The Rocky Road: Autobiography By Mr Boogie Woogie

By Rockin Dave

The Rocky Road is essentially the story of a rock & roll piano player, Rockin Dave, yours truly. The ups, but mainly downs, of a rocker's life. It is also worth noting that my life story is based on a true story - a collection of recollections. I consider myself first and foremost a piano player. A pianist, which is an archaic term for a keyboard player. My rocky road has many times become a cul-de-sac. I must confess that I was born at a very early age, only to soon discover that the road of life is indeed a rocky road, exceedingly so, just like any road that you might walk down. A road filled with pot holes that you can fall in, and uneven cracks that you can trip up on, and lots and lots of dog shit.

There is an enormous amount of challenging information in this book. Please do not continue if you are dependent on your present belief system, or if you feel that you cannot cope emotionally with what is really happening in this world. To all the judges, police, immigration officers and the Crown Prosecution Service, bailiffs, ladies in waiting, and ladies who have given up waiting, the events in this book never happened. For the rest of the world, this is the way it was. Only some of the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

This book contains elements of reverse psychology, please don't buy it. Nothing contained herein is plainly black and white, however I hope it will be read. So herewith, I present my offering in the form of this novel, and I sincerely hope that you will waste no time in reading it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483585765

Book preview

reserved.

Preface

At the outset, I must say that I am not a novelist, I hardly even write letters these days, and I rarely reply to anonymous letters, so, for anyone picking out grammatical errors or omissions - tough! Go and find something useful to do. I do like the peculiarities of the English language, though. I’ve always been interested in languages, I appreciate the art and cunning of linguistics. In fact, I’ve often been called a cunning linguist.

I don’t believe in politics, it doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government always gets in. Guy Fawkes, in my view, was the only honest person to enter the Houses of Parliament, and look what happened to him. Why do you think the announcement on the London underground train states A light for the Houses of Parliament, when the train comes to a stop at Westminster? It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. It also bears a striking resemblance to the first. Did you know, by the way, that it is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament? How unfortunate. It’s a strange anomaly that Britain is governed by politicians in the Houses of Parliament, in a place where the Speaker of the House is not himself even allowed to speak.

Politics, as such, is not a bad career. If you succeed, there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book, as did Prime Minister Tony ‘Bliar’ and many before him. It’s a well known fact that the Prime Minister is committed to maintaining the status quo of the country in general and the Civil Service in particular. He is a master of obfuscation and manipulation, baffling his opponents with long-winded technical jargon and circumlocutions, strategically appointing allies to supposedly impartial boards, and setting up inter-departmental committees to smother his Ministers’ proposals in red tape. In my book, Govt is a four letter word, so I have never voted - except once for Screaming Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Loony Party. But that’s another story…

And what about the media in politics? Who reads the newspapers? Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; Financial Times is read by people who own the country; Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, and Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is. And what about the Sun tabloid? Sun readers don’t care who runs the country, as long as she’s got big tits.

Although I hear that reincarnation is making a comeback, I am not a religious person and, indeed, consider myself an atheist. Still, I do believe that I have abided by most of the Ten Commandments, except the one about coveting your neighbour’s ox… Oh, and the one about love thy neighbour (as long as her husband doesn’t find out). The only problem with being an atheist is when you are really thankful and have nobody to thank.

I’ve never stolen, knowing how much the government hates competition, but I am a person of many convictions. Don’t forget that the only way to make crime pay is to become a lawyer. After all, a lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than a thousand men with guns can, and lawyers are the only people for whom ignorance of the law is not punishable.

I have written this book slowly, for anyone out there who can’t read fast. Also, I will be writing this novel, which will become my first unauthorised autobiography, on my PC, unlike the novel Tom Sawyer, which was the first novel ever to be written on a typewriter. Ok, I digress - why not, it’s a free country, almost! I was determined that this book would be reality and not fiction. The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense. As for that, it is fair to say that income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction written today. When I decided that it is high time to put pen to paper, I quickly bought a computer. Whoever said that the pen is mightier than the sword had obviously never encountered automatic weapons.

Every word in this book I have compiled from memory, there was never anything written down over the years, not even a diary. I used to have a memory like an elephant - in fact, elephants would often consult me. Unfortunately, age eventually caught up with me. Getting older is unpleasant, but I guess it’s better than the alternative. Finally you reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.

Proofreading is the hard part, you have to proofread very carefully to check if you any words out. I don’t read a lot of books, personally. I’ve not even read this one but, then again, I don’t need to - I know how it ends. I’ve never bought a newspaper and peruse them very infrequently, then only out of boredom and for sheer entertainment. I’m definitely a self-confessed non-conformist and a firm believer in antiestablishmentarianism (if there are a few extra letters in there, sorry about that). Even as a kid, I would have an After Eight mint at 6 o’clock, just to rebel.

Then came rock & roll, which was my escalator to fame. In due course I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty. Consequently, I have always been opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position. I wouldn’t say that I am cynical but, if I smell flowers, I look around for a coffin.

After some 43 years of entertaining people and having had the pleasure of visiting all four corners of the globe in the process (can a globe have four corners?), I consider myself a citizen of the world. Alas, living on the Earth is expensive, but it does include a free trip around the sun every year. The wages of sin is death, and the wages for playing rock & roll are not much better. There have been many nice things said about my piano playing and song-writing, but I soon realised that flattery is just an insult in gift wrapping. I have seen it all and done it all, the problem is that I can’t remember most of it!

Nevertheless, I have always liked rock & roll, not just the music but the clothes, the people, the way of life and the cars. Where else would you find big imposing cars with massive finns (except at a Helsinki police station)? Rock & roll is not just a matter of life and death - it’s more important than that. I remain very philosophical about it all, I started out with nothing in life and still got most of it left. Also, I learnt at a young age that you can’t have everything….where would you put it?

In the seedy world of rock & roll, whilst you certainly meet a lot of fascinating characters, remember that friends may come and go, but, as I have found out, enemies tend to accumulate. It’s a fact that if you lend someone 20 quid and never see that person again, it was probably worth it! I can also say that there are worse places than prison - I should know because I’ve played them.

Having been involved in the music business since the early 1970s, I have throughout the years amassed a vast assortment of anecdotes and mareseydotes and little lamseydivey, in conjunction with amusing reminiscences of that period, and I now have the opportunity to pass on these memories in the following chapters. I planned to write this book many years ago, but just kept putting off the inevitable. After all, procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday, which is yet another way of saying don’t put off today what you can avoid doing altogether the day after tomorrow. In any event, had I written this book several years ago, it wouldn’t have been complete, and you wouldn’t be reading these words now. In truth, without that little voice in your head, you wouldn’t be able to read any of this at all. Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.

The Rocky Road is essentially the story of a rock & roll piano player, Rockin Dave, yours truly, the ups - but mainly downs - of a rocker’s life. My life story is based on a true story, a collection of recollections. I consider myself, first and foremost, a piano player. A pianist, which is an archaic term for a keyboard player. My rocky road has many times become a cul-de-sac. I must confess that I was born at a very early age, only to soon discover that the road of life is indeed a rocky road, exceedingly so, just like any road that you might walk down. A road filled with pot holes that you can fall in, and uneven cracks that you can trip up on, and lots and lots of dog shit.

I remember, as a young boy, watching on TV teen idols such as Paul Anka and Bobby Vinton, wanting to follow in their footsteps. I soon became a teen, but was never idle, maybe that’s where I went wrong. I recorded my first album in twenty minutes - the second one took even longer. I always dreamt of having one of those jobs where people ask: Do you actually get paid for doing this?

I also remember, with warmth, how on dark and rainy days in England I would stand with my family around the piano located in the drawing room, wishing that someone could play it. So, I decided that I would learn to play - after all, it’s the early bird that gets the worm, while the second mouse gets the cheese. I have never been backward at coming forward and have always had an ambition to write a book but, until I was born, my life was pretty boring. Practically everybody in London has half a mind to write a book… and they do. Everything works, in theory, as I found out.

This book will provide insights to concerns that you never knew you had. It will both shock and enlighten. Indeed, it will offend some individuals, especially those who are cronies of the state. You know what they say - birds of a feather flock together and then crap on your car.

It isn’t what this book will cost that matters. It’s what it will cost you if you don’t read it. Rumours that profits derived from this publication are being donated to a raffle for the policeman’s ball are entirely speculative. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely intentional, and any similarity to any person, either living or dead, is also definitely intended. Should any of the content found in this book be deemed or maybe even found to be offensive, indecent or otherwise objectionable… well, it means that you’re just an old fuddy-duddy. As the old saying goes, if you can’t take the heat, get a fan. I did, and some of them still buy my music. The same people also say that nothing is impossible; ok, try sneezing with your eyes open, or slamming a revolving door!

CAUTION

There is an enormous amount of challenging information in this book. Please do not continue if you are dependent on your present belief system, or if you feel that you cannot cope emotionally with what is really happening in this world. To all the judges, police, immigration officers and the Crown Prosecution Service, bailiffs, ladies in waiting, and ladies who have given up waiting, the events in this book never happened. For the rest of the world, this is the way it was. Only some of the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

This book contains elements of reverse psychology, please don’t buy it. Nothing contained herein is plainly black and white, however I hope it will be read. So herewith, I present my offering in the form of this novel, and I sincerely hope that you will waste no time in reading it.

Rockin Dave

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE PICS TO GO WITH THIS BOOK HERE:

www.midnightrock.eu/files/Rocky_Road_Photos.pdf

OR VIA MIDNIGHT ROCK WEBSITE LINK:

www.midnightrock.eu - ‘Autobiography: The Rocky Road’

Minor Details

It’s ironic that, with my long revulsion of the police, and all the various altercations that I would have with them throughout my life, I was brought into this world on Tuesday, 5th March 1957, in a women’s hospital on Peel Street, named after Robert Peel (he first introduced the Peelers, or Bobbies, as they would later be known), in the bicycle capital of England and, indeed, the world, otherwise known as Nottingham. It was Pancake Tuesday, or Shrove Tuesday, depending on your bent. A day of celebration as well as penitence, because it is the last day before Lent. In France, for some bizarre reason only known to the French, they call it Mardi Gras, when people disguise themselves and put on crazy masks. Strangely enough, the doctors in the hospital where I was born must have all been French, as they were also wearing masks. Shrove Tuesday is also known as Fat Tuesday, which comes from the ancient custom of parading a fat ox through Paris on this day. The ox was to remind the people that they were not allowed to eat meat during Lent. However, as I was not partial to pancakes, and there was no meat on offer, I decided that it was as good a time as any to make my grand entrance into what is euphemistically called the ‘rat race’. It’s not that I minded the rat race, but I could have done with just a little more cheese. Back in the hospital room, I emerged into a shower of light, surrounded by other rats and pancakes. A French hand firmly slapped me on the arse as a welcoming gesture to this rocky road of life. I was so surprised that I didn’t talk for a year and half.

The first thing which I can record concerning myself was that I was born. There was, apparently, a sign in the ward emblazoned with the moral: The first three minutes of life can be the most dangerous. I don’t know about that as I was too young and couldn’t read, but I would say that the last three minutes are pretty dodgy, too.

My mum was talking with the other mums in the surrounding beds about what to call her new offspring. One of the women said Well, my son was born on St George’s Day, so I decided to call him George. That’s a real coincidence, remarked a woman on the opposite side of the ward. My son was born on St Andrew’s Day, so we called him Andrew. My mum laid there pondering about the fact that I was born on Pancake Day. I said nothing, mainly due to the fact that I was only one hour old.

She eventually decided to call me David Jeremy, and I was the seventh to be born into a working class family. I later found out that the sole purpose of a child’s middle name is so he can tell when he’s really in trouble. I don’t know why she decided to call me David, after all, every Tom, Dick & Harry is called Dave. My father, Frank, was born in 1914, in Liverpool, and worked as a presser for a dry cleaning company. His only connection with music was that he played the mouth organ relatively well, and he regularly dry-cleaned Big Band leader Joe Loss’ suits. I would often go to his place of work with him and, although initially frightened by the noise of the massive compressors and machines in the mysterious basement, I would come to love the noise that they made. Even now, I sleep much better if I can hear a steady noise in the background, like an air conditioner or the engine of a van driving down the motorway. Also, I loved the smell of tetrachloroethylene, the dry cleaning fluid that he used in the massive cleaner. I guess it takes all sorts!

During the war, my dad was a fireman, and he would entertain me for hours about his exploits during the blitz. One thing I never understood, though, was that he used to say ‘always fight fire with fire’, which is strange coming from a man in the fire brigade. My mother, Monica, was born in 1919 in Knottingly, Leeds, and she played the piano very adequately. Sadly, my brother, Paul, and sister, Barbara, both died shortly after their birth, which left me with two sisters, Hazel and Sylvia, and two brothers, John and Philip. Hazel is the eldest, she was born in 1937 and now resides in Vancouver, after moving there in the mid-1960s. She married David, who was an ardent hi-fi enthusiast and had an array of wonderful 1950s reel to reel tape recorders and valve amplifiers, and a radio which was the size of a washing machine, with a large rotary dial and place names like Lahti and Hilversum, which I always thought were obscure types of music. I would later perform in both of those places. They were, in fact, obscure types of towns dotted around the world. Valve amplifiers sounded so much better than their transistorised counterparts. The only problem was that, by the time they had warmed up, the programme you wanted to listen to had already finished.

Although our musical tastes varied considerably, David had an original copy of the EP Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley, on the Brunswick label. I was fascinated with that song, and used to pester him incessantly to play it for me, even though I was only a couple of years old. I didn’t know it was rock & roll at the time, as even back then it was considered old music, being from the preceding decade. In fact, David made my own first ever recording in 1960, when I was just 3 years old. I was in bed with bronchitis (that’s an illness, not a girlfriend) when Hazel and David came to visit me. I was reading some books of nursery rhymes at the time, (or nurnery rhymes, as my illness persuaded me to pronounce it). David, always equipped with his reel to reel and trusty microphone, captured the moment for posterity, complete with coughing, spluttering and wheezing, as I began narrating from the pages in my hand. Mary had a little lamb, simple Simon met a pie man, and humpty dumpty was pushed.

As a child, I suffered from quite severe asthma, and I remember having to use various inhalers on a regular basis. I also had to take many drugs, including steroids, which, although they helped with my asthma, resulted in stunted growth. This afflicted me throughout my childhood. I even had to carry a card in case I was in an accident, informing whoever found me that I was on steroids. These were not the same anabolic steroids we hear so much about nowadays in connection with body-builders, but a different kind, used for various medical conditions. I remember one other drug in particular, Ephedrine, which was once widely used as a topical decongestant and bronchodilator in the treatment of asthma. It was dispensed in a large, old-fashioned type of inhaler that you had to pour the drug into, and then squeeze a large bulb to eject the mist into your mouth. My mother would purchase the drug from our local chemist who, on his door, displayed the immortal words: We dispense with accuracy. Many were the times I would end up drinking the stuff instead of breathing it in, necessitating, on at least one occasion, a visit to the hospital to have my stomach pumped. As I lay in bed in the hospital, I was examining the various drawings and diagrams on the wall, depicting various regions of the body. I studied one entitled the Arterial System and wondered if artery was the study of paintings. That prompted me to think that Beethoven was probably so deaf that he most likely thought that he was a painter. I digress…

Because Hazel was my elder by 20 years, when I was young I used to think of her as some kind of auntie, which was very confusing for me. My brother Philip was born in 1944 and spent much of his youth in and around Nottingham. He also now lives in Vancouver, having emigrated there soon after Hazel. He was an original Ted, although much older than me, so I didn’t get to hang around with him much until he was already in his late teens, and we never really got to know each other. John was six years older than me and lived in Nottingham all of his life, hardly venturing anywhere, except for a brief trip to New Zealand for reasons which were never fully clear to me. He never married, and lived life as somewhat of a recluse. He died in 2003 from a chest infection and I attended his funeral in Nottingham with Stella and Rosy, my first and last wives respectively. Sylvia was born in1953 and has spent most of her adult life in Scotland with her husband Ian, and their two children, Michael and Gary. I recall well when my mother told me that Sylvia had had her first baby, at the time my mother didn’t know if it was a boy or girl. Consequently, I didn’t know if I was an auntie or an uncle. Sylvia now lives in a small village on the outskirts of Inverness. As a kid, I spent most of my time with Sylvia and John. The first few years of my life would appear unremarkable, as I have, unfortunately, no memory of what I was doing at that time. Suffice it to say I did what other babies did, and must have managed adequately enough.

One of my earliest memories, at around the age of 4, is going down to our local shopping centre with my mum. We became separated, I got lost and ended up wandering around aimlessly in and out of establishments such as Woolworth’s, British Home Stores and Marks & Spencer’s. It was then that I had my first encounter with the boys in blue. I was picked up by the police and taken to a room where they tried to ascertain what I was doing and if I was alone, or not. It must have been some kind of self-preservation, even back then, as I refused to give them my real name - I told them I was David Fuller! To this day I have no idea why I chose that name. Bizarrely enough, there was an American rock & roll singer by the name of Bobby Fuller around at that time, who later had a hit with the classic rocker, I Fought the Law. He also released a recording entitled Rockhouse, as indeed did I, many years later. The mind boggles.

Anyway, in a frantic attempt to get away from the police, I was kicking and fighting as best as I could at my tender age. They asked me how old I was, and they asked me where I lived, whereupon I replied Fletcher Road in Beeston. They continued with their interrogation: Have you lived there all your life, asked a large man with smelly breath. Not yet, I replied. Eventually, my mother appeared at the door, shouting at me with a desperate look of consternation. I was whisked away, back into the safe environment of home, but left with an unnerving memory of tall men in dark suits with pointed heads, asking far too many questions.

I recall tearing around the streets on my 3-wheeler bike when I was around 5 years old. I saw a snake, which was identified as an Adder, in our back garden in Eastwood, a suburb of Nottingham, where we had recently moved. Apparently, the Adder is the UK’s only native venomous snake, according to the Who’s Who of Deadly Snakes, and seeing an Adder is no cause for alarm - of course, being bitten by one is. Allegedly, these snakes are very placid and retiring creatures. Clearly, the person who wrote that wasn’t on a 3-wheeler bike wearing khaki shorts. I remember everyone being petrified of the snake, including me, but I was still trying to run over it with my bike. The poor thing was hissing and snapping at my ankles. People are usually only bitten during attempts to catch or handle the snakes. So, with that in mind, our neighbour, who was in the local territorial army, arrived and took it away with a brush and shovel.

Like many kids of my age, I would fall asleep on the sofa while watching one of the two TV channels that invariably brought the likes of Bruce Forsyth, Norman Vaughan and Jimmy Tarbuck into people’s living rooms on an almost daily basis… only to be awoken by my mother saying: Wake up and go to sleep! My dad would unceremoniously pick me up and carry me to my bed, banging my head against the wall whilst climbing up the stairs.

I recall how, when my brother and his then wife, Vicky, would come over and visit us, she would try to teach me to draw, which I never got the hang of. She reminded me of Alexander Bastedo from the 1960s series, the Champions, with the same likeness and mannerisms. I remember vividly learning to draw the human heart with its four chambers and the valves, perhaps it was that which kindled my interest in anatomy. Phil and Vicky then emigrated to Canada and, sadly, she passed away, after a battle with cancer.

During this time, I remember lying in bed with asthma or bronchitis, and my dad would put the electric fire on in my bedroom, because it was winter time and freezing cold. The problem was, when he turned it off before he went to bed, it made an eerie clicking sound as the elements cooled down. That noise haunted me for years, I never could sleep with that sound of clicking away, out of time. I would shout down Dad, can I have a drink of water? No, he replied, go to sleep. Ten minutes later, I would repeat my request. Dad, can I have a drink of water? No, he’d reply, go to sleep, or I’ll come give you a hiding! Then I would shout Dad, when you come to give me a hiding, can you bring a glass of water…

The music on the jukeboxes and radios during the time of my childhood was by the likes of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, so it’s quite strange that I grew up liking 50s rock & roll. I recall my brother, Phil, being a Jerry Lee Lewis fan and having a copy of Down the Line, backed with Breathless, and I would listen to that record countless times. I didn’t like the popular music of the era (although I appreciate it more now). In 1954, rock & roll had just been born, when a Michigan congresswoman, Ruth Thompson, introduced a bill in the House that would prohibit the mailing of any pornographic recording - pornographic referring to rock & roll - the Devil’s music. The offence would be punishable by five years’ imprisonment and a $5,000 fine. Just who would decide what is pornographic was unclear. That’s the government for you. I started listening to the Andrews Sisters, Bill Haley and, later, Merrill E Moore, the piano player. I had the two albums by him that had been released on the Ember label, Bellyful of Blue Thunder and Rough House 88, and played those until they were almost worn out. I much preferred Merrill as a piano player to Jerry Lee.

I listened to the popular Rock & Roll songs performed by the likes of Elvis, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, etc., collecting it all as I went, but then turned more towards Louis Jordan and the black jump blues stuff by people like Lloyd Price, Wynonie Harris, Roy Brown, Thurston Harris and Joe Turner, to name just a few. I also loved doo-wop, especially the up-tempo numbers, by bands such as the Crew Cuts, the Five Keys, the Moonglows and the Flamingos. One of my favourite songs ever during my teens was Goodnight Sweetheart by the Spaniels, which all the Teds would belt out as we walked through the streets of Nottingham in the early 1970s. I was also intemperately into western swing by guys like Bob Wills, Spade Cooley, Pee Wee King, and the more modern, but equally adept, Asleep at the Wheel.

My brother Phil was into motorbikes, and I remember him once visiting us on this huge monster of a bike. It was an Ariel Square Four 1000cc classic bike. He showed me how to ride it, with him on it at the same time. One day I decided to take it for a spin, which was not a good idea, being around 8 years old! I got it started and crawled off down the road. All was good until I tried to stop and, as my feet couldn’t reach the ground, promptly fell over with the ‘squariel’ pinning me down. Needless to say, Phil wasn’t all that pleased about it!

The British pop industry in the 1960s brought a different music culture. The Teds began to devote more attention to the rock & roll music that they had made their own a decade earlier, which, then, was taken for granted. The first specialist rock & roll pubs appeared. Rockers, who liked the same music and rode powerful British motorcycles, also emerged on the scene. Teds and Rockers got on well with each other and the leather motorbike jacket became the normal wear for many Teddy Boys and Teddy Girls. The biker jacket was not only protective in motorcycle accidents but, unlike the drape jacket, could provide good cover against razor attacks and spilt beer!

SLAMMM!!! I was jolted back to reality by the slamming of the door of my cell, which had housed me for the last three days. My ‘home’ was a 6 x 8 ft concrete room with an extremely hard bed, toilet, sink, cupboard and colour TV, and a window which looked out onto the exercise yard. I really must request a sea view, I thought to myself, although, to be fair, if you looked carefully on the horizon, you could see the English Channel. In fact, you could almost see Midnight Rock, but not quite. Midnight Rock was the name of my house in a quaint little village called Marshside, on the Isle of Thanet. A beautiful house set in the Kent countryside with winding country roads and a stream with swans and ducks. Despite constant warnings, I have never yet met anybody who has had their arm broken by a swan. I was a temporary resident of Elmley Prison, an ugly concrete establishment located in the middle of nowhere. To be honest, it was actually on the Isle of Sheppey, on the Kent coast - a sort of poor man’s Alcatraz and yet only 40 or so miles from my home. Here I was in prison, surrounded by drug traffickers, murderers and rapists - and that was just the prison officers! I figured that it must be 7.30pm, as that’s the time when all the cells are locked and the screws go home for the night, leaving 1000 inmates in the dubious hands of two or three night watchmen.

As I sat in my cell, I thought to myself how in prison you spend the majority of your time in a 6 x 8 ft cell, whereas, on the outside, at work, you spend most of your day in a 6 x 8 ft office. While here in prison, you get three meals a day, at work you only get a break for one meal and you have to pay for it. In prison, a guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you, but at work you must carry around a security card with you and open all the doors yourself. In prison, you can watch TV and play games, whereas, at work, you get fired for watching TV and playing games. In prison, there are wardens who are sadistic, whilst, at work, they are called managers.

I was watching the end of a western, starring John Wayne. The Indians were about to attack the cowboys, when the Indian drums started beating out an ominous message. One cowboy remarked to the other I don’t like the sound of those drums. The retort He’s not our regular drummer! sprang to mind as I switched off the TV and went to bed.

I was sentenced on 24 November 2006 at Canterbury Crown Court to a term of 12 months’ imprisonment. This was my first time in prison and it was not an experience that I looked forward to, but I was here now and would just have to make the best of it. The problem with prison is that you don’t get any peace and quiet. The initial impression I’d got was one of complete surprise at the lack of things to do. That, plus the fact that the screws are always making a noise and shouting, not at anybody in particular, but just shouting, as if it gives them a sense of purpose and the feeling of being part of a team. They were always stomping up and down the landing in their size nines, banging doors, and generally making a nuisance of themselves, and it was quite difficult to get any peace and quiet at all.

BBC News was on the TV, with the Home Secretary rabbitting on about over-crowding in jails, and it felt more like I had my own private camera enabling me to see what was going on in Parliament, live, as it were. They were discussing the 80,000 or so prisoners, which were bringing the prisons to bursting point, and that something would have to be done as it was an intolerable situation. I was starting to feel almost guilty about taking up cell space, lying there on a mattress which had all the savagery of a medieval torture device, while faintly feigning the resemblance of a bed. I was reminded of a story I had read the day before about someone in prison who was serving four years for fraud, and is suing the Prison Service for £30,000 because his bed was too hard.

Of course, you have to remember that prison officers are not the most intellectual of people, and the only reason they became prison officers is because they failed the exam to become traffic wardens. I flick through the channels of the 14" portable TV which, for the immediate future, is my only connection with the outside world. Having had enough of wars and corrupt politicians, I turn to the movie channel and settle down to watch the evening film, the Colditz Story! I find myself wondering if someone is trying to tell me something… The film comes to an end and the British have won again.

The next night I was watching the Great Escape but decided against digging a tunnel, as I didn’t fancy walking around with my trousers full of earth. I switched off the TV and tried to sleep, but the security lights were shining across the recreation area, straight through my cell window, lighting up my cell with a yellow glow. The screws had, unfortunately, forgotten to hang any curtains. I followed the yellow beam to just above the cell window, where a previous hostage had helpfully written the motto Please do not lean out of the window while your sentence is in motion.

As usual, various melodies and song ideas were going through my mind, and I had to make hastily scrawled notes on bits of paper in the somewhat naïve hope that, once the melodies have been written down, they will allow me to sleep. No such luck. As usually was the case in these situations, once the melodies had been transcribed, I’d start contemplating appropriate words for them. This could go on all night. I recalled another TV program that I had seen recently about the life story of Tchaikovsky, who suffered from the same affliction. His mother told him that, instead of visualising songs and notes flying in his head, he should imagine filing cabinets in his head and methodically go about putting all these flying songs and ideas into the filing cabinets, which he should then close, enabling him to drift off into a peaceful and contented sleep. Well, I thought this was a cracking idea and decided to try it. I spent the rest of the night plagued by the thought of filing cabinets flying around my head.

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Schooldays

I remember with affection how, on dark and rainy days in England, I would stand with my family around the piano located in the drawing room corner, wishing that someone could play it. I felt that this fascinating item of furniture had a more important use than simply supporting the various photographs poised upon it and, in the early years of the 1960s, I began to show an interest in that strange musical curio. This eventually grew into an ambition and obsession, and I would regularly have to be dragged away from the keyboard.

I used to play at all hours of the day and night in the only way I knew how and, one day in 1965, I asked my mother what this style of playing was called. She told me it was called boogie woogie. I had somehow taught myself the rudiments of this fascinating style. I had heard that name before somewhere and, over the next few months and years, collected all the information that I could about this weird and wonderful style of music.

I marvelled at the likes of Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson. Albert had become interested in boogie woogie after listening to Jimmy Yancey. The very first record I ever acquired was Blues for Albert, by the great Jimmy Yancey. One peculiar part of Jimmy’s playing technique and distinctive style was that he played in a variety of keys but ended many pieces in the key of E flat, even if the song was in another key. And he favoured keys atypical for barrelhouse blues, such as E flat and A flat. He also influenced the likes of Meade Lux Lewis.

Occasionally we visited my grandmother in Norfolk, on the east coast of England, in a tiny village called Louth. She lived in a small cottage, and the only way to reach it was across a dyke, over her own little bridge. It was all very quaint. She used to be a stage-performer in the early 1900s and had trod the boards all over England doing music hall shows. Possibly this is where my genetic trait for becoming an entertainer originated from. She had an English sheep dog, which always made me ill, as I was allergic to dogs. However, I took it for a walk one day and it must have seen a rabbit (or a sheep!) because it suddenly tore off down the road, with me still firmly attached to it. The dog was much stronger than me and, as I was being dragged along, I could see a fence coming up. It was the kind of a fence that had concrete posts separated by a single metal bar, around 18 inches from the ground. As the dog jumped over the fence, I was dragged under the bar and hit the metal rail with my chest, which brought the pair of us to an abrupt halt. The dog let out an almighty yelp, as indeed did I. We both sauntered back to my grandmother’s house, with me clutching my bruised chest, and the dog clutching its bruised neck. Dogs and I just never got on. I remember, when I was about 5 years old, being chased by a massive Alsatian that knocked me to the ground and began gnawing at my back. Fortunately, a neighbour spotted what was going on and came to the rescue, and I was taken to hospital to have stitches on my back. The doctor said I was lucky that the neighbour pulled the dog off me before I was killed. Why is it that people always say you are lucky when you’ve just had something horrible happen to you? After that, I made a decision that I intended to live forever, or at least die trying.

I was residing at this time in Eastwood, near Nottingham, the birth place of the famous writer DH Lawrence. As Eastwood was mentioned in the Doomsday Book, we decided to leave there as soon as possible, and eventually I moved with my family to Arnold, on the outskirts of Nottingham.

My mother had bought me a toy which was all the rage at the time, bearing the captivating name of Slinky. In 1943, Richard James was a naval engineer, trying to develop a meter designed to monitor horsepower on naval battleships. Richard was working with tension springs when one of the springs fell to the ground. He saw how the spring kept moving after it hit the ground, and an idea for a toy was born. One day, while visiting Woolworth’s, I sat mesmerised as I placed my Slinky on the escalator and watched for hours, much to the annoyance of other customers, my Slinky continually going nowhere. I came to the inevitable (if somewhat illogical) conclusion that I had mastered the art of perpetual motion.

One day in Arnold I was playing with a friend on the railway lines at the back of our garden, which we used to do in those days. We’d put our heads on the rails and listen for the train. When we heard one coming, we’d play ‘chicken’ by standing on the tracks as the train approached, and the last one to jump out of the way was the winner, unless he was really brave and didn’t jump out of the way in time - in which case he would have won, but it wouldn’t have mattered anymore. We weren’t quite that brave and always jumped out of the way, with at least a second to spare. Sometimes, if the trains were going slow enough, we would jump on the back of them and sit on the bumpers, and go wherever the train took us. Sometimes we arrived home late for dinner! Of course, there were rival gangs who used to claim that the railway was theirs, and frequently we’d get into fights, which culminated in us throwing stones at each other. They had catapults, which resulted in some severe headaches.

One day I arranged to meet the opposition for a showdown. There were about ten of them, and just two of us. We were to meet just beside the railway track, at 12 noon. I picked that time for a reason, as I knew that that was when the express train came by. I had arrived earlier and placed stones all the way along the railway track, on the edge and on their side. They arrived and began throwing stones at us when, suddenly, the express duly arrived. As it went over the stones, it shot them out at high speed towards the rival gang; it was a massacre, they never knew what hit them as the stones were propelled at them like a machine gun. Those guys never bothered us again!

There was an old tunnel known as Joner’s Tunnel, where we used to play. Trains were not using it anymore, so we decided that we would. We’d walk through it and scare each other to death in the cold, icy blackness. The tunnel was about a mile in length, and every couple of hundred yards there were drain holes, which we just had to investigate. We were told that they were ‘bottomless’, and we believed it, too. It was all very scary, especially if we met some other kids coming from the other direction. We would all end up running out as fast as we could, dodging the bottomless drains and tripping up on old prams left there many years previously. We had some good times there, in Joner’s Tunnel. Outside the tunnel was a high embankment on either side, which we’d climb up. It was really steep and only the experienced climbers would make it to the top, the rest came tumbling down and landed in a crumpled mess, back where they had started. At the top stood an old tree, which overhung the embankment. I would frequently climb to the top of the tree and attach a rope to a branch, and make a kind of death-defying swing, not dissimilar to a horizontal bungee jump, long before bungee jumps became popular. We would take a big run and swing out over the embankment in a large circle – had the rope broken or the branch snapped, we would have fallen hundreds of feet to a certain death. Luckily, neither ever happened, and we carried on doing it for many years.

I recall a huge storm on one boring Sunday afternoon. My brother John, who was quite intelligent about these kind of things and was studying electronics and astronomy, told me that people can be struck by lightning, especially if they have any metal objects around them. Well, I didn’t believe him and immediately decided to put it to the test. I ran upstairs and fetched my Tarzan dagger, a real dagger that I had found in the woods, which I used to wear in a furry holster and go climbing the trees, jumping from branch to branch. More than once I nearly did myself a mischief with that dagger. Anyway, I grabbed the dagger and ran out into the garden, where it was pouring with rain, with lightning and thunder all around. I stood in the middle of the garden with the dagger in my hand extended skywards. John was going crazy trying to stop me, and we both ended up rolling about in the mud and water. I never did get struck by lightning, but my mum wasn’t half angry when we both came in soaking wet and covered from head to feet in mud.

Another time, we found an old metal box and were trying to break it open to see what was inside. It wouldn’t open, so I picked up a house brick and began banging the box with the brick. It still wouldn’t open. Then my friend tried to hit the box with the brick. Unfortunately, my little finger got in the way. There was blood everywhere and, what’s more, it was mine! I ran home cupping my hands together so that I wouldn’t spill any of the blood! It didn’t help, it still spluttered everywhere. When I scrambled home, mum ran my finger under the cold tap. I fainted - I never did like blood.

I watched a film on the TV one Sunday afternoon, one of those religious films, maybe it was the Ten Commandments. I found it immensely interesting, especially the bit about man being made from the ‘dust of the ground’. I wondered how it was possible and read up all about it. Some weeks later I watched Frankenstein with Peter Cushing (I mean he was in the film, not actually watching it with me). Anyway, that was it. I was 6 years old at the time and decided that it couldn’t be all that difficult to make a human being!

The following day I set about it. I got some dirt from the garden and mixed it with some multi-vitamins I found in the kitchen, then added water as I had learned that the body was made up of 90% water. All I needed now was electricity. I found an old car battery in the garage, and connected it all together. Well, what I did find out was that water and electricity doesn’t mix. The battery blew up in my face and showered me from head to toe with acid, water and mud. That curtailed my medical experiments, at least for the time being.

I recall another horrible experience, sitting on the handlebars of my brother John’s push bike, when we were cycling around the neighbourhood. All of a sudden, we were heading down this extremely steep hill at an alarming speed, so fast that I couldn’t even see where we were going. Being about 6 years old, and for reasons that I can’t remember, I wasn’t wearing any shoes or socks. Suddenly one of my feet got caught in the spokes of the front wheel, causing the bike to come to a violent and abrupt stop, hurtling my brother like a catapult over the top of me and head first into a concrete lamp post, and leaving me entangled in the front wheel of the bike. One bystander rushed out and attended to my brother, who had been knocked unconscious by the impact. He appeared to be the more serious casualty and was getting all the attention, while I was left intertwined with the bike wheel. We were both taken to hospital, and I heard the doctors discussing my fibula, which I thought meant a small lie. Thankfully, we both recovered from our ordeal, but I still have the scars on my foot and, what’s more, I don’t ride on the handlebars of bikes anymore - not barefoot, anyway!

I started infant school when I was 6. I was supposed to start at 5, but managed to avoid it. I don’t have many memories of that school, apart from being taken home quite often because of ill-health, mainly due to asthma. When I was 7, I attended the Kingswell Junior school in Gedling Road, Arnold, just a stone’s throw from the Fryer Tuck pub (we’d generally use the spoonerism of that name), where my dad used to visit occasionally and allow me to go with him, drinking a half of bitter shandy. Anyway, one afternoon at school, being bored, I got into a daring match with some other kids, and I was dared into hanging out of an upstairs window. The window was on the fourth floor, just above a toilet bearing the lettering Armitage Shanks, so I climbed out of the window and gradually let my legs dangle precariously some 50 feet above the playground, whilst holding on with my fingertips to a ledge only a few inches wide, ever mindful of the possibility that one of the kids might just decide to close the window while I was hanging outside. I’ve never been scared of heights, really, but I was scared of hitting the ground after falling from such a height, so I cautiously made my way back into the relative safety of the school loo.

A fellow schoolboy, around 7 years of age, got expelled for using the ‘c’ word in class. His mother said to him That wasn’t clever, was it? No, replied the boy. It was cunt. I remember my teacher asking me to form a sentence utilising the word ‘fascinate’. I pondered this question and quickly wrote down the following: I had nine buttons on my shirt, but could only fascinate.

On another occasion, I was walking home from school when I passed a newsagents store. Outside, on the ground, there was a pile of newspapers, tied up with string. Naturally, I assumed that they had been thrown away by the shop and, knowing how my mum loved to read, I thought it would make a nice surprise for her. Now, as anyone knows, a pile of newspapers containing 50 thick broadsheets takes some lifting, especially if you are just 7 years old. Somehow I struggled home with the newspapers and arrived sweating and panting and cut to bits, with the string digging into my hands, but extremely pleased with my efforts. I did surprise my mum all right, and the whole neighbourhood received their evening papers the following morning! The newsagents were very understanding, if a little perplexed, when they turned up at our house to retrieve their newspapers.

Another time, in the playground, I found a metal bullet, which I thought was a toy of some description. I carried it around in my pocket everywhere I went, for months on end. It became sort of a good luck charm - I would panic if I couldn’t find it, wondering how life would continue should it be lost forever. The following Christmas I was given a toy gun as a present, among other things. I used to shoot my bullet from this gun all around the house. I would shoot the postman and the milkman, it never hurt anyone unless it hit them on the head. I was always getting told off for shooting it at mum’s ankles. This went on for months until, one day, I was shooting in the conservatory, when BANGGG!!!! My ears were reeling from the pain, I couldn’t hear anything and the room was spinning, with smoke everywhere and an awful smell of gun powder. Mum came running in, confronted by a large hole in the ceiling and broken plaster scattered all around. The gun was a molten mess of plastic stuck to my hand and had to be peeled off, taking much of my skin with it. After that, I didn’t play with guns anymore!

I regularly watched children’s TV programmes like Fireball XL5, which had fantastic theme music, unlike today’s kids’ programmes. The title song was released as a single in May 1962, arranged by Charles Blackwell. It reached number 32 in the UK charts - the only chart hit Barry Gray ever had. It featured the vocals of Don Spencer. Another great theme song was from the series Stingray, with vocals by the Mike Sammes Singers. My favourite, however, was Thunderbirds, which I still love today. The theme song is from Barry Gray’s the great Century 21 March, which is a rousing arrangement, released in 1965. Another great song that I remember, from August 1965, was by Gary Miller, who sang the vocals on the Stingray end theme, Aqua Marina. All these theme songs helped inspire my interest in music.

When I was around 9, my mum decided that I needed to find something constructive to do, and she was of the opinion that I should learn to play the piano ‘properly’, so I was sent for piano lessons. My first teacher was an old lady, with the coincidental but unrelated name of Enid Taylor. She had a house in Arnold, where I would go and visit her for tuition once a week. She had a baby grand piano, which was really nice to play. Her husband would open the door and let me in the house, and I had to wait in a very formal room with a table full of old copies of Punch magazine and Reader’s Digest. There was a large picture of some old music, which I didn’t understand at that time, entitled Handel’s Organ Works. So does mine, I thought, but I don’t brag about it. I decided that Handel was probably just another crank, and picked up the Punch magazine, which was equally beyond my comprehension. I returned the magazine to the occasional table from whence it came, and wondered what an occasional table was for the rest of the time.

As I sat in Enid Taylor’s waiting room in anticipation of my first exam - Grade 1 practice & theory - waiting to be called into the examination room, feeling like I’d done something wrong and was about to be punished. I guess, in a way, I was. I glanced around the sparsely decorated room and saw an old-fashioned telephone perched on an equally old-fashioned mahogany table, and found myself wondering; when Alexander Graham Bell first invented the telephone, who did he call? I shook my head in an attempt to purge my mind, to enable me to concentrate on the task at hand. I nervously took my first exam under Mrs Taylor’s watchful eye, which involved performing various scales and arpeggios, and other such digital dexterities, as well as answering various questions about clefs, staves, keys and relative minors. I had a friend who worked as a minor down Calverton coal mine, but he definitely wasn’t a relative, so that was ok. They say that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. I’d say that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is.

During those days, Bobby Crush was never off the TV. Also, Russ Conway was enjoying hit records with Side Saddle and the like, with that continuous and contagious smile that appeared to be painted on. I really liked Russ Conway’s playing, and he certainly influenced me in some small way, as did the marvellous piano player, Neville Dickie. With the help of my mum, I wrote to the Neville Dickie Fan Club asking how I could learn to play Nola (a very technical composition written by Felix Arndt), which Neville Dickie had just recorded. He was all the rage at the time and constantly heard on Family Favourites, a popular radio programme of the day, broadcast on the Light Programme (that’s the BBC to me and you). Much to my surprise, Neville replied personally, saying that Nola was a very difficult song to play, and he suggested a few easier ones to start with. He enclosed a copy of his latest hit, The Robins Return, a signed photo of him with his trio, and three music sheets (The Grizzly Bear and Chromatic Rag - the third one escapes me). Straight away I set about learning the new songs, which were indeed very complicated pieces, especially for someone of my age. Even my music teacher had difficulty playing them, although, to be fair, they weren’t her cup of tea, and she refused to teach me to play them. It was up to me to master them in my own spare time.

Of course, I had no idea then that 30 or so years later I would be releasing my own versions of Nola and The Grizzly Bear on my own CDs. Grizzly Bear Boogie was among the sixteen piano boogie woogie instrumental tracks licensed by me to Charly Records for the Boogie in the City album, recorded in 1993.

The composer of Nola, Felix Arndt was born in 1889 and was an American pianist and composer of popular music. His mother was the Countess Fevrier, related to Napoleon III. Educated in New York, Arndt composed songs for the famous Vaudeville team of Jack Norworth and Nora Bayes, and recorded over 3000 piano rolls for Duo-Art and QRS Records. He died at the ludicrously young age of 29, during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, in New York City. Arndt is best remembered for his 1915