Just like anyone who has ever been into rock music will probably admit, I have always had a dream of being in a band and being famous. And I don't just mean a garage band or a pub band, I mean the kind of band that sells millions of records and flies round the world in private jets playing at sold-out arenas to tens of thousands of people every night. For most people this will only ever remain a dream, but for me...oh alright, it's still only a dream.
I found my mother's old acoustic guitar when I was about 14 and learned some very basic melodies and a few chords. This made me think that I was destined for stardom and when I was 16 I bought my first electric guitar. It was a black and white Squier Stratocaster that belonged to Ste, a guy who I "worked" with at Woolworths every Saturday. Ste was quite a handy guitar player who I later jammed with on a couple of occassions, and by "jammed" I mean "watched open-mouthed in awe while he played complicated widdly solos over my attempts to play the simplest riffs known to man".
I spent hours in my bedroom learning as many riffs and songs as possible, although there were not many songs I could play all the way through to be honest. Most guitarists can play Smoke On The Water, but it's more than one riff and I only ever learned the intro. I was having fun though and that's really what counts.
It was when I bought my first distortion pedal that I really discovered what rock guitar playing was all about. The day I bought it, my friend Adrian came round and we jammed for about four hours, taking turns between the old acoustic and the now doomy-sounding distorted Strat. Crucially, I discovered that most things played badly sounded tons better with the proper amount of distortion (proper amount of distortion = everything turned all the way up).
When I was 17, I bought yet another second-hand guitar. This was a blue Yamaha RGX 112 that belonged to a hippie at college named Rich, and for some reason it had Tippex all over the fretboard which I spent hours attempting to remove. I only paid £70 for it and it came with a flightcase and a practice amp, so I got a good deal.
A few of us decided to enter a Battle of the Bands contest at college. With myself and Chris on guitars, Mike on bass and Big Jim on theoretical drums (no-one had ever heard him play and his kit was in Barnard Castle, but he assured us that everything would be alright on the night, so to speak), we battled through a so-so cover of Metallica's For Whom The Bell Tolls in our rehearsal every Thursday for six weeks. I even bought a wah-wah pedal so I could play the intro "properly". Sadly, we never got to play as Big Jim's drum transport "let him down" on the big day. At this point, the dream was still alive, but it was on life support.
A couple of years later I joined my first and only proper band. Together with Mike on bass, Al on drums and dual vocalists Alan and Sean, we were The Seed Crystal (don't ask. I just googled it and I still don't really understand what it means). We played four original songs and covers of Enter Sandman and Nirvana's Territorial Pissings. The whole drunken debacle was commited to cassette (I still have a copy if anyone's interested) and the highlight of my musical life came when we got a song played at a local rock night and two people who weren't in the band got up and headbanged on the dancefloor.
Al was working as a dogsbody at Teesbeat Studio in Stockton and he managed to arrange some studio time for the band. It was obviously an off the books venture, as it had to happen while his boss was on holiday and it had to happen during the night. The new-look Seed Crystal (Sean had now taken over bass duties and our new singer, Joe, had actually had singing lessons!) arrived at 10pm and Al spent a ludicruous amount of time setting up the drums and generally pissing about. The rest of us wisely spent this time drinking heavily and two hours later, what can only be described as a mass brawl broke out (I've no idea what started it or what ended it). After we had all calmed down, we recorded eight full songs and some bits and pieces of two or three others. I wasn't happy with what we had done and didn't like the way my guitar sounded (this was more down to my drunken playing than anything else, but I was loathe to admit it). I remained angry over this situation and a few weeks later I quit the band, doubtlessly citing "musical differences" - what a tool.
I never realised my rock star dream, in fact I've never played live in front of more than four or five people. I have continued to play the guitar off and on (although mostly off if I'm being totally honest) for the last twenty years and I still get a huge kick out of it.
A few months ago I bought a bass and I've come to accept that it's a better fit for me than playing lead guitar. If anyone in the Drammen area of Norway needs an average bass player, give me a shout - the dream still lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment