50 Years of Music Blog (Part 1)
This year marks the 50th year since the start of my passion for music as 1974 was when I brought my first album and single. Growing up as part of a large family in Windsor, there were nine of us and up until this point I was really a football fan like my Dad who took me to watch Chelsea play at home every other week as it was the closest First Division team (before the Premiership) to us, but the wonderful thing I remember was when Chelsea weren’t playing at home he would take me to random matches so I could see some of the great Legends. So we went to watch Southampton play Manchester United so I could see George Best, Dennis Law, Bobby Charlton and co, Watford versus Stoke to see 1966 World Cup Winner Gorden Banks and a friendly with Fulham who were playing Santos which featured Pele and most of the Brazilian 1970 World Cup Winning team.
As my older brothers and sisters started getting jobs of their own, getting into relationships and moving out, I ended up sharing a room with my older brother Ken and it was then that I started to explore his record collection, I also remember getting a small transistor Radio for Christmas and like many teenagers at that time, I use to listen to Radio Luxembourg and then latterly the John Peel show in bed until late at night when I was supposed to be asleep, which opened me up to whole world of music.
The first single I brought was ‘I Know It’s Only Rock & Roll’ by The Rolling Stones, although we did have some children’s novelty singles before then, my Dad listened to Military Band Music which really wasn’t my thing although in later years he became a big fan of Max Boyce but this was more for the comedy, my Mum was the musical one of my parents and she was a fan of Country singer Jim Reeves as well as Tom Jones and Al Jolson, who isn’t Politically Correct now but back then it was all part of the norm, with programmes like the Black & White Mistral Show being prime time Saturday night viewing, which never sat right with me even at that age.
The very first vinyl album I brought was ‘Diamond Dogs’ by David Bowie, I am not entirely sure what motivated me to buy it but I think it might be that brother had ‘Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders of Mars’ (one of my all time favourite albums) and it had just been released. It occurred to me whilst writing this blog that back in the day before streaming sites if somebody else had an album we didn’t feel the need to get it ourselves, instead we would go around a friends house and listen to it and buy something different instead.
Growing up in such a large family with the hustle and bustle of people coming and going, can feel quite lonely and at times and I didn’t feel like I fitted in, what I felt when I listened to David Bowie was that there was someone out in the world who spoke to me then. I remember listening to ‘Kooks’ from ‘Hunky Dory’ and thinking these are my people.
As far as Bowie albums go ‘Diamond Dogs’ is largely ignored but I still love it to this day from the opening lines of ‘Future Legend’ I was hooked.
“And in the death
As the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare
The shutters lifted in inches in Temperance Building
High on Poacher's Hill
And red, mutant eyes gaze down on Hunger City
No more big wheels
Fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats
And ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes
Coverting the highest of the sterile skyscrapers
Like packs of dogs assaulting the glass fronts of Love-Me Avenue
Ripping and rewrapping mink and shiny silver fox, now legwarmers
Family badge of sapphire and cracked emerald
Any day now
The Year of the Diamond Dogs
This ain't Rock'n'Roll
This is Genocide
The whole album conjured up a whole world in a way which only David Bowie could do accompanied by the gatefold sleeve image of Bowie being half man, half dog. The only hit to come from this album was ‘Rebel Rebel’ but there are so many good songs on it from the title track to ‘Sweet Thing’ with it’s pre Punk distorted guitar.
This opened the floodgates for my Bowie obsession at that time and I started collecting the back catalogue with ‘Aladdin Sane’ followed by ‘Hunky Dory’ which listening to it now I think is a masterpiece, ‘Man Who Sold the World’ and even the ‘World of David Bowie’ which I remember buying from Woolworths in Windsor for a pound, ‘Space Oddity’ was one of my brothers albums, so never I technically owed that, although I went out and brought ‘Ziggy Stardust’ as soon as he left home.
A year later (1975) David Bowie released the title track to his new album ‘Young Americans’ and I have to say the fifteen year old me hated it, for me it was too slick and polished with an American soul feel. I remember the first time I heard it my family were driving back from a weekend on the coast and it came on the radio and my Mum turned it up as she knew I liked Bowie and after I heard it I don’t think I said a word the whole journey back, so mixed were my emotions. Fifty years on I appreciate it a lot more along with a lot of his later albums and the genius of David Bowie is that he changed his identity more than any other artist in history and was so ahead of his time that it was too big a change for me at the time.
David Bowie is still one one of my all time heroes, I have joked with friends that after he passed away the World has never been the same and I know many people who feel the same.
January 1975 saw me go to my first live music event which I will talk about next time.