I Know This Much: From Soho to Spandau

My mother was upset about the title. ‘“Alone”? You can’t call it that! They’ll start to worry about you.’ She already had.

Writing songs was a lonely process, it seemed. Although a dark, maudlin number in a minor key, it still somehow managed to contain a whistling refrain. But a pattern, thank God, was not forming, and it was to be my last in the whistling genre.

Strangely, and with some measure of foresight, my headmistress recorded the performance on reel-to-reel and I still have it. Listening to it now, what fascinates me most of all is not my child’s voice, surprising lack of nerves or dreadful whistling, but the noises of the children in the background, children I knew, shuffling, coughing, talking as though it were yesterday, and yet now into the final half of their lives. It’s a distant moment of sublime naivety that I want to reach into and pull out. And somewhere, just off to the side of the singing boy, silent, but to me very present upon the tape, the bishop, making a decision that would help create the man now listening.

In the January of 1971, my brother and I decided to buy our first records.We both had money saved from our paper rounds and together we walked the Essex Road towards a little record shop in Cross Street, painfully called Pop Inn. For such an important event we needed to be attired correctly, and Martin and I were both dressed de rigueur in Brutus shirts with buttoned-down collars.

I had begged my mother for this essential fashion item the summer before, knowing exactly where to purchase it. At the Angel a shop run by some tasty ex-mods was a windowless little grotto of working-class style. Oh, that giddy sensation when I first saw the Brutuses and Ben Shermans, as one of the shop’s oh-so-fashionable owners slipped them off the shelves and laid them out for my delectation. Folded oblong in shape and protected inside their crisp polythene wrappings, they were like perfect portraits of what shirts should be like, all stiff and pleading to be bought. Some were gingham, others a confectionery of ice-cream colours, and all impossible to choose from. I wanted to own every one of them, collect them with the same eagerness that I’d collected World Cup coins the year before, but I had to make a choice and my eyes kept returning to a pale yellow one. I pictured myself in it; I pictured Tony Bayliss and Stephen Brassett looking at me in it; I pictured myself walking into Anna’s in it. The power of making that choice left me light headed, almost a little nauseous with excitement, and then the owner was slipping it into a brown paper bag and I was desperate to get back home.

The smell of the fresh cotton as its lemon folds fell open and caught the light had me falling further in love. Little vents and buttons flawlessly set off its short sleeves, and, as I slipped it on, my skin had never felt such bliss. Leaving its straight-bottomed tails hanging out over my trousers, I would be À la mode that winter, but what terrible trousers they now looked next to my new shirt. These were awful. They had to go. More begging ensued.

Dad took me to a little Jewish tailor he knew of in the East End, and I picked out the electric blue-and-green mohair myself. By the following weekend, the bespectacled cutter had made me the sharpest parallels I could imagine, and although they were unlined, the roughness against my legs was worth suffering. As well as getting a few cast-offs, my brother was quick at catching me up with his own begging, and so there we were, a couple of real tasty geezers in two-tone tonic strides, marching up Cross Street in search of our musical identity.

Two pairs of mini-brogues with Blakies hammered on to the heels clipped their way into Pop Inn. Presented with a large tray of 45s, the baby suedeheads were bewildered as to what they should pick as their first buy. The bearded shop assistant indulged them by languidly playing a few. Martin heard the double-tracked vocals of the Tremeloes’ ‘Me And My Life’ and made his choice. For Gary, the minute the car horn sounded and the singer’s lazy London drawl spoke to him, he knew what he wanted.

‘I think I’m so-phisticated…’

The Kinks’ ‘Apeman’ was my first record on a consumerist journey that would not only shape my life, but would eventually pay me back in spades.

Thursday night was Top of the Pops; it had been since ‘Hot Love’ reached number one in March. Marc Bolan’s T.Rex was now being scrawled over my exercise books, and my second single was soon bought. As Marc flicked his corkscrew locks from his glitter tears, I knew the button-down collars had to go. I grew my hair, had it ‘feather-cut’ in a new ‘unisex’ salon called Stanley Kays, and graduated to a turquoise-patterned tulip collar—probably worn under a knitted black tank top with rainbow hoops—and the ultimate playground desirable, a suede Budgie jacket. Adam Faith’s eponymous TV character, Budgie, became a clothes peg for the West End store Mr Freedom, and we all wanted what Budgie wore.My Budgie jacket was cream with a green yoke. I can still smell its urban opulence, although mine was almost certainly tainted with the pungent smell of burgers from Brick Lane, where my cheaper version was bought. I never extended to the white clogs Budgie also made fashionable, although the star of our playground, a boy called Chris Lambert, certainly did. Captain of the football team, and a magnet for girls, he had everything, and so long before you did that by the time you’d realised you wanted them, his were already worn out. Toppers, Selatios, Wedges, whatever shoe it was, he’d kicked them to bits while you were still begging your mum for them. He laid down the playground’s sumptuary rules of clothing and we followed them as best our parents’ pockets could afford.

T.Rex’s follow-up to ‘Hot Love’ was all pouty plosives and hissy breathing, with a dark, feline groove that crawled all over me the minute I first heard Tony Blackburn play it on Radio 1 while I was getting ready for school one morning. After watching them do it on Top of the Pops, I pestered my mother into buying ‘Get It On’ while we were out shopping the following Saturday. The bearded hippy from Pop Inn looked unimpressed as he dropped it into a paper bag and handed it over. I was dying to get back and bang-a-gong with the Puck-like Marc, but on the way home we had, frustratingly, to stop and buy saveloys and chips. As soon as we were in the house I dived into the shopping bag and lifted the record out from underneath the hot chip bag; but it didn’t feel like a record any more. ‘Get It On’ had warped into something resembling a piecrust or a small fruit bowl with crimped edges, the kind Nan would own. The hot chips had destroyed it. There was no way I was going to get another one so I put it on the turntable anyway. As the needle bobbed like a boat on the high sea the sound left everyone in earshot feeling nauseous. I suffered the indignity on behalf ofMarc, and in between gobfuls of the now cold, shameful saveloy, I sang along anyway. Oddly enough, as with that familiar vinyl scratch we all know and love, I now miss the wow and flutter of an unwarped ‘Get It On’.

It was on a Thursday that the bishop came round. I can say that with some certainty because Top of the Pops was on telly.My mother and father were packing as we were going off to a holiday camp in Westward Ho! at the weekend. The doorbell went and I ran to the window. Below on the doorstep stood the tall man in the maroon robe from prize day. Local kids on bikes wheeled around, staring at him. Someone must have died.

‘It’s the bishop.’

‘What? For us?’ Mum sounded a little frantic.

‘The one from prize day.’

I’d already told her that he’d spoken to me after I played that day, and that Miss Bannatyne was very excited by it, but I wasn’t sure she’d listened.

‘Well, go down, then, and see what he wants.’

I went downstairs and opened the door. The kids tried to look into our passage, probably for signs of grief. On top of all the maroon material the bishop’s grin sat high on his jutting chin.

‘Hello, Gary.’ He was holding a large plastic bag. I stared at him. ‘Are your mother and father in?’

‘Er…Yeah.’

He seemed huge in our little place as he went up the stairs in front of me. His shoes looked worn and dusty underneath the richness of the cloth, as well as a bit odd, as if he were a man in a dress. It seemed a bizarre outfit to be wearing in the street, especially around here, but I assumed he must have come straight from work. I could hear my mother plumping the sofa as we climbed the stairs. I pushed open the front-room door and went in.

‘Hello.Mrs Kemp? I’m Trevor Huddleston. I saw your son perform his songs at Rotherfield. The headmistress gave me your address. I hope that’s all right.’

‘Oh, right. Come in. Sit down. Would you like a cup of tea?’ She had a different voice on. Oh God, not that voice.

‘Yes please.’ She vanished. ‘No sugar. Thank you.’ He took Dad’s chair, putting his bag next to his feet, and I returned to my place on the sofa. ‘I thought you were wonderful at the prize-giving, Gary,’ he said, giving his fist a little shove into the air in front of him. ‘I loved your songs, especially the one about being alone.’

I could feel my mother flinch. ‘We like the Easter one, don’t we, Frank?’ she shouted from the kitchen.

My father came in from the bedroom. He brushed his palms together and shook the bishop’s hand. ‘Nice to meet you. Yeah, we have a record of it we made at Waterloo Station.’

‘It doesn’t work any more, Dad. You can’t hear me.’

The bishop seized his moment. ‘Well, that’s exactly why I’m here,’ he said. I wondered if I’d done something illegal.Maybe even immoral. ‘A few years ago I worked in Africa.’ It occurred to me that that was why his shoes looked so dusty. ‘While I was there I met a young black African boy. A wonderful trumpet player. Still is a wonderful trumpet player.’ His two large hands came out like paddles. For a moment I thought he was going to pray. ‘I gave him a trumpet, to help encourage him. And it has.’ He stopped. Was that it?

Mum came back in with the tea. ‘Turn the telly down, Frank.’ She put the steaming mug on the mantelpiece above the flickering fake coals. ‘Would you like a biscuit?’

Top of the Pops was being ruined.

‘No, thank you, this is lovely.’

They’re clapping on the telly and Jimmy Savile is back on introducing the next band. Except for the blond hair, he looks like a younger version of the bishop.

Dad leant across to lower the volume a little and I shuffled to the end of the sofa, closer to the telly. The singer seemed to be impersonating Mick Jagger, but I loved his feathery haircut.

‘Don’t look at the telly!’ my mother snapped. ‘Look at the bishop!’

‘Eh?’

‘He’s come to see you.’

The bishop smiled. ‘I bought this for you, Gary. If that’s all right with your parents?’

Out of the plastic bag he pulled a box with a photograph of what I thought was a radio, but my peripheral vision was still half-concentrating on the telly and the guitarist and bass player, who were running around like a couple of cheeky schoolmates.

‘It’s called a cassette recorder. Easier than reel-to-reel. I’d like you to have it.’

I wasn’t sure what this meant and stared at the box as he handed it to me. Philips, it said.

‘Every time you write a song I’d like you to record it on to a cassette, write down the lyrics and send them to my house in Stepney.’ I didn’t know what to say and carried on staring at the gift in my hand. ‘Would that be all right?’

I looked up to see he was asking my father the question and took the opportunity to glance once more at what was too fascinating to ignore. They had a football out on stage now, and their skinny legs and high platforms lazily kicked it around while the mandolin player, or whatever he was, did a solo.

‘That’s brilliant,’ said Dad. ‘Thank you. Thank you very much. What d’ya say, Gary?’

‘Thank you very much.’

The singer was singing something about finding a rock‘n’roll band. The bishop could see that I was distracted and a little taken aback by the gift. ‘Do you like pop music, Gary?’

‘Er, yeah.’

‘I’ve just been helping to put on a charity pop concert with a famous guitarist called Pete Townshend. It’s going to be at the Oval cricket ground. We’re helping to raise money for Bangladesh.’ To my pleasure and relief he turned to the telly. ‘He’ll be playing,’ he said, nodding at the screen, ‘Rod Stewart. With the Faces. And the Who.’

He knew them!

‘That’s nice,’ said Mum.