As with reading, there’s never been a time when I can remember not being able to write, and enjoy writing. It’s as much a part of my life as reading and music, the difference being that, once in a while, it’s earned me some money, something which has always amused and mildly amazed me: someone was prepared to pay for my ramblings !
Two people feature prominently in the writing part of my life. Firstly, and once again, my English teacher at the grammar school, Mike Foster. He patiently taught me and a class of unruly schoolboys the basic structure of English grammar in such a manner that a surprising degree of it sunk in and remained. Secondly, my dear friend, collaborator and mentor John Tobler, rock journalist extraordinare and co-founder of the legendary Zig Zag. In 1978 I interviewed him for a Beach Boys fanzine, we became friends – he lived literally three stops down the train line – and for reasons unfathomable to me (and I suspect him) decided I’d make a good collaborator. Initially, I transcribed his various interviews but one day he called me to come over as he had a book project to discuss. I thought I’d be researching it but on arrival was presented with a stack of albums, a small pile of cassettes and a wedge of articles and informed I was writing it… and that was how our first full-on collaboration, The Doors, came about. It was well reviewed (mostly, I suspect, because everyone thought JT wrote it) and sold about 115,000 copies in total. Further collaborations followed, notably The Beach Boys entry in the Omnibus Complete Guide To The Music Of… series, which was essentially me being paid £XXXX to listen to my own CD collection and then write about it: money for old rope indeed ! That in turn led, in 2000, to my being commissioned by Capitol Records to provide (at ridiculously short notice) the liner notes to one of their reissues of the bands 1970-1985 catalogue. The single best piece of advice JT gave was this: write as if you’re sitting down with a friend and talking to him. Brilliant.
But it wasn’t just scribbling for money: back in my early teens I was given a wonderfully ancient Remington typewriter by a family friend and that was it – I was tapping out reams and reams of teen angst and largely excruciatingly awful poetry (all now thankfully lost to time). Back then, as now, writing was something I did because, well, that was me. Even today, although I write less than I used to, the crafting of a sentence, a paragraph, a photo caption fills me with a sense of achievement, even if I’m the only person who’ll see it, and of course there’s social media. It’s not unusual for me to revisit a Facebook post to edit and correct, and I utterly abhor the increasing use of txtspk online: I know, I know, language evolves and we don’t use “thee” and “thou” anymore… but is it really so hard to spell a simple three letter words such as “you” ? Grammar Nazi ? Damn right, and proud of it. Writing has also been a release for me, on many levels, and much cheaper than therapy, but mostly I do it these days because I can’t imagine not doing it, even if the only communication is with myself. That others seem to enjoy my ramblings is a pleasnant and surprising bonus.
30/6/22
