My ‘rock music’ memory is basically – compared to a lifetime of ‘rock memories’ for you – only the 3–year period 1979 till the end of Rhine River 3 (the Golf Club gig – our last, I think – was in January 1982). Thereafter I deliberately ‘got into jazz’…
Why I turned my back on rock music was totally to do with Joy Division: no-one else was ANYTHING LIKE as good! So after a couple of years of trying, I thought ‘grown-ups don’t listen to rock music’ – and turned my back at 18…
It was only when Alex prematurely got into the Beatles (about 2011) that I thought again. What had I been thinking of? Pop music was GREAT! (And some jazz too…) Now, thanks to Spotify, I’ve got my one playlist of 500+ tracks, and it’s growing…
You have always been someone who just ‘tells it how it is’. In the 90s, you just wrote that letter to me at Premiere saying ‘how are you?’ And – though I was glad – I also thought it was weird, somehow… There was just NO REASON to do it! But post-stroke, as I see it now, there‘s just no reason NOT to do it! As my mind came back to me, I thought: Why on earth not…?
I realised my whole reluctance to do anything without a reason was basically inculcated by my mother, who I now think is somewhere ‘on the spectrum‘. (As am I…) She doesn’t have a sense of humour and is quite incapable of empathy. I don’t say that to blame her, just out of interest – for curiosity‘s sake. (Well, I probably protest too much…)
Some things she taught me turned out to be good. That obsessive list-making quality came in handy with my gig list…
Stroke of luck 