If music be the food of love...

(from 2011)

There is a certain period in most peoples’ lives when music becomes all important. You can often tell a person’s age by the tunes and lyrics they know inside out. These bring back memories of happy days – or at least different days. In my work I visit many retirement homes – the visiting sing-along entertainers still lead with songs of the last World War. In ten year’s time, they will all be Elvis impersonators!

Before I even hit my teens, my life revolved around Radio Luxembourg. It was realistically the only commercial station available to people in Britain. The BBC had the monopoly and its tastes in popular music reflected the age of those who ran it. It was also tied up in knots by musicians’ unions which meant that recordings were rationed and music was more often than not – “live”.  Or “dead” – depending on your point of view. But Radio Luxembourg was a commercial station – “208 on the dial” – that broadcast popular music to Britain – even though its programs were taped in Britain, flown out to Luxembourg, then beamed back to its hungry UK audience. It was before the era of transistor radios, but I had a valve portable wireless the size and weight of a large brick, that could be snuggled under the bedclothes with me.

The only time that music took a back seat was on Sundays when a variety of religious groups bought time for their individual messages. They included one of the splinter groups from the religious history I write about elsewhere.

Only now, looking back, do I see how my taste in popular music was shaped. A lifelong interest in folk music – people like Pete Seeger – started with a series of live programmes by the Weavers in the mid-50s. I heard Seeger and audience do Wimoweh and I was hooked. Still am. Different companies bought airtime on Luxembourg, so you heard stuff you just wouldn’t have heard anywhere else. There was a strange program called Scottish Requests – which started with a bowdlerized version of Scotland the Brave – “sit ye in your easy chair, for your program’s on the air”... Then the Capitol Show introduced me to Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee and (some contrast) Gene Vincent and the Bluecaps. As Vincent’s career nosedived in the States he came to Britain – first in 1959 – and I saw him perform on a number of occasions, and wrote articles about him for small circulation fanzines. In his prime, before drink got the better of him, he was one of the most exciting rock and roll performers of all time. And in my misspent youth I saw most of them.

Also on Capitol came the Kingston Trio. In their day they racked up gold disc on top of gold disc for album sales in the folk style. Later we realised that their harmonies were perhaps a little too slick and their patter too rehearsed. Nik Cohen gave the best put down when he said (quoting from memory) that they had the ability to get hold of an old blood and death ballad like Tom Dooley and make it sound like a song by Shirley Temple. Still – they introduced a huge swathe of the college crowd to folk music, who were then ready to lap up Dylan and Baez and the 60’s folk protest movement when it came along. I saw the Trio too on the only occasion they visited my country. I bought all their discs on vinyl, and courtesy of Bear Family Label of Germany have them all on CD and iPod today.

As a spin-off from the Trio, when they disbanded, John Stewart went solo and I followed his career through over forty albums down to his death in 2008. Some were straight folk, some were rock (he teamed up briefly with Fleetwood Mac), some were pop (he wrote Daydream Believer for the Monkeys) plus hundreds of quality singer-songwriter tracks – it became the soundtrack of my life. My poor daughter was subjected to Stewart tapes as we drove to and from school for years, but grew up to teach music and sing herself, and now does Stewart numbers in folk clubs and on YouTube. When visiting clubs – having heard how bad some of the others are – I have even plucked up sufficient courage to sing a Stewart number myself. Some of us will just not grow old gracefully.

But really it all started with a valve portable radio, snuggled under the bedclothes, and the delights of Radio Luxembourg - 208 on the dial. As did a lifelong interest in radio drama. But that’s another story.