Nostalgia
We Were The Boys
With All The Promise Of A Brand Fire New Summer’s Day
Liverpool in the swinging sixties. I have to say, my childhood was not an easy one. I was an undernourished and introverted child born and brought up on the wrong side of the tracks. I was bullied and beaten on a frequent basis at home, at school and out on the streets. I was once attacked by a group of fifteen sixteen year old thugs who left me for dead. I did not expect to live a very long life and at times neither did I desire one. There was very little joy in my young life apart from music and football, I was fanatic about both. And it was those two things that sustained me during some of my most difficult days.
In particular, being from Liverpool, I was mad about Liverpool FC and the Beatles. They were both my saving grace. Liverpool’s Roger Hunt, Ian St John and Tommy Smith, plus John, Paul, George and Ringo, were all my childhood heroes.
I can vividly remember going to the Anfield stadium with my Dad at the age of ten passing out due to the late Spring heat. I was surfed down the crowd of supporters over all of their heads, all the way down from the back of the stand to the touchline, just behind the goal that Liverpool were going to attack in the second half. The Red Cross ran around to bring me round with smelling salts and I came to with the sound of Gerry and the Pacemakers and the Beatles on the tannoy singing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone and She Loves You’.
Oh what joy! I had a ringside seat at the best show in town with an atmosphere that I can only describe as wondrously magical. Roger Hunt leaping to what seemed like incredible heights to catch a header. Ian St John soaring horizontally across the penalty box to catch one of his speciality flying headers. It was like a sporting ballet and pop opera all mixed into one.
Many years later when I went to record my third album I tried very hard to recapture those days with the sound of the tumultuous crowd roaring and singing in the background of the song ‘We Were The Boys’ from the album ‘Lost and Found’. What I wanted was to distill those all too brief childhood moments of joy into one single composition.
A nice touch for me was that I managed to find an old black and white Youtube video of that self same match with a ten year old me on the sidelines. So I recordered the song as an adult me being accompanied by a younger me singing along in the background at that particular game. How sweet is that?
Looking back, I can hardly believe that it was all well over fifty years ago that I set out on my performers journey, and it wasn’t always about music.
Like any young kid I wanted to follow my young heroes either by playing football for Liverpool, which I never did, or by becoming a musician singer songwriter, which I did. And although I have never hit the pop charts, I have had a very fulfilling and financially rewarding musical career which harks all the way back to those halcyon days of the sixties.
Looking back, I can hardly believe that it was all well over fifty years ago that I set out on my performers journey, and it wasn’t always about music. At school, when I wasn’t having the holy crap beat out of me in the playground, I did excell at drama and participated in school productions of musicals like Aladdin and the Mikado. And this was yet another field of endeavour I managed to continue participating in professionally by performing in theatrical operettas like Calamity Jane and The Vagabond King. From this I became a professional actor in film, television and video.
However, much as I love the smell of stage makeup and the fun of strutting my stuff across the boards of a theatrical stage, my first love has always been the music. And if I had to choose a highpoint, it was appearing in the Beatles pop video ‘Free as a bird.’ The song itself takes me all the way back when my Dad was a docker (which was the part I played in the video) down at Liverpool Docks. It was all so long ago, and yet it is fresh in my memory as if it was yesterday. Nostalgia? You can’t beat it.