St Edward's Chronicle October 2016

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ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

FOCUS ON MUSIC

core ones. Schools today have a far greater relevance to life outside which in itself is much more diverse. Did you enjoy school? I was very homesick initially – but after I’d settled in I had a good time and made some good friends, although I don’t think we ever thought we were supposed to enjoy school. I think I was the first person at the school to own an electric guitar. My housemaster let me keep it in a cupboard in the Geography hut because in the afternoons, when I was allowed to practise, it was miles away from everyone. Eventually there was a band in my House, Field House, and another emerged in Mac’s. There were actually quite a few of us into rock/pop music – in Segar’s there was John Silver, who was the first drummer in the band that became Genesis. Music in general was nowhere near as accessible to pupils as it is today. Unless you were a music scholar it was slightly on the fringe of school life. After my early attempts to learn the organ, I started formal lessons at Teddies aged 13 with Peter Whitehouse. I was no prodigy and a late starter and therefore under no particular pressure; I was allowed to discover music at my own pace and to find out what I liked about it in a very relaxed way. Yes, I did exams, but they didn’t seem especially important at the time. I

found great calm in practising the organ and in the peace of the Chapel. If you watch a truly exceptional individual at work – be they a dancer, footballer, musician, or whatever – even as a layman – it’s always obvious that they have something special. I knew even then that Whitehouse had that quality. He was an incredibly skilled musician. I was greatly influenced by him in life as well as in music; he gave me the confidence to try things and he continued to do that even after I left School. He became a lifelong friend and I am always thankful to Teddies for that. I was so stressed when I started School (hopefully that’s not the case for people now) that I thought of it as some kind of necessary and painful rehearsal for life, but looking back at that friendship and a couple of others too I see that School wasn’t just ‘school’ – as in five years in brackets – because it offered connections and possibilities which became a very real part of my life. I didn’t fully understand that and certainly not the importance of my relationship with Peter until I knew him as an adult and worked with him, which I did extensively. How did you launch what has been a hugely successful career? I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do, other than play the guitar and not take up the option I had to go to university, which my parents didn’t seem to mind

about. I left school in 1968 – so there was no anxiety about finding a job. The security of knowing that had a wildly liberating effect on all of my generation. There was an explosion of nightclubs, boutiques, bands, hairdressers, shops etc. It was a cultural revolution of sorts but in the certain knowledge that if you had half a brain you could always get a regular job if it went wrong. I couldn’t really imagine I would actually earn a living in music so I messed around a lot. Played in a couple of bands and was a delivery driver for an off-licence. I had half wanted to become an actor and I sort of did to the extent that I was rescued from the off-licence by getting a part in Alan Bennett’s first West End play, Forty Years On . (I even made a brief appearance in Emmerdale ). As a result of that I was encouraged to audition for, and was offered a place at, Central School of Speech and Drama but I turned it down because by then I was making a bit of a start in music - I had session work and a recording deal and was also studying music again. And following on from that I began to do some arranging and orchestrating. My first real break came when I had a call from the Royal Shakespeare Company saying a director wanted to meet me. I had played guitar for them in a previous production so I assumed that was the reason but it turned out he was calling

Rehearsing Planet Earth at the Barbican