Home life was good when I was 16. We didn’t have much, but we didn’t want for anything. I couldn’t see the point of school once I’d learned to read and write. Education and academia had absolutely no purpose for me. My main preoccupation was forming a band and listening to music. The only thing I could really envisage was being in a band. I listened to pretty much everything. Radio in the late ’70s was far more eclectic, DJs like John Peel played virtually everything. Including us later [on Young Guns (Go for It) in 1982]. That was an accolade. Anyone of our era would have seen that as a real stamp of justification.
We became best friends very quickly. Those friendships that you make in your teens have a depth and a substance that is rarely repeated, simply because you’re immersed in each other’s company all the time. We used to listen to music together, skiving off lessons, and
