Feeling Called Love

I read a review in the NME. Actually, you know what, it was probably more likely a feature in one of mum’s magazines or the Sunday papers. It made it sound like the most amazing thing ever: angry, violent people, loud guitars, swearing, big tunes… The review, or whatever it was, read like a thriller. By the time I’d finished reading it I felt like my life had changed. No more Airfix modelling, no more bike rides with my brother or helping mum out with the shopping. And no more pretending to like stuff I was supposed to like. Before I even heard a note, I was hooked. I felt cool just knowing about it.

I was thirteen and the closest I’d come to cool was two years earlier getting asked by Sonya Murphy at primary school to be her partner at the school disco. I think she asked me at the last minute because she didn’t have a partner.
“Make sure you wear Levis,” she said.
I nodded, grinning and said, “Yeah, definitely.”
Back at home I asked mum for Levis.
“But you’ve got some jeans already, darling.”
This was useful information because I wasn’t sure what Levis was.
“I have to have the Levis though, mum, please!”

In the end I arrived in the school hall: wallbars folded flat, disco lights flooding the parquet floor blue then yellow then red. I tried to see where Sonya was in the gloom. Girls and boys were already dancing together, Bye Bye Baby sang the Bay City Rollers.

“They’re not Levis, they’re….Wingfield!”
“Yes, I couldn’t get my size in the shop… I’ve got some ordered but ...”
Sonya glazed over as I fumbled with obvious lies. Mum simply hadn’t bought me any because she couldn’t afford them. Then Sonya wandered off with Lucy Slater to get a paper cup of Coke. Later I was sitting on the wall bars, self consciously hanging my arms over the bar behind my head like pictures I’d seen of film stars – angsty and sensitive. Sonya will notice how she’s hurt me and take pity. Last thing I remember that evening was sitting alone on the wallbars, watching her snog Darren Fletcher. The DJ was playing Fernando. If it had been later in the 70s, it would have been Winner Takes It All.

And now it was later in the 70s and I had another shot at being cool. This was a record that was frightening; it was more than a record, it was a statement. When I mentioned it to Robert, my best friend, he said he’d heard of it too. His sister had bought one of the group’s singles. I could go round to his and hear it after school if I wanted. Other kids in class knew about it too. The group who made it were making headlines in the sort of newspapers mum never got at home. There were playground rumours about the songs on it – some with swearing so bad that it almost never saw the light of day, one in particular that made the band get dropped by their record company. Dropped? What did that mean? Dropped like a stone in or like a teacup on the kitchen floor? Or was this a meaning of the word that I didn’t know yet, some exotic thing I was yet to discover. And of course, something my younger brother Price discovered when he was dropped 30 years later by his best friend Ollie.

I had never bought an actual LP before. I’d bought a few singles and had inherited a few old LPs from my mum and her boyfriend. But they were from a different age. Ancient songs that said nothing to me at all. I had no idea of how much these larger, grown-up discs cost; three, maybe even four pounds? Back in my bedroom I checked the shoebox on the shelf above my headboard – almost five pounds in three notes and many coins saved from my birthday and a visit to my great aunt’s a few weeks before. Would this be enough?

By now some of the song titles had been passed around in the playground during lunchbreak. Angry, violent, sexy. I repeated the titles to myself like a mantra. I sang versions of them to myself imagining how the actual songs would sound when I got the record. If I got the record. It was no sure thing I would be able to get hold of a copy. Was I old enough? Maybe there would be some law stopping me being able to hear it. It certainly sounded like an X film.

All this and the record didn’t seem to have come out yet. I went to the local record shop. It was near Robert’s house – overlooking the Heath. The man in the shop had something in his beard, which I couldn’t take my eyes off while I was talking to him.
“It’s out next week, son.”
“What day?”
He told me the day. And told me what time the shop opened. I could tell he was being sarcastic. There was a poster with the artwork of the record on the wall in the shop. I stood staring at it. It was beautiful.
“You going to stand there all day, son, or you going to buy something?”

The day the record came out was a school day. Robert and I ran back from the bus stop across the Heath. We arrived at the shop, panting and out of breath. I had the money from the shoebox in my pocket and would have happily given it all to the bloke with the beard behind the counter.

“You sure you’re old enough for this, son?” he said.
My heart leapt. He wasn’t going to sell it to me…. I knew it! I was only 12 and he knew it.
“But I’m 18!” I said, aware of my voice cracking.
“Yeah, and I’m as black as Trevor Macdonald.”
“But… but…”
“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, son, I’m only joking… That’s three pound ninety.”
He’d put the record in one of his red and black paper bags and was holding it in one hand. The other was open and outstretched towards me. I filled it with notes and silver coins.
“Jesus,” he muttered, looking down.

Robert had to go off and do something with his stepmum. He seemed strangely blasé about actually hearing the record – his older sister had played him the single a lot so he was acting a bit superior. To be honest though, I was glad I could unwrap and play it all by myself. I wanted to be able to smell the disc itself, to study the label, to read the writing on the back, and to play it again and again. With someone else there I knew I’d feel self conscious and not be able to fully enjoy the experience.

Price wasn’t home yet – he’d probably gone round to his friend David next door to play Action Men - and mum was still at work. I rushed to my room. My heart was beating as I removed the record shop bag to reveal the album cover. It could not have been more desirable – no picture of the band, that would have been giving too much away – a simple font on bold colours printed on matt cardboard. I was already impressed with the idea that less was more. I didn’t want the glossy, girly pop packaging that I’d seen on some of the record albums that boys from my class brought into school sometimes. I turned the sleeve over. To my slight disappointment there was very little on the back cover – just the names of the songs in the same sort of font used on the front. I read each songtitle slowly and carefully; four of the titles were already familiar to me – indeed so were the tunes and extra words I’d invented for them. I really hoped the band’s songs were better than the ones I’d had to invent. I slipped the inner sleeve out of the outer and again felt a tinge of disappointment that there was no songwords page or manifesto or something to help me find a way into the record rather than just doing what I was about to do. As I dropped the needle onto the vinyl plastic, I knew I was on my own, I would just have to find my own way.

The first song started up. It was one of the song titles I knew and had invented my own tune for. The song was immediately much better than the one I had come up with. Much, much, better. A lone, loud guitar, quickly followed by the sound of marching drums, handclaps and more guitars. The voice came in like nothing I’d ever heard – just like the things I’d read in mum’s magazine and heard in the playground – angry, sneering, violent, yes – but full of melody and sweetness. Like Abba but without any of the bits that girls liked – it was the sound of being a boy, of being 12 – no, of being 13, 14 – grown-up. IT WAS BRILLIANT.

The next song came on. I didn’t recognise the title and it wasn’t quite as good. The voice was just as powerful but … the tune wasn’t as strong. When the third song came on I realised what the previous one had missed – background singing. The background singing on the third song was amazing. I sat and stared at the front cover, feeling the rough cardboard under my fingers.

When the song stopped I became aware of activity outside. My brother was home. As the fourth song started, I got up and locked the door. This was my discovery, I wasn’t going to share it with him. Not with a seven year-old.

Once I had got over the shock of the sound of the record. I was able to listen to it all absorb more and more. By the time I had got to the end of side one – with a song that ended on just the singer’s voice, really close up, repeating the same word – I felt like I really understood it. I was still a bit scared – for a moment I thought the disc was programmed to do something weird with the needle, like destroy it or something to match the power of the songs – but I was beginning to relax into it.

As I turned it over, I looked at the grooves on Side 1 and smiled. I knew them. The label seemed out of another time and place. The design on it had nothing to do with the radical content on the disc or the art on the sleeve. Somehow that made it even more exciting, as if the group had kidnapped the record company.

Side Two was even better. Perhaps because I was familiar with the voice or just that the songs had more background singing. I found myself singing along with each chorus the second time it came around. By this time, Price was knocking on my door.
“What are you listening to? Is it one of mum’s records?”
“No. Go away!”
“Shut up!”
“You shut up! Can’t you hear? I’m busy!”
“Oh Sam! Come on! Let me in!”
“It’s not for you. You’re not old enough…”

And so on. In the end, like he knew I would, I let him in. He didn’t like it. I almost found myself trying to persuade him it was great, then I realised he wasn’t interested. He liked the idea of the swearing on it and he laughed at the rude words. But no more than he would laugh at The Two Ronnies or Benny Hill. Before he left I made him promise not to tell mum that I had the record.

In the end he left me with my new love. I put it on again and this time concentrated on the words. Once I’d played it through, just concentrating on the words, I played it again and sang along. When mum came up to say supper was ready I realised I must have been listening to it for about three hours.

Fortunately, she didn’t notice. She just asked me how my day had been. I gave the usual answer and followed her to our kitchen where Price was already sitting waiting to eat.

And so life continued. Except it was different. I played the record before I went to bed at night. I played it in morning when I got ready for school. I talked about it in the school playground and other kids who didn’t use to talk to me began taking an interest in what I had to say.

After about two weeks, I agreed to lend Robert the record. I had been wrong about him that day, he’d really wanted to come back to mine and hear it but he couldn’t. Now he’d been back to mine a few times to hear it and he wanted to borrow it. He said he’d lend me another record that people were talking about that his sister had.

So we swapped.

For a week I lived with the other record. I liked it, in some ways it was better than my record – the songs were better thought out, there were different instruments on it, not just guitars and drums. But I missed my record. And after four days I just wanted it back.

At school on Friday morning, he gave it back. Loads of kids in our class had never seen it before and took it in turns to handle and stare. That night I put it on. It still sounded great – although there were two unfamiliar clicks on Side 2. I later found out these were where Robert’s sister had played it to her mates and they’d scratched it. “You hardly notice,” Robert said, but I did every time. It was like touching bruises – I’d forget about them then WHAM! there they were, sore, painful and upsetting.


But after a while I got used to them. Blemishes I could live with. Maybe I played the scratched tracks a bit less. And after a while, I played that side a little bit less than the other side.

Weeks went past and I began to hear more records. Boys at school were buying other albums – as we now called them - from newer groups and they all seemed exciting. It was a class craze, like calculators or digital watches before. I was listening to John Peel too. I checked in mum’s Radio Times to see what time it was on and it said 12.02. How annoying, I thought, just while I’m at school. So in half term, I tuned in to hear the show and the first track that came on was great. Then, immediately after it, came the new song from ABBA. No, this couldn’t be John Peel. And sure enough it wasn’t – it was someone called Simon Bates who had an insincere, boomy voice.

I checked the Radio Times again – there it was: 12.02, just like before. Then I realised – it was twelve o clock at night time – really late. Wow. That made it even more exciting. So I tuned in that night and struggled with a lot of noisy things and reggae. Urgh. Guiltily, I almost wanted to hear Simon Bates instead. But no, I kept listening because his voice was wonderful – like Barry Norman only slightly edgier. And the next night I listened, he played some songs from groups I knew.

It must have been about two months after I’d bought the record that it dawned on me that I hadn’t played it for almost an entire week. A whole week – unheard of! I went upstairs and got it out of its sleeve. But even as I did this I felt I was going through the motions. The idea of hearing it was not that exciting, to be honest. I loved it, I really did but…

As the needle went onto track one I tried to remember the first time I’d heard it – the excitement, the anxiety. Now the aggressive drums, the searing guitars sounded a little bit… well, polite, predictable. And when the singer’s voice came on I just took it off – I didn’t want to spoil it. I wasn’t in the mood. It wasn’t the record’s fault, it was mine. I just didn’t fancy it.

A few days later, Robert was round and we were playing records. I felt really grown up having just turned 13 and just sitting in my own room drinking tea and eating Digestive biscuits with milk chocolate on. He played some new singles he’d bought – I didn’t like all of them. One of them was even reggae! I thought he was trying to be cool but I didn’t say anything. We then played a couple of albums I’d got for my birthday, only one of which I liked. I thought if I played the other one enough I might grow to like it. Then we played some of his sister’s records, which were really scratched but kind of cool because of that.
“Yeah, she really likes to party, my sis. She smokes dope and everything…”

I’d heard songs about dope and they’d been writing about it in the NME, which I now read every week. Most of my bedroom walls were now papered with its pages too – apart from a couple of areas that still had James Bond girls up. Anyway, I knew about drugs. The group who’d made my album were taking them – I’d read this in the NME too. And they’d just split up. Terrible really, they were just getting going. Something to do with heroin or the singer not wanting to do it anymore. Robert asked if I’d listened to them recently. No, I said. Shall we play it? I got it down and we admired the sleeve and talked about which songs we liked best and why. But in the end we just didn’t need to hear it anymore. I’d heard it so often. I just didn’t feel like it. There were other things to hear, anyway.