On many nights at 6pm, we listened to music on the radio as we watched Dad iron his shirt to get ready for his 7:30 gig. It was the dance band era, so he didn’t tour, but he was a bandleader and played around the area in different jazz groups. He’d return home at midnight or later and often bring musicians back to the house and into the front room of the house. I knew that this was his private time with his mates, but one time I felt bold and snuck downstairs in pajamas to watch him and his friends play.
‘Go back to bed,’ Dad slurred when he saw me.
‘I don’t want to,’ I snapped back, as only a precocious youngster can. ‘Besides, you woke me up and now I can’t sleep. Can I watch?’
He shrugged, and I watched them play jazz for hours. I never had to ask again. I’d watch their routine countless times. At around two in the morning, they’d stop playing. Then they’d smoke and play cards until sunrise. Dad was only paid for the gigs, but he loved the jazz life so much that he took it home with him. Sometimes they’d all smoke weed, so I grew to know the smell, though I never liked it. For a while, my dad brought some black jazzers from America back with him who seemed far more distant than his jovial, animated friends. Phil, who as a young adult was wiser to the ways of the world than I was, told me the Americans were heroin addicts. I had no idea what he meant. I just knew they were a little different, but this was the way those guys lived. They weren’t like regular folks. They were musicians, and what they did together (aside from drinking and taking drugs) was magical.
In some ways, I inherited the artist’s lifestyle, just without the smoking, drinking, and drugging. The obsession my dad had with jazz was like the love I developed for rock’n’roll. Having watched him and his friends, I understood that being a musician came with sacrifices. I knew that if I ever had kids there would be long stretches when I was on the road and wouldn’t see them. I accepted that—the drawbacks would come with the benefits. My dad was a natural musician, and Evelyn, Phil, Ray, and I inherited that gift. It would be a crime to throw it away. If I did that, I felt like I would be missing out on all the happiness that being a pop star would provide. I also honestly felt like I would be robbing thousands and thousands—maybe millions—of listeners of the great music Ray and I would someday make and that the public would enjoy.
From the time Ray and I announced our plans to our parents, we were totally upfront about our goals and what we were doing to meet them. And we promised that our school grades wouldn’t slip. I had great respect for my mother, so I always let her know what was going on in my life, even after I became a pop star. I never consciously defied her. That said, I wasn’t a momma’s boy per se, because I wasn’t utterly reliant on her. I loved her, of course, but I wasn’t helpless without her. I had been working hard since long before I made a penny from music, so I would always have records and whatever I needed for the band. And I pitched in to buy food or pay the bills when my dad was short.
Once Ray and I started throwing together musical ideas, we soon gelled as players. However, I was limited to playing at a low volume because I was still using the Spanish acoustic without amplification. I was playing all the basic open chords—C, G, D, E, and A—and doing what I could with that. I still hadn’t fully developed calluses on my fingertips, so the F and B barre chords, which required covering all the strings with the index finger, playing three other notes, and pushing hard on all the strings, were damn near impossible on Spanish guitar. I found a workaround for the F by playing it on only the highest four strings, but I couldn’t do that as easily with the B because it required sliding my hand seven frets up the neck.
When my dad saw how serious I was about playing guitar, he bought me my first electric for £20. It was a Red Vox Shadow three-pickup solid-body with a tremolo arm. He bought it on hire purchase, which was like a layaway plan that cost him £1 a week with interest. He couldn’t afford it, but he was a musician, and he knew I needed decent equipment to reach the next rung up the music ladder, so he didn’t hesitate. I saved up money from my job as a pork butcher and did jobs on Saturday mornings to buy my first amplifier, a triangular-shaped 15-watt tube amp called the Watkins Dominator. I think it was about £15.
There was no such thing as distortion. The only way of overdriving your amp was by turning it up all the way, strumming as hard as you could, and having sensitive pickups. Every unusual amp sound had to be coaxed and lured out of the guitar and amp by the way you set the tone knobs and the way you plucked or attacked the strings. You had to earn everything, and, because of that, a lot of musicians spent endless hours focusing on how to get the best, most unique sounds from their primitive equipment. There were no shortcuts. The only way to sound good was to be good. Having a guitar with an amp was a major step in my progression as a musician since better-sounding guitar tones inspired us to write better melodies.
Ray and I were fortunate that our father was able to attend a small variety show we played, and afterward he was happier than I’d seen him in ages. I felt like I was walking on air. I wanted to recreate that feeling on a regular basis for a long, long time and have him there as a part of it. Dad died when I was sixteen, and dealing with that at such a young age forced me to get serious, be determined, and work hard to provide. We all chipped in and supported my mother and the household, not the other way around. Mom was devastated. She was warm, sensitive, and emotional, and I don’t think she ever got over Dad’s death. She was in mourning for a long time, and when she finally was able to look outside herself and consider her options, there were few opportunities. She wasn’t young anymore, and she had no professional training, so she wasn’t qualified to hold a job.
That’s the point in my life where I became the COO of the family and earned my de facto business degree. I was always interested in business, and whenever I worked a menial job, I would take mental notes as I watched how my boss would run the shop: Was he taking constructive steps to make the place successful or not? Was he charging too much or too little for his services? That kind of attention to money matters helped set me up for negotiating contracts, maintaining efficiency, and setting reachable goals for myself and my family. I was the middle child, but in the absence of my father, I played the role of the patriarch. That approach continued when my brothers and I formed a band and got signed—which I felt we were destined to do—and Ray and I were well on our way to making music far more than a hobby. We got together with friends and rehearsed every day. We were writing our own songs, and we felt good. We got shivers down our necks every time we played something that sounded professional. It felt like a sign of the future.
When I turned seventeen and my classmates and I were working on our A-levels, the schoolmaster, Mr. Rogers, wanted to provide some incentives. Before we cracked open our English textbooks, he went around the room and asked everyone what they wanted to do when they finished their studies. Some of the boys said they wanted to go to college to become lawyers or doctors. Another said he wanted to do something in math like accounting or engineering. There were aspiring scientists and pharmacists.