This picture – of me in my mums arms on a CND march, with my dad in front, singing on the back of a lorry with the London Youth Choir in 1960 – neatly sums up my start in life
I grew up in central London and was lucky to have parents that encouraged and took part in music making for fun and to carry a message. Activist folk musicians and music lovers, I was asked what instrument I wanted to learn when I was seven. I immediately said trumpet, but the school said I was too young and too small and had to wait till I was eleven! After two frustrating years on the recorder, my parents got me a trumpet and paid for lessons when I was nine.
By the time I was eleven, I had progressed enough for my school to ask me to play the last post at the school remembrance service… however it was cancelled at the last minute by older school students who complained that the service was to militaristic and they instead held a memorial assembly for Jimi Hendrix who had just died
The fluidity of Hendrix’s playing , the effects, the effortless transition from riffs to melody stayed with me and is still something I aspire to do with my trumpet.
Discovering Miles Davis when I was 13 years old, showed me how expressive the trumpet could be ….militaristic fanfares and paracticing to get higher notes than anyone else went out the window as I also discovered free jazz and improvising, thanks to the fact that the amazing singer Maggie Nicols lived just upstairs in my block of flats.
Music at school was very traditional and I played with the London Schools Symphony Orchestra, most notably at the Royal festival hall conducted by Simon Rattle. I had an operation to lengthen my leg when I was 15 years old, and spent a year recovering in plaster and on crutches. Not having the usual distractions of a 15 year old I buried myself in music.
I studied music A level at Kingsway college and was lucky to study under Dave Smith who introduced me to avant garde sounds from Stockhausen to the minimalist composers.
One of my fellow students was the amazing jazz pianist Django Bates, who remains a good friend to this day. We were the only students on the course who were interested in Jazz. There was nowhere to learn jazz in those days … so we both refused places at music college and went on to form bands. It was 1977 however and Punk happened. that changed everything for me. The energy, the fresh-ness and the message all made jazz sound old and remote. I left Django… who went on to be the most successful piano player of his generation and got involved in activism and punk.
I took up the bass guitar, moved out of Django’s house, where I was living and ended up squatting in west London. I tried forming various bands, and shared squatting, activist and musical ideas with friends in Camden based around the band “Scritti Politti”. London was amazing for seeing bands at the time and I was a big fan of “Gang of Four”… who had amazing support acts like The “Pop Group”,”Pere Ubu” and “Joy Division” among others.
London was getting violent. Blair Peach was truncheoned to death by police at an anti-racist demo in Southall where I was living at the time. Me and my friends organised a benefit gig to raise money for the legal costs of the kids arrested in Southall that day. We got the amazing “Crass” to play and the band I was in at the time supported. After we played the venue was invaded and smashed up by nazi skinheads.
No Fun indeed! My girlfriend from Manchester suggested I move up there. My life was about to change.
