by Alfie » 12 Mar 2010 03:09
I was going to say there's no accounting for taste, but that seemed derogatory. But actually, when it comes to art and music, there actually isn't any accounting for taste.
And that's the problem.
Because unlike athletics, or motor racing, or generally any competitive sport, there's no such thing as 'first across the line' when it comes to music. There are measurable quantities, the sort of horrible tedious stuff they measure when you apply for music college, like how many notes you can play per minute, how fast you can sight read, and how accurate your pitching is. I should know - I applied, and failed across the board.
But in the days when I played, I was lucky enough to have many people tell me that I was a fabulous and talented guitarist. And I was unlucky enough to have an equal number of people tell me that, in fact, I was a bit shit. Most of the latter happened to be guitarists and musicians. There has to be a moral to that story somewhere, but I'm buggered if I can work it out. But trying to work out the reality of where I stood between those two extremes nearly drove me insane, so I gave up trying. And gave up playing.
Which brings me on to The Beatles vs. Bob The Builder.
I would love to be able to say that The Beatles provided the soundtrack to my youth. In a way they did, but I only started to connect with them when I was about 14, a good 5 years after they'd split.
I had locked myself in my bedroom, listening to what remained of my stereo after my mum had tried to smash it up with a hammer, presumably because my estranged dad had bought it for me as a birthday present. I was waiting for her to fall drunkenly asleep downstairs, so I could go down and get something to eat without having to dodge a volley of household objects or the usual barrage of verbal abuse. I was listening to Capital Radio, and they were holding their annual 'Help a London Child' appeal, where they would 'auction' a song.
Basically they would announce what the next tune was going to be, but they wouldn't play it until they reached a certain sum of money in pledges from the listeners, for the 'Help a London Child' charity. The next song was to be Hey Jude, and the money target was much higher than had been set for the other songs I'd heard that horrible afternoon. So I thought it must be something special.
And then, they reached the target, and played the song. And as I sat there, waiting for mum to fall asleep downstairs, and listening to my battered stereo, Paul McCartney was telling me to take a sad song and make it better. Except he wasn't. He was talking to Julian Lennon, after John had left Cynthia. But that afternoon, it felt like he was talking to me. And I didn't care in that moment how many f**k notes he could play per minute, or what his pitching was like, or whether he could sight read or not.
When I took up playing the guitar a couple of years later, I learned to play by putting Beatles records on and listening to them again and again, with the retaining arm pulled back on my Dansette, figuratively speaking. Much the same as John and Paul did, with their Little Richards records. And for a short, troubled while, I scraped a living out of doing that.
I think the last Beatles song I learned to play was about 12 years ago. It was 'I Will', by Paul, from the White Album. And I played and sang it to a woman who up to then had been an acquaintance, and, in a vindication of the time-honoured reason why most spotty teenagers learn the guitar, I pulled. She ended up being my partner for over eight years, until she eventually found me out. Like they all do, in the end.
And for that reason among many others, I can forgive Paul for The Frog Chorus.
I'm not sure how my life would have turned out if the 'Help A London Child' auction song that afternoon had been Can We Fix It by Bob The Builder.
Like you say, guess we all need different things at different times in life and sometimes they stay with us like old friends. Bob's not such a bad guy either....my eldest didn't end up malnourished at 2 and 3 because he allowed me to actually make dinner...we owe a lot to him I suppose. 
