My Reluctant Friend

By Michael Dunn

Two fractured musical souls meet amongst the perverse privilege of an English boarding school. Through rebellion, by forming a Rock band in the uniquely 'classical' musical environment they found themselves in, and by pursuing a life-long search for a lost autonomy, they take a mutual journey through tragedy, despair, hope, and hilarity to an eventual discovery of the consequences of a childhood stripped of the basic human emotional requirements of love, security, and a sense of identity.

"My Reluctant Friend" is a captivating story about music, friendship, and growth – and all that comes with it. This is a story about a life in rock and roll and the immense personal and professional challenges bands faced during their seemingly invincible years. Managers, clashing personalities, women, creative differences, and so much more, factored into whether a band thrived or crumbled. In this compelling book, a band was formed – and it seemed as if one special group found their spiritual home. But no life in music is seamless as the band faces countless incidents of uncertainty and despair. If you are a music lover, have ever been in a band, or just enjoy a truly compelling story, this is the book for you. Get ready to embark on a musical journey and a true reflection of personal growth!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667840345

Book preview

Chapter 1

Conjecture

Far Slopes British Ex-Pat residential estate, Malaya, September 1960

Waning sun. Musky air. Two silhouettes steal through the fading light, giggling as they go. Furtive fingertip parting; then with heads down, shoulders hunched, they hurry apart. He back down the hill to his feckless obscurity, she through a latch-gate and up a sloping lawn to a veranda, beyond which lights and laughter drift from a family-fuelled house. What is she feeling?

Chapter 2

Hearsay

Ash Heights Preparatory School, Suffolk, 1970

Lees House,

Pesham Rd,

Keysely,

Norfolk

14th October

My Dear Terence,

I hope you are well and having fun at school.

I am afraid I have some news for you that will bring changes at home. Your mother and I have decided that it would be better for all the family if she and I were to live apart from now on. I have spoken to Mr. Meeson and he will have a chat with you about holiday arrangements etc for the Christmas. I shall be going abroad to work. Don’t take this to heart Terry, it will all work out for the best. In the meantime, work hard and enjoy your sports, especially your rugby, which I hear is coming on well. I’ll try to fix up for you to come out for a visit one holidays when I have settled my work arrangements.

With Affection,

  Your Papa.

I always found other people’s boarding schools far more tempting as places to live in than my own. You know, or maybe you don’t; going out on away matches, singing events, plays etc - reasons for getting out of the place. Other people’s schools seemed more cosy, more benign, somehow. Although I knew deep inside that really they were just the same as mine. Places full of lost boys, buoyant buoys; losers and winners. Sinkers and swimmers.

Chapter 3

‘Lower Field’, Wontbridge Public School, Devon, July 1975

Is your name Terry Mowlam? He half-turned, and gave a nonchalant sideways glance in my general direction – yup. ….My sister Clare went to school with your sister Fiona, apparently they sing songs together – she, Clare, gave me your name and I thought I’d introduce myself.. my name’s Neil, Neil Williams, I’m in Barnes.  …O yeah? Affable indifference. He looked back at the true focus of his attention – assorted athletics on the rugby pitch turned field-and-track venue for the term, that lay amongst many others in the rambling park of trees, fields and criss-crossing gravel drives that was our home from home. See ya then.. No reply that I could distinguish, but a hopeful start, I felt. Well no outright hostility, at any rate. Not that I would, in all likelihood, have much to do with him; my house - Barnes House - was a mile away from the main school anyway – he was in Fellowes, amongst the other houses down at the main school. We would probably only ever meet as adversaries in house matches. O well, I’d done what I told Clare I would do. Introduced myself. I went back to my 400 metres training, unaware of the import. Unaware of the places and perspectives which that brief first meeting would lead me to.

Chapter 4

Wontbridge School, January 1977

In fact, if I had been into making predictions, which I wasn’t at the time, I would have predicted that it would have been Peter that would become my life-long musical collaborator, cohort, and outsider-in-arms, not Terry. My first summonable impression of Pete was walking back up to Barnes House one evening after a day’s schooling… he was some way behind me, walking up the drive through the tall trees. I turned for some unknown reason, and saw him at the same time as he saw me – he waved, the sort of exaggerated wave you make to someone far off, and I waited while he caught me up – it was a welcome friendly gesture in an alien world. I was the only one who had come to Wontbridge from my Prep School, and unlike most of the other new boys in my house, had no existing friendships to buoy me up in the tentative first few terms of living in a new environment.

That had been my first term, but now I was moving back up the hierarchy again in a school that, in fact, was turning out to be not half as painful to live in as the one before. More even – I was actually starting to enjoy myself. I had recently discovered two crucial keys to my well-being – rock music and self-destructive subversion. Pete and I were both studying for our music O level (he was there through long-lived musical ability, I was doing music because it had been a way of giving up Latin..). We had both started making music outside of the, then, strict parameters of musical education, and we were getting a pioneering thrill from playing and writing songs on pianos that normally resounded with far more conventional tones. Not that we were being unconventional, though we thought we were – composing tunes for an intended musical of Biblical content (there was to be a plague of frogs in there somewhere) and epic proportions that would, if it had ever got finished, which it didn’t (the frog song was as far as we got), have owed more than a passing nod to all of the famous Rock Operas of the time.

It was during one of these clandestine musical liaisons in the newly built music school, with its myriad of rehearsal rooms and storage spaces, that I first heard those drums…

Pete and I heard them from far off, in another part of the building and we both went to investigate, something pounding and primeval kindled in our souls. As we got closer, we realised it was coming from one of the large storage rooms through the main music hall – shut off from the hall by rolling doors, and with loading doors to the outside, they provided an outside access point for orchestra gear, as well as storage for bulky instruments. The rolling doors were shut, but it was clear the earth was moving inside. The thunder from the violently played drumkit was seeping out of the cracks in the doors, and resounding around the main hall, which added space and ultimate authority to a sound that could not have been more full of blind intent in the first place. It was a spiritual experience. And whoever was playing those drums was feeling it too.

We gently slid the rolling doors open a crack, so as not to disturb the worshipper at his altar of rhythm, and took it in turns to peer in. In the gloom amongst xylophones, stacked up chairs and a spare grand piano I could make out Terry Mowlam’s distinctive curly fair hair thrumming in sympathy with the drums as he thrashed and pulsed with absolute abandon. I don’t know how long we were crouched there, listening. But eventually he must have run out of steam, or sensed our presence - he stopped, and the world resumed.

That was good I said, pathetically, as Terry turned to look at the light we were casting in from the brightly lit hall. Yeah, great followed Pete, apologetically. Thanks he clipped back, sparingly. Words were not going to be the most successful means of communicating with Terry, as I was beginning to see.

Chapter 5

Wontbridge School and beyond 1977/8

I can’t remember how, but Pete and I found out that Terry played in a band – a band?!..  – but we were the only band at Wontbridge, how dare they? In our elitist musical snobbery, we had assumed that because there were only a handful of O and A level music students, and because we were the only low-lifes amongst them with the audacity to play non-classical music, that we were the only band… wrong by a mile. Here we were in one of the high-roofed rehearsal rooms at the end of the music school watching a seriously heavy rock combo - Lava, as they turned out to be called – making merry with loud grunge (though we did not know the term then), and with none other than Terry Mowlam banging out the beats on his kit, playing with the same intensity and commitment that we had witnessed a few weeks ago.

We watched, numbed by distortion. I had heard music like this on vinyl, and it was starting to change my psyche already, but I had never heard it live. It was awesome. Not only did I want more, now, but I wanted to make that noise myself. Pete looked similarly dismayed.  Terry wasn’t going to need us – he was doing fine already. To hear that sound and to be unable to be a part of it would be unbearable, but there was no way Pete and I could make a noise like that. All we could do was watch and listen, as lamely and as enviously as when we first heard Terry play in the storage rooms behind the concert hall..

But fate was moving faster than we knew. As they packed up after the rehearsal, Tristram, one of the guitar players, who also had a bass sat next to his six-string, which he had not played when we were there, told us that Richard, the other guitar player, was leaving the band, and asked if either of us played electric guitar. Blimey. In an uncharacteristically bold move I immediately replied yes, I did actually, neglecting to mention that I had only ever played acoustic, and did not even know how to plug an electric in. The pull was just too strong. Pete politely remained silent.

The first Lava rehearsal with me, their new guitar player, did not go well. Seems that not only was I lacking in electronic know-how, which Tristram had, so far, teeth-clenchingly accepted (seeing as how I was using his guitar and amp anyway it was not that much of a drawback), but worse than that, I was not even aware that barre chords were the exclusive order of the day for this sort of music. Forget being able to play them… I had not even heard of them. I like to think Tris discovered a new-found patience within himself that day. Under his fervent instruction, within an hour or two I was playing rudimentary bar chords. Luckily for me no-one had yet noticed the remarkable vee-sign that my spare two fingers made as they strained, in the only way they knew how, to shape the chords. Had I realised that 60 miles away in London the seeds of punk were taking root, I would have nurtured this surprising ability. Throughout all of my initiation, and the wasted time that it caused, Terry sat behind his kit with a benign, unhurried patience. He was happy just to be there; any excuse to play his drums again, and again, and again, was fine with him. Until it was time for a smoke of course – a habit that I had also stumbled upon. The Music School at Wontbridge had only recently been built, and was large. It’s nooks and crannies of cupboards, instrument stores and other un-peopled spaces afforded us easy opportunity for nurturing our new-born narcotic pretensions. Smoking was to become another of the invisible strands that would draw Terry and I together - one of the tools with which we would wage our undeclared war against ourselves. Or, as we thought, against everyone else.

I only remember ever attending one Lava rehearsal, and that was it. There may have been another one or two, but we quickly realised that our sound needed filling out, and we all agreed it was keyboards that would do it. Pete seemed the obvious, perhaps only, choice, and within a few weeks the four of us had gelled into a working unit.

But the music we were now making was not the same – we had vocals and lyrics now; I was morphing into our lead singer, with Tris providing harmonies and the occasional lead vocal – so the name could not be the same. Here began an obsession with changing and distorting band names that would last Terry and I half a lifetime. It would in the future confuse us, all around us, and all those who might one day even wish to pay us. But none of those things mattered to us then – what we were doing was purely for the music, and the point in time that we were making it at. The here and now. The there and then. We settled on Second Inversion which we thought reflected our blossoming depth and musical integrity.

We thought we were brilliant, of course. We needed an outlet. The energy and intent were too much for the confines of one rehearsal room, however high the roof. But when one dreams one does, and avenues appeared. The first avenue was Pete’s father, who had started doing cassette duplication for the Associated Board’s music exams – tapes of musical aural exercises and the like, which were recorded in a recording studio – Andy’s Shed a few miles away in Bath. He had got to know the studio owner, Andy, and he somehow managed to fix up a recording session for us. The other avenue was our own Alma Mater – Wontbridge had a Sixth Form drinking club that met once a week in the school Tuck Shop – which was housed in a building big enough for us to set up our gear and play at one end of the main room. We had our first studio session and our first gig booked, and we only had three songs… that half term we stayed behind at the school whilst all the other pupils went home for the week and played, played and played. I discovered the power of music over illness that week (Dr. Theatre to an actor) – ‘flu had been rife in the school that term and I had succumbed, but there was no way I was going to miss the rehearsal time… I forced myself to play and sing for the week and just collapsed the following week instead and missed school for ten days – far more expendable.

~

Even waiting two or three months to get rehearsed up properly was too much for Terry and me. We decided the only thing for it was for he and I to go up to London and busk. My sister Clare had by this time left school, and had a flat up there, so we used a weekend exeat (we were allowed out of the school for two weekends in a term other than half term, one each side) and took my acoustic guitar and a tambourine with us. I had discovered from my travels through London (my parents were then living in Scotland, so I often stopped and wandered around the city when changing stations on my way to or from school at the beginning and end of term) that Tottenham Court Road underground station was as good a place as any – it was always busy, and was symbolically near Charing Cross road, or London’s Tin Pan Alley – where all the music shops and publishers were, and where the musos hung out. We wrote a song specially – suitably entitled Singing in a Subway. I remember no nerves, no worries – we just played, and even made money. Once someone even dropped a fiver into the guitar case – not a small amount in the seventies. Though I have to confess the donor in question may have had an ulterior motive – he hung around us and introduced himself as Dudley – he said he was a magazine publisher and wanted to use Terry’s head… I should say here that Terry was, and I have long since forgiven him this, a strikingly good-looking young man. He had a mane of thick, curly blond hair that he had grown past his shoulders, blue eyes, with a look of such pure Rock and Roll intent shining out of them that he could have been a sixties icon easy, had he been born ten years earlier. He was photogenic and profoundly, outwardly at least, sure of himself. Being a thunderous drummer, he was also pretty well built, but it was not Terry’s torso that Dudley wanted – he told us he had a perfect male body ‘on file’ and wanted to graft Terry’s head onto it for the cover for the next issue of his magazine. By the time he finished explaining this, Terry and I were sliding down the curved subway wall, unable to control our mirth, clutching our tambourine and guitar to our stomachs. Dudley correctly sensed our lack of potential as future business partners and sidled off, looking rather hurt. At least he didn’t take his fiver back.

Enlivened and emboldened we made several more busking trips to London, and it was on one of these metropolitan mini-tours that we came across ‘tool’ number two. Ganja, weed, herb, puff, blow, pot, spliff… yes spliff, that’s the one. Out of all the terms for cannabis, and the different methods of ingesting it, spliff sums it up, as regards Terry’s and my association with the stuff. He would in the future develop the abilty to roll the finest looking and finest smoking spliffs I ever encountered, and for my part I have to say I was to develop a surprisingly useful ability to construct spliffs in the most adverse circumstances (once even ‘al fresco’, halfway up a mountain in the Pyrenees, but that’s another story). Spliffs would accompany us to almost every place we were to go together – both physically and metaphorically, for the next 28 years. We had just finished busking, and were walking through the underpass at Tottenham Court road when a quiet voice came from an inconspicuous man I was walking past ..need any hash boys ? – I turned to Terry for reassurance as I instinctively replied ..no, we’re ok thanks mate and saw only that look of benign passivity in his eyes, mixed with perhaps a little surprise, though I wasn’t sure. We walked on a couple of paces and I turned to him again. I don’t think I quite meant that, do you? … I’m not altogether sure you did, as it happens … we both turned around, walked back to our benefactor and bought our first ever lump of dope.

That night we climbed out of Clare’s ground floor flat window to the tiny patch of grass in front of it and furtively constructed, smoked, and assimilated our purchase. It was not as much of a mind-altering experience as I had expected, but it seemed to fit the mantle I was growing into. We clambered back into the flat, and as we lay down in our sleeping bags, I think that maybe I sensed a haven, a peaceful place inside of myself where a certain part of me that I had been hitherto unaware of did not hurt anymore, but I did not think of it like that then.

..I’m having brilliant dreams.. said Terry.

Chapter 6

Andy’s Shed recording studios, Bath. Scarborough and Wontbridge School 1978/9

My name’s Neil, I’m the singer – Andy looked up from a tangled mass of cables and sundry electrical debris, or what looked like it. Pleased to meet you, Neil Singer – can you sing? .. his eyes twinkled with a sparkle only granted to those in life who truly pursue their life’s vocation. He radiated an energy that was infectious and galvanising. Here was a true priest of the temple where I wanted to worship. I hope so I replied, somewhat deflated, but not for long. I had met my musical guru, my teacher of the mystical arts of studio recording, and I knew it the instant he spoke – his voice mashed gravel; it had a low bass resonance that rattled the wire snares under the snare drum on the kit nearby; it was as if every guitar hanging on the wall, every keyboard placed haphazardly around the main studio, every microphone jauntily angled on a stand (and there were many of all of these, you could hardly move around the room) every cymbal and every drum were his silent servants, waiting to quiver into life and be recorded and manipulated by the master of the magic that infused this place.

"OK boys, so the first thing you have to remember is that if you don’t play your music with Vibe, then it won’t record properly, understand? My machines are set up to automatically erase everything you play that doesn’t have Vibe, see? It’s the magnetics of the thing . We were all now sat in the control room of The Shed – Terry, me, Tristram and Pete, with Andy presiding over his court from within the cloud of rich tobacco smoke that emanated from his pipe. Our first session in a recording studio. Practiced up and ready to go. Only joking, just give it your best shot and we’ll see what happens. Into the main studio lads, cans on and let’s get started.." Cans? what’s he talking about? I thought as I put on my headphones. But thoughts of ignorance were blasted from my mind when we started to play. It sounded incredible – so clear; I could hear the saliva in my mouth sizzle on my teeth when I sang esses, I could hear my breath magnified ten times when I inhaled and every detail of Terry’s drumming danced between my ears. All of us felt the same, I could tell, and we all played in a haze of ecstacy and enchantment, starting to enter a world where there was no time, no night or day, no limitations. The song we were playing seemed to go on for ever, like it had no beginning or end, it just was, but when it eventually finished there was a silent pause while we took in what we had experienced, before Andy’s voice smiled in our ears - well done boys, come in and have a listen.. make sure you don’t leave the cans near your microphone, Neil Singer.. What is he on about? I thought as I hung my headphones, rather cleverly, I thought, wishing to look like a seasoned studio veteran who knew the ropes, on the microphone in front of me. The whole building instantly squealed with a shriek that pierced my ears as if someone had shoved a skewer in them. From the corner of my eye I saw the burly figure of Andy rushing towards me from the control room and suddenly I clicked… cans were headphones… aaargh! I pulled them off the microphone quickly and the squealing stopped. Lesson number two - cans and microphones don’t mix, Neil Singer, gravelled Andy, as I humbly shuffled into the control room after him.

~

We were hooked. The result of our labours sounded ok, but not as good in the cold light of the next day as it had done on the massive studio speakers in The Shed. We played what we had done to a few people, including the school secretary, for some bizarre reason, who thought it was rubbish. Our own peers were not so insulting, but we weren’t bothered either way. We knew what we had found, how it felt. A few weeks later we heard through Pete’s dad that Andy thought we had potential, and he was willing to offer us a few free sessions during studio downtime – when he wasn’t busy recording other bands – if we were interested. As if. We started work on a new song, a ballad that I had written called Cat in the rain – a heartfelt musical vignette of lost love inspired by my own unrequited affections for a girl in our music class, Sandy Jones, who I knew would never be mine. I didn’t have Terry’s pulling power, unfortunately. It’s a fact – the drummer always gets the girl.

A few weeks later we were back in The Shed, this time with two girls from the Wontbridge sixth form (girls were a recent innovation at Wontbridge – the school, like the world around it, was changing), Sheila and Stephanie, who had agreed to sing backing harmonies on Cat in the Rain. We were now old hands of course, having done one whole studio session already, and we smiled knowingly as they looked around them in wonder. Who needs drugs when you’ve got music? , sighed Steph, as she lay back contentedly in one of Andy’s expansive sofas that lined the inside wall of the control room. We nodded wisely, both Terry and I thinking the same thing – yes, but both might be fun..

This time we were less entranced but played better. The tapes sounded as good the next day as they had in the studio, and everyone seemed to like what we had done. We were growing in confidence and our first gig was fast approaching. We were on a roll.

~

That half term, Terry and I decided to go up to Pickering, near Scarborough, to visit his mum and her partner Benedict in their flat. We took the school train to London and rode the tube through the tunnels and subways we felt we now partly owned, due to our musical performances in many of them, to make our ongoing connection.

We managed to get to Kings Cross with an hour or so to spare before our train to the North departed. Terry wanted to buy a lighter, so we went to one of the shops adjacent to the station arcade and had a look at their selection while we waited. He found himself a rugged-looking petrol lighter, the simplicity and utilitarianism of which seemed to please him greatly. Starting to become jealous, I decided to buy a lighter too. My choice was less butch but, to me, more stylish. It was tall, thin and gold coloured, with a sideways action to roll the flint that seemed neat to me, but had my thumb aching by the time we got to Pickering.

By the time we had had something to eat, our train was waiting at the platform. The long, vaulted glass roofs above the platforms augured our departure with a church-like air of fate and destiny. Though, I have to say, most trips with Terry felt like that. The large diesel locomotive thrummed gently ahead of the long string of old-style carriages with their plush wooden interiors, waiting to pull us and our new lighters forward to a week of joys unknown. Well, one of them was known. We had rolled a few spliffs for the journey, and as soon as the train was under way, we made our way to a section between two carriages where the outside doors were, opened the pull-down window, and fired up. People walking through between carriages must have smelt something, but no-one said anything, and we didn’t care anyway.

The fields of Middle England rolled by outside our compartment window and we both sat, staring out of the window and daydreaming happily. No cares scarred our youthful, life-hungry spirits, and the hours passed us by, un-noticed.

By the time we got to Pickering, it was dark. Terry said he knew the way back to his mum’s flat, so I followed gamely as he threaded through dark streets, past a church, across a deserted roundabout and finally into an estate of modern looking blocks of flats. He led me through the communal door, and we walked up a staircase to a landing. There was a door at each end, but we turned right, and Terry knocked gently. A medium sized man with a generous stomach, balding pate and huge sideburns answered the door. His tired looking face relaxed into a huge grin when he saw Terry. Hallo young man. And this must be Neil. Welcome Neil! Come on in. Your mum’s been waiting and worrying about your journey, as usual, Teh. This even more abbreviated pronunciation of Terry’s name, like ‘Tel’ but without the ‘l’ on the end, was unique, as far as I knew, to Benedict and Motty. Ah, Motty, that was another abbreviation. Originally I had called Terry’s mum ‘Mott’ – short for ’Mother Of The Terry’. Motty had thought it stood for ‘Mother of