The Living Years Read Online Free PDF

book. Worse, I could only go into Nicky’s room if she wasn’t there. But when we went down to stay at Morris Lodge there was a huge old, dark wooden wardrobe with two full-length mirrors on the doors. I spent quite a lot of time in front of them.
    Dad must have taken pity on me at this point because he decided to send me for some lessons with a guitar teacher in Bramhall. Education and learning in any form was something that he considered worthwhile. Unfortunately, as far as I was concerned, this wasn’t much better than Bert Weedon. I didn’t want to learn about scales and notation from a guy in a tweed sports jacket: I wanted to learn songs. I stopped going after a couple of weeks, which I’m sure upset Dad.
    The thing about being a guitarist – even a not-very-good one – was that it automatically made you stand out at The Leas. Everyone else played the piano or the recorder.
    My first live performance was at a school assembly in my third year where I performed a solo version of ‘Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore’. (The bill also included ‘Dry Bones – A Negro Spiritual’ and ended up with the school song, ‘Deo Parere Libertas’.)
    I was in the school choir but my voice wasn’t great and, to make matters worse, my guitar, which a master had tuned for me, had been knocked over by some idiot just before I went on stage. It remained painfully out of tune for the whole performance. I wasn’t an outgoing guy but luckily I was too young to be fazed. I battled on regardless and then, feeling flushed with success, decided to form a band.
    There were five of us in the Chesters, although only two of us could play instruments: me and Dimitri Griliopoulis. He was a drummer so it was a no-brainer that we’d bond instantly but I don’t think we minded that the others were only along for the ride. The main thing was being able to say you were
in
a band – we all understood that. Playing something was not the point.
    The thinking behind our name was that The Leas was fifteen minutes from Liverpool, which was the place where everything was kicking off musically. The Liverpools didn’t sound very good, though, so we decided to go for the Chesters, Chester being the nearest city that worked.
    We’d hold our rehearsals in the main hall and every so often the music teacher would insist that we let some flautist or recorder player join in, which didn’t help with our image – although neither did the cricket jumpers that Dimitri and I wore in our promotional photos. During one school holiday, in desperation, we persuaded Nicky to pose with us. She looked like she should be in a band, which was more than you could say about Dimitri and me.
    Dimitri and I wrote a couple of songs together – ‘We used to be so happy / We said one day we’d mar-ry’ – but I didn’t blame Dimitri when he started moonlighting with The Leas’ other band, the Echoes. I was too busy learning to play my new electric guitar to mind.
    It probably wasn’t the greatest look, having Mum with me in the guitar shop. She was wearing a tweed skirt and a headscarf, but then again, I was wearing shorts and Start-rite sandals. Mum always dressed me smartly and also kept a brush in her handbag, which she’d whip out to do my hair before we went anywhere.
    I hadn’t got a clue what kind of guitar I wanted and the shop itself was a bit overpowering. I was a bit too intimidated by the coolness of the instruments hanging on the walls to look around. The guy could have sold us anything he wanted, which is exactly what he did. I left with a Fender jazz guitar which had strings about quarter of an inch off the fretboard: the last kind of thing you’d want to get if you were a beginner. I also ended up with a Selmer Little Giant amp – impressive name, teeny little thing. It was only about a foot by a foot-and-a-half. The fact that I would need an amplifier had never occurred to me before that day. Newspapers at the time were full of cartoons of