This Could Be Rock 'N' Roll Read Free

what?”
    “You look really lonely.”
    “No, I’m not.”
    “Your songs are really sad too.”
    “Well, yeah, they are. That’s because I’m a happy-go-lucky type of guy and need some sort of balance in my life.”
    She gave me the Spaniel-from-Zanzibar look. “I really love your stuff.”
    “You’re young enough to be my daughter.”
    “I’m looking for a father figure.”
    “I could never have guessed.”
    “Don’t you just want a friend?”
    As it happened, I did. The hell-raising rock star act wasn’t making sense even to me. The limousine was looking more like a Williamson’s potatoes truck and the hangers-on were not exactly Pamela Des Barres, nor had they been with members of Franz Ferdinand or Keane the night before.
    I did have friends. I have fantastic friends in Lesley, Jerry, Saskia and Martin who are fellow artists. We have supported each other over the years and I love them to bits. I also have friends from school and from the house we shared off the Anlaby Road but, yeah, I can always squeeze in one more, especially one who can’t get enough of me in a nice sort of way.
    Jackie, Jade’s mum, refers to me as her very own Ralph McTell. In this game you are always being likened to somebody and most of the references I just don’t get. The Ralph McTell thing is a deliberate joke. Jackie’s mum, Jade’s nan, keeps harking back to George Formby. Luckily she isn’t deluded enough to think I am anything like him. I’m not fit even to lick his sandals according to Nan. Did George Formby really wear sandals? More likely golf shoes, or clogs. She’s a big Frank Sinatra fan too. As it happens, I do have something of the Frank Sinatra in me, except more in the future tense, as in “I’ll do it my way” rather than “I did it my way.” I wish I could afford to hire the guys to turn up to pubs and clubs before I get there and replace all the music being played with my stuff. It might help if I recorded some music videos sometime.
    I don’t know what Jade eats in that bakery - pure sugar I would guess - because she comes home bouncing off the walls ready to go out. We live in Victoria Ave, so just around the corner from Newland Avenue which is the liveliest, trendiest part of Hull (hold your excitement), so I don’t have many excuses to stay at home but I wish we could give it a miss sometimes. Jade is beginning to make me feel like an irretrievably clapped-out old rocker who just wants to crash at home while his missus paints the town red. Still, I get to meet Jade’s friends and several of those are easy on the eye so once I have been dragged out of the house I become a bit more lively again.
    The house where we live in Victoria Ave is one of those places where the door bell looks like it should come with a bell-hop. There are six flats in the building, which leaves us with a ground floor bed sit. It’s not a lot to show for fifteen years hard toil day and night. Jade has ambitions. The trouble is, however hard I try, I sell about 250 - 350 CDs a year, or £1,000 to you. The gigs pay better but they are harder and harder to get. The venues want artists who are young and happening (i.e. virtually free) rather than established no-hopers who demand a proper fee. So us veterans of the circuit have to sit around on the bench waiting for a substitution. At least we are reliable.
    I record my music down the shed in the garden. I had to insist on there being a shed, so it took some time to find the right flat. I don’t have a lot of equipment and I am a bit of a technophobe, so most of my stuff is recorded with me playing acoustic guitar and harmonica, singing and whatever I can find to bash. I have to lay down one track at a time for a maximum of eight bars, so it takes forever. The bass track comes from the lower E string on my Ibanez. It doesn’t usually take me long to compose a song, typically around two-to-three hours to get the main shape, a couple of days to finalise the lyrics, and then