School days

I was truly blessed in my younger years to have so many influences around me, and amazing parents who encouraged my creativity. Heading back to school days in this segment from my biography "Do or do not".

My love of all things musical kept me incredibly filled, and while I couldn’t afford to buy all of the records that I wanted I discovered another route. My parents bought me a reel to reel tape recorder and a small transistor radio (pink would you believe, but hey, it worked well), and I would put the small microphone right next to the radio speaker and recorded the songs I liked. Not so much from the BBC as their choice wasn’t that good, at that time, but the pirates, Radio Caroline for example that operated from a ship 12 miles off the British coast at Frinton, and Radio Luxemburg that was only clear in the evening. I built up a little collection of music that I played over and over, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Mamas and the Papas, The Dave Clark Five and so many more hits of the time. When ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ came out I was fascinated. This was so unlike the Beatles that I knew and for the first time in my life I found myself analyzing what had gone into the recording not knowing the true recording technique at my 12 years of age. I discovered a kindred musical spirit in my class friend Paul Drake. We were to share some very interesting musical adventures before the decade closed, and another friend, David Crouch, shared my love of comics, but unlike me, he was a talented artist who could draw Superman to perfection. We used to go into town on some Saturdays, look around the shops, treat ourselves to a sasparilla from the shop in the Hayes arcade and just generally fun around for a couple of hours. One day David bought a trick plastic knife where the blade slipped into the handle, and playing around in the street he ‘appeared’ to stab me in the head, to which a lady next to us screamed and started calling for the Police. I managed to calm her down but she gave us a right scolding and sent us on our way. We couldn’t help but laugh all of the way to the bus.

The other common love we had were Daleks and due to the various Comic annuals and now the second movie “Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 AD” (of which I was a huge fan) the Dalek universe had grown exponentially providing us with the ultimate ammunition to create our own Dalek boardgame. We were two Dalek factions each with Emperors, Dalek Supremes, Black Daleks, Drones and various special weapons. The game was based on challenge, each piece having a score and once you placed your piece in front of another you were challenging it and you couldn’t see the opponents piece value, only the front of the vertical card. The secret was on the other side and the highest score won the challenge and that piece was removed. We had hours of fun with this and were just too young to realize that maybe we had created something that we should have presented to the BBC. My reel to reel recorder also came to its own as we recorded our own comedy sketches, bits of drama and my very first radio show (I always say I started DJ’ing in 1968 but truth be told this was my first round at it).

Miss Thomas, my music teacher (who I had a secret crush on) had convinced me to start playing the hymns at morning assembly on the grand piano in the assembly hall. I wasn’t overly thrilled at doing this, and not too good as reading music didn’t come naturally to me. Even to this day I play what I hear, and while I can read the basics on a sheet, I never adapted to reading it properly as I knew I should have. Also in 1966 I joined the school orchestra learning to play the cello, and I never really got to like the instrument, even though it has an amazing sound. I would have weekend lessons with a lady in Canton, and the major bonus was getting to learn with Debbie Yates, who I liked very much. Needless to say the same reading problem arose and I found it difficult to blend in properly with the rest of the section as I tended to go by memory, which didn’t work the first time a piece was presented to me. I was soon to gain inspiration that made me want to read music though. Thunderbirds had become such a part of my life that I wanted to connect with it somehow so I wrote a fan letter to the person who created what was, to me, the piece of the magic that sent shivers down my spine. Barry Gray was an absolute genius whose music brought all of Gerry Anderson’s shows to life so I wrote him a fan letter care of the studios and very shortly I received a reply. His writing was magnificent copperplate and he wrote as if he’d known me for years, and in the letter were two postcard sized black and white photographs, one of the Thunderbird craft and one of the Tracy family and guest stars, both signed by Gerry Anderson himself. I was stunned and just couldn’t believe it, my mother was thrilled for me and my friends in school were, I believe, quite jealous. In the months to come Barry and I would write quite regularly and he would send me pieces of original music that he’d penned for me to practice on the piano, “The Man From MI5” was the one I loved as it caused me to ‘romp around the bass in octaves’ (in his own words), which my pudgy hands had difficulty with, but you can bet I practiced hard and finally got it down.

December that year was the premiere of ‘Thunderbirds are Go” and I went with some friends to see it the moment it hit the local cinema, and IT WAS MAGNIFICENT! Seeing the amazing Thunderbird craft and the magnificent Zero X on the big screen, the superb effects, and more importantly Barry’s new music. The soundtrack LP was released very soon after and I persuaded mam to buy it for me, and when the stylus hit side A I was over the moon. It was the Thunderbirds music but somehow larger, and several years later I found out that Barry had built a full 70 piece orchestra for the movie soundtrack. The Orchestral ‘That dangerous game” which had been originally featured in the episode ‘The Cham Cham” took me by surprise as it hadn’t been in the movie, but my life was seriously about to change as I turned it over. One of my favourite pieces of music EVER opened side B, ‘The Zero X Theme’, to my mind one of Barry’s most amazing compositions, and I couldn’t stop playing it over and over. In the final part with the key change the counter melody strings are so hypnotic. I took this album into Miss Thomas, played Zero X for her and asked her all kinds of orchestral questions about it. I learned so much from that recording which carried me in good stead throughout my professional career.