Notes on a Musical Youth

Self indulgence warning!



When I was a teenager I absolutely knew that I'd be famous. I was hooked on music. I poured every drop of my being into music. All for nothing. It was fun while it lasted, apart from the final few months of a band who lived in each others' pockets, whined about each other and kept the knives sharp. We're all friends now, bar one. Not that I see them much anymore, but that's a geography thing, not down to disliking them (because I don't). We were all pretty bad at keeping in touch anyway.

Instead of messing about moving here and there I wonder if I would have become a musician had I stayed in Sunderland, working in a call centre or subtitling darts and wrestling. It's possible, but then I know that my ego would only have got in the way of me doing anything with any kind of musical ability that may have come about.

I can write this with impunity because nobody in Sunderland ever reads this blog at all. I don't even think my friends from university do either.

I think that perhaps my band's biggest talent was drinking, or maybe that was mine. I did my share, because it was rock and roll. I intended to give up drinking several times but the singer insisted I was boring without a drink. Episodes with drink included drinking a whole bottle of vodka at a party, going clubbing and being refused entry, then proving my sobriety by performing press ups and star jumps, eventually being allowed in and then falling down two flights of stairs. In another incident I almost got me, the singer and a friend into a fight after swing my belt around pissed and thinking I could be just like Iggy Pop. I got a smack in the face and fell backwards in broken glass. I also fell into broken glass on a walk home before and drank more vodka at a the bassist's flat to numb the pain of pulling a three-inch shard out of my hand from behind the gristle of my palm.



Maybe on the whole, the band's talent was resenting each other. We resented the singer because he was full of self-pity; we resented the bass player for his popularity with women, and also for not realising it; we resented the other guitarist for his ambition; they probably resented me for my narcissism (when starting the band I once quipped that it should be called the Marc Jones Experience). Nobody resented the drummer except, perhaps, the drummer. The bassist and singer were the best of friends who also hated each other's guts because the bassist could sing much better and had ten times the charisma of the singer. The singer was very good at writing lyrics but not very good at singing them. And he hated singing the songs I wrote but had no choice due to lack of songs otherwise.

We loved other bands. We hated other bands. We even did both at the same time sometimes. Just not as much as we loved and hated each other.

I did not become a pop star. I'm not even a musician of any description any more. Maybe I already am what I'll be. I keep children marginally entertained enough to teach them five new words of English every week and have conversations with people who want me to correct their grammar and let them know what the long words I use mean. I don't mind it but it was never part of my planned trajectory. I could do it long term but quite how well it will go down when I'm old and grey is questionable.

I know the tone is bitter if not downright miserable and I don't honestly like posting like this but I suppose that you're all adults and you can take a bit of dark meat along with the jelly and ice cream.

A few friends who work in music meet their heroes and pursue what used to be a hobby for a living. It makes me jealous and relieved. Jealous because I'd love to be the one meeting the people behind my favourite albums, but I'm also relieved because I don't think I could handle it. I'd be either in prison or in Alcoholics Anonymous by now if I were doing what they were doing and having the Facebook contacts and Twitter followers they are having.

I honestly looked forward to being thirty because I thought I'd finally have everything sorted, and I don't mean a musical career because those days are long gone. I thought I might become a writer but more importantly I thought I might get a private life that was successful. Instead, things unravelled. I now live in a crap flat that's too hot in Summer and too cold in Winter with the only violence that occurs in Tokyo within earshot.

There is a little bit of sugar coating though. Things that unravel can sometimes be knitted into new and surprising garments. My girlfriend can knit, sew and crochet too.