The first LP that I remember buying, or rather asking my mother to buy for me, was the Beatles’ "A Collection of Oldies". I am fairly sure that this was because I had seen ‘Help!’ on TV. I have a very clear recollection of watching the chase down the beach at the end of the film on our black and white TV. Of course these may be two completely unrelated events.
I think I was about 12 or 13 years old. There were two Jim Reeves LPs in our house and a Max Bygraves cartridge for the 8-track player in the car. This remarkable device had been bolted on below the dashboard in the passenger's footwell, on one memorable occasion dislocating a knee cap of a particularly rangy cousin. My musical foundations were laid on very shaky ground.
Having said that, years later I discovered a reel to reel of ‘With The Beatles’ in the attic. So perhaps my parents were cooler in their 20s than I ever gave them credit for; although it is more likely simply testament to the ubiquity of the Fab Four in 1963.
I still have that "A Collection of Oldies" LP. It went briefly to live at a friend's house. By that time I had all the tracks on other LPs so I swapped it for a copy of "Disraeli Gears". Then I realised I had to have it back. I really, really had to have it back - not just any copy; MY copy. As I recall money changed hands to secure its return.
The Beatles were central to my teenage years. Everything I did, every waking thought involved the Beatles. Looking back now I find it quite unsettling that I became quite so focused. This reached a peak around 1978-1980, just in time for John Lennon's demise; of which more later, perhaps.
Of course I had form. There was a period years when I was 7 or 8 when I would not eat any meal at home unless there were baked beans on the plate. Aged 5, I would only eat from "the stripey plate". But these are childish things that are outgrown. The Beatles were different.
In R.E. I chose to do a project on Transcendental Meditation; English essays featured quotations from ‘Eleanor Rigby’; my art project was a collage of album covers. You get the gist.
The point is that the Beatles were my entry point into the music we call pop, and provided - and still provide - a fixed point from which all else radiates out. To this day my CDs organised on the basis that the Beatles are always in the top shelf, left hand corner. Everything flows from that point - solo Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Who and onwards and outwards. These CDs are not alphabetised you understand; they are just there, and I know where they all are. When I moved house they each reassumed their fixed position on some nice new shelves.
Did I mention that the first track played in a new house or a new car has to be a Beatles track?
No? Well, take it as read.
Whilst all around me the punk wars raged, I was keeping my head down and buying LPs by The Beatles, The Who, The Stones, Cream and well, Wings. In the days before the internet, and in the absence of older siblings or hipster parents, there was of course no easy way of finding out about the music of a previous decade. A chance encounter with a Tommy ('TV on the Radio') Vance show featuring the music of 1967 lead me to The Doors, Jefferson Airplane and The Velvet Underground. That show featured 'Heroin' and 'White Rabbit' but it was 'Light My Fire' that impacted most on the pretentious 14 year old grammar school nerd.
A nerd and at 15 a school librarian, which involved a lapel badge and more importantly a pass on the General Studies class. This allowed us to loll about the library for several hours a week drinking coffee and speculating whether or not the actual librarian wore a bra. It's nice to have a hobby, at any age. She was in her late fifties so I suspect the answer was yes, but it was an all boys school and our experience of female corsetry was limited.
Then, one otherwise unremarkable day, this librarian of undetermined corsetry found a book that had seemingly been stolen from the public library and left in the school. I was told to return. It was 'The NME Encyclopaedia of Rock'. Needless to say it never made it back to its rightful owners.
This book really was a revelation; a pre-punk A-Z of classic rock with biographies, discographies, and almost as important actual pictures of album sleeves and band members. I read that book from cover to cover; actually eventually the back cover fell off. I underlined in red the albums I wanted, and ticked them off as I slowly edged towards the perfect collection. I wrote in details of new albums as they were released. Looking at that book now it is clear that there was some fairly sophisticated code being applied - different coloured lines; some straight, some wavy; asterixes; little dots and crosses - the meaning of which has long since been forgotten.
I took it with me to university. I read sections of it out loud to my fellow students. We compared record collections and quizzed each other by reading out the opening lines of reviews to see who could identify the band or album in question. It goes without saying that, perhaps consequently, my experience of female undergarments remained limited during this period.
Even forty years on I can still quote reviews and the sarcastic captions to the photographs - a picture of Wings' "Red Rose Speedway" bore the legend 'Too bad these was only room for Paul on the cover'.
I never met anyone else who had this book, although recently David Hepworth tweeted a photograph of his. If you ever come across a copy in a second hand book shop I highly recommend its purchase. Of course it is essential that you get the edition that includes Gentle Giant, sadly absent from later editions, and that completely omits reference to anything that occurred after 1975. Of course, I suspect David Hepworth's edition finishes in 1971.
Whilst all around me the punk wars raged, I was keeping my head down and buying LPs by The Beatles, The Who, The Stones, Cream and well, Wings. In the days before the internet, and in the absence of older siblings or hipster parents, there was of course no easy way of finding out about the music of a previous decade. A chance encounter with a Tommy ('TV on the Radio') Vance show featuring the music of 1967 lead me to The Doors, Jefferson Airplane and The Velvet Underground. That show featured 'Heroin' and 'White Rabbit' but it was 'Light My Fire' that impacted most on the pretentious 14 year old grammar school nerd.
A nerd and at 15 a school librarian, which involved a lapel badge and more importantly a pass on the General Studies class. This allowed us to loll about the library for several hours a week drinking coffee and speculating whether or not the actual librarian wore a bra. It's nice to have a hobby, at any age. She was in her late fifties so I suspect the answer was yes, but it was an all boys school and our experience of female corsetry was limited.
Then, one otherwise unremarkable day, this librarian of undetermined corsetry found a book that had seemingly been stolen from the public library and left in the school. I was told to return. It was 'The NME Encyclopaedia of Rock'. Needless to say it never made it back to its rightful owners.
This book really was a revelation; a pre-punk A-Z of classic rock with biographies, discographies, and almost as important actual pictures of album sleeves and band members. I read that book from cover to cover; actually eventually the back cover fell off. I underlined in red the albums I wanted, and ticked them off as I slowly edged towards the perfect collection. I wrote in details of new albums as they were released. Looking at that book now it is clear that there was some fairly sophisticated code being applied - different coloured lines; some straight, some wavy; asterixes; little dots and crosses - the meaning of which has long since been forgotten.
I took it with me to university. I read sections of it out loud to my fellow students. We compared record collections and quizzed each other by reading out the opening lines of reviews to see who could identify the band or album in question. It goes without saying that, perhaps consequently, my experience of female undergarments remained limited during this period.
Even forty years on I can still quote reviews and the sarcastic captions to the photographs - a picture of Wings' "Red Rose Speedway" bore the legend 'Too bad these was only room for Paul on the cover'.
I never met anyone else who had this book, although recently David Hepworth tweeted a photograph of his. If you ever come across a copy in a second hand book shop I highly recommend its purchase. Of course it is essential that you get the edition that includes Gentle Giant, sadly absent from later editions, and that completely omits reference to anything that occurred after 1975. Of course, I suspect David Hepworth's edition finishes in 1971.
