very different from what people had seen from us before.
By the end of March, I had a plan for my life. Wheras my drinking buddy from Friday night had reached that point and stopped. I chose a different path. I was thinking clearly. I decided to get fit, to play more football (I'd only played 5 a side kick abouts since school). I stopped eating meat ( which I kept up until 2000). I am dyslexic and I always had trouble reading, but I went through a period of two years where I was reading every day. Sci Fi was the genre I chose. The songwriting course was perhaps the best thing I ever did. I learned to properly structure songs. Until that point, most of the songs I'd written were just streams if consciousness set to music. When Criag Withecombe was in the band, he was a good arranger and insisted that the songs had structure, but when he left, we lost that. I realised that the managers comments about bad songs, was more about the arrangement than the actual content.
I came to realise that with the False Dots, we'd tried to do too much, too soon. We hadn't sorted the songs out to the level where they had proper arrangements. My plan had simply been to get the band gigging, hope someone noticed us and gave us a shedload of money and it would all come together. It doesn't work like that. We needed properly arranged songs, with strong hooks. We needed a proper look. We should have targetted the labels etc that we wanted to work with and made a compelling case, based on strong catalog of recordings. In short, if you want to succeed in music, you need to have a proper plan. Much as I hated the guts of the manager, by March 1985, I realised he'd done me the biggest favour of my life.
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Where I am now musically! |
This morning, as I often do, I was at the 8.30 mass. As I often do, I was thinking about all of this. I had a realisation. You'd think that as a 62 year old, the penny would have dropped long ago. I got to thinking "If I am lucky, I have fifteen years of healthy active life. I have no plan for this at all". Sure I've paid into a pension, I have investments etc. But what do I want to do. If there is anything I feel I should do, I need to get a plan together. Just as I did in late 1984 and early 1985, I need to step back, take stock and get a plan, so that when I am 77 I can sit back, just as I did then and say "That was a really defining moment in my life and in music, business and life, I have got where I wanted to"
Most of the things in my life are not the result of big plans. I just stumble along and if something works, I stick with it. But if there are things to sort out and get in order, now is the time. So here's the plan. This week has been rather boozy. It was Clare's birthday on Wednesday. Next week will be a sober week. I am going to sort out all of the boring paperwork that I've been putting off. And I am going to have a long hard look at some things with a view to making sure that I have a proper plan to see me through these years. They say men make plans and God laughs. The pandemic showed me that no plan in the world can deal with everything. But if you have no plan, then everything is always chaos. So anyway, what I've expended a huge number of words saying can be succinctly summed up as "I am long overdue a long hard look at what I am doing and the time to do it is now".
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