I turned thirteen the winter of 1972. Who knows anything at thirteen? I certainly didn’t. All I was aware of was my burgeoning hormones and a lack of any decent outlet for them. I spent long afternoons and evenings in my bedroom, which I had painted bright orange with white doors and lit with a single red light bulb—a sort of psychedelic den, or what I imagined one would look like. Listening to my records was the pinnacle of each day. I minutely analyzed every record cover, reading all the notes inside the sleeve and looking for clues I could use to get out of this world, escape my humdrum existence.
Robert’s older brother Richard, or “The Guru,” as he became known to us because of his counterculture appearance, had an extensive record collection and knowledge of music. He had grown up in the 1960s and gone to school with my older brother John, so we knew each other fairly well. One spring Notre Dame asked volunteers to help dig the new swimming pool they wanted to install. Apparently the Catholics had no problem with child labor. My brother Roger picked me up in his VW Beetle and dropped me off for a day of digging at the large hole that was appearing in the school grounds. Being older and more responsible, The Guru had been assigned to supervise the unfortunate diggers. In rain and mud we toiled. During our digging we would chat, and I mined The Guru’s extensive knowledge of music for some hints as to what I should buy to get my collection started.
“Two albums you should get,” he said, “The Age of Atlantic and Nice Enough to Eat. They’re both samplers, one on the Atlantic label and one on Island Records.”
“Samplers?” I asked.
“Yes, Nice Enough to Eat has a sampling of songs from mostly English acts for half the price of a normal album. There are tracks by Nick Drake and King Crimson, among others. They’re pretty good, you know.”
“Oh,” I said, completely not knowing.
The Guru rambled on that “The Age of Atlantic is a similarly budget-priced sampler album with mostly American underground acts such as MC5 and Vanilla Fudge. So for a couple of pounds, Lol, you can pretty much hear all the good music from both sides of the pond.” The Guru considered this for a moment while stroking his beard.
“Yeah, just two pounds for a lot of good music,” he said, staring into the middle distance. “Some good shit.”
One thing for sure, The Guru did indeed know his shit. I ordered them both from Radio Rentals the very next week.
In order to fund my expanding record collection I had a part-time job at the local newsagent’s delivering newspapers on my old blue and red bicycle. I did this come rain or shine. However, the crème de la crème of jobs was marking up the papers at the newsagent’s. It meant I could stay dry in the warm shop and had access to the magazines and other papers, specifically the music papers, of which there were three back then: New Musical Express, Sounds, and Melody Maker.
I avidly read them all while marking the top pages with an address on the piles of newspapers, ready to be picked up by the boys and girls coming each morning to do their rounds. These newspapers gave me a view into a different world, one that I could barely imagine. After reading the music weeklies, I shared stories with my friends, specifically Michael and Robert. They seemed the most interested in music and musicians and what we took to be their glamorous world. They shared my fascination with the goings-on in this strange other existence that seemed so remote from us at the time. Remember that the predominant music scene of the early seventies was either disco or horribly overblown progressive rock. Neither genre resonated with us, three white boys from the suburban edge of south London.
In any era there are always artists who make their presence felt by not being part of the mainstream, and those were specifically the types of musicians we were drawn to. Among them was David Bowie, who in the summer of 1972 made such an impression on my teen self that he became an influence on my whole psyche. I’m pretty certain he had the same effect on Robert.
Bowie’s performance of “Starman” on BBC TV’s Top of the Pops that July changed everything for me. It was as if suddenly a being from another world had landed at the television center. Bowie and his band, The Spiders from Mars, just looked and sounded so different from the other acts we saw. His whole demeanor shouted that here was someone we could trust to show us the way to a world that was different from the dull one we normally inhabited.
He had an androgynous sexuality and strangeness that immediately entranced me. If you look now, all these years later, at the clip of that performance, it’s amazing just how completely different from the everyday he was.
Looking behind the stage of TOTP (as it was known to all and sundry), you can catch a glimpse of an audience member in the standard teen getup for the time: a jumper with no arms and a teardrop collar shirt. You realize immediately that this man on stage was doing something completely different.
I remember sitting on my couch at home with my mother, watching this spectacle unfold, and at the point where Bowie sang the line “I had to phone someone so I picked on you,” he pointed directly at the camera, and I knew he was singing that line to me and everyone like me. It was a call to arms that put me on the path that I would soon follow.
I went to school the next day and exploded with excitement to my friends about it.
“Did you see him?”
“Who?”
“Bowie on Top of The Pops, of course.”
“Yeah,” said Robert, “he was bad!”
Way, way before Michael Jackson misappropriated the phrase, we had taken to calling anything that was really, really great “bad.” It just fit in with our view of the world, looking through the other end of the telescope at everything.
That summer I tried to understand as much as I could about how things worked in this strange new world. I spent a great deal of time reading about all kinds of music people, and I was baffled by some references. After all, sex, drugs, and rock and roll were hardly on my radar yet. Especially drugs and alcohol, of which I had no personal experience.
That was about to change.
“Lol, you want to come DJ the party?”
My brother Roger was asking if I would bring my record collection, which by now was much bigger than his, to the party he was throwing for my other brother, John, who was emigrating to Australia.
“Yeah, absolutely, I’d love to play my records! I can play them louder than Mum lets me, right?” I asked.
“Of course! Turn up the volume, brother!” Roger was getting a kick out of seeing his little brother so excited.
It was the first adult party I had ever been invited to and I was to go unchaperoned by my mother. However, I had no real experience with adults and what they liked to do at parties. It wasn’t that long ago that the parties I attended had Jell-O and ice cream—like the one I recall on Robert’s seventh birthday at his new family house in Crawley.
My carefree young life was changing and I was about to be introduced to the real world. Perhaps a little too early, but it was coming at me like a freight train, and there was no avoiding the circumstances that were about to unfold.
I had always viewed drinking alcohol as something my father did that made him either very happy or inhospitable. It didn’t really seem that appealing to me. However, when my mother would send me down to the Chequers to collect my father, I caught a whiff of a certain bonhomie and joyous good time that seemed to lie inside the old oak doors of the pub. Even the normally dour townsfolk seemed happier inside the Chequers.
So, despite my misgivings, it seemed like it might be worth investigating one day. I, of course, had no idea that it would be at my brother’s going-away party that I would be introduced to the demon alcohol.
My brother Roger arrived in the late afternoon to take me to his house in Crawley and set up my stuff for the evening’s festivities. I had brought my treasured purple satin shirt to wear, the one I had bought at Whitworth’s, the small clothing shop at the top of my street. I loved going into Mr. Whitworth’s: I never knew what sartorial secret he might impart to me.
“Men with short legs should wear wide Oxford trousers to look more impressive,” was one gem I never forgot.
The small bell attached to the door rang as I walked into the musty little clothing shop.
“Ah, young Mr. Tolhurst, what are you seeking today?”
“I saw that purple shirt in the window?” I said.
The real reason I went in was to seek out the one or two trendsetting items that stood out in his otherwise drab menswear section. He usually priced these to sell to a teenager with very limited income; in other words, yours truly.
“Ah yes, the one with the modern collar.” Mr. Whitworth looked like it hurt his lips to say the word.
“Yes, that’s it. The one with the teardrop collar.”
He pulled it out of the window display and handed it to me.
It had a £5 price tag, much more than I could afford. He saw my glum expression as I noticed the price.
“How much do you have, Mr. Tolhurst?”
“A pound?” I said hopefully.
Mr. Whitworth looked out over the top of his glasses and tugged on the tape measure he always carried around his neck.
“All right, £1 it is, but do not tell anyone else that I gave you such a bargain; otherwise they’ll all want one. Do I have your word?”
“Yes, of course! Thank you, Mr. Whitworth!”
I walked back to our house clutching the shirt, thankful for the old tailor’s generosity.
So it was that at the age of thirteen, and living in a small town on the edge of the bustling metropolis, I was already something of a fashion trendsetter. For the party, I matched the purple satin shirt with a pair of Lybro Sea Dogs, or blue jeans by a plainer name.
I set up my turntable in the corner and started to assemble a rough playlist for the night. By this time, some of my brother’s friends had arrived for his farewell party. Then I saw them out of the corner of my eye: the bottles of wine in my brother’s kitchen. It had never occurred to me that anybody drank at home. I viewed drinking as an activity exclusively to be done at the pub at night. My life until then had revolved around a very few outside activities, mostly church and school. This was a totally new experience for me, and as such quite exhilarating.
Roger rounded the door, “Like a drink, Lol?”
I had never thought that I would partake in this ritual. That’s how naïve I was.
“Sure,” I answered, my voice just a little stronger than the pubescent croak that had appeared at the same time hair began growing in strange, unaccustomed places.
I grasped the proffered glass of red liquid, taking what I supposed looked like a confident gulp. My first impression was how much it stung my throat on contact, but it was the second sensation that really caught my attention, so much so that I can instantly recall it, forty-three years later. It was a subtle but definite feeling at the same time, mysterious and malevolent in equal measure. Bad with goodness mixed in. It felt bloody wonderful!
Although I have a better understanding of it now, this sensation and instantaneous craving is still baffling to me.
I walked into the next room; it was still early so it was empty. I marveled at just how free and great I felt! Like a poet, I could easily summon up the words that my normally tongue-tied teenage self couldn’t. I had never experienced such a feeling before. The hues and colors in the room seemed changed but still familiar, perhaps just a little more vibrant and beautiful, or maybe I just imagined this. It didn’t seem to matter at that moment, to be perfectly honest. I had a strong sense that everything was okay, and suddenly the burden of just being me seemed to evaporate. It was as if time, space, and normality had been shifted by a few degrees to the left, and given an extra frisson of excitement for good measure.
The addition of this new substance to my system also made music more exciting to me. I seemed to understand it more, and appreciate just what it was these musicians were trying to convey with sounds and rhythms.
I had a vague inkling that this was maybe what people wanted from being “stoned” or “loaded,” but I had never felt it before so I hadn’t really had anything to base my assumptions on. Now I did.
The year before, Michael and I had been to our first concert proper with his sister and her boyfriend. They took us to Hyde Park to see a free gig. At one point we were standing by a soft-drink vendor at the edge of the park when a very disheveled young woman came by and lurched jerkily toward us.
“Have you got the time?” she said.
“About a quarter to three,” I replied, glancing at my watch. She shook her head furiously.
“No. Have you got the time, man? I mean, really have you got the time?”
I looked uncomprehendingly at Michael. We were just twelve years old, after all, and extremely baffled by this.
The Greek drink vendor said, “She’s stoned, boys,” by way of explanation, as he could see our confused faces. That was the only clue I had so far.
Was this that? Was I stoned? Never mind. The fact it felt good was all I knew or needed to know.
I sought out my eldest brother and asked if I could have some more. I figured that if one was good, more would be better. He filled my glass and I wandered back to my records and turntables. Now the party was in full swing, with people talking and starting to dance.
Soon my brother John appeared at my side. “Fancy a breath of fresh air, Lol?”
I said I did, and we made our way out through the crowd into the night air. It was cold and chilly as we walked briskly down the dark street. “I thought I would get you a present before I left for Australia. Anything you would like?” he asked.
I thought hard as the night air’s crisp slap had sobered me up a little and my thoughts became a little less grandiose.
“I think I’d like something to do with drums,” I said. I was listening to songs with greater clarity now and I had started to discern the separate elements. I could make out the bass, guitar, and vocals, but what intrigued me the most (besides the words) was the rhythmic thump of the drums. It seemed to me that this was what created the dynamic impulse in the songs, lending them excitement and power. It made me want to move, to dance, to be joyous! I thought I could do something with that. It felt like something was drawing me to the drums and the power they contained. Even then I found myself split between the profane and the sacred. I loved the physicality of drums but I also found words and what they could express, with a deft couplet or turn of phrase, beguiling and attractive. I knew I wanted to combine both sides somehow. Drums looked hard to play, but with my new friend alcohol I felt I should be able to do anything.
Right at that moment the ground fell away from my feet, or so it seemed, as I tumbled feet first into a large trench dug in the road and lit by a very dim warning light.
“Ah, shit!” I shouted as I fell into a pool of soft mud at the bottom. Then I saw John’s face peering over the side of the trench to look at me. He laughed a little, then remembered to be concerned at his now drunk little brother.
“Here, give me your hand,” he said more solemnly, and proffered his right hand for me to hold on to and use to haul myself out of the soggy bottom of the trench.
“Didn’t see that,” I said. It felt like my mouth was full of cotton wool. When I tried another phrase, it came out just as mangled as the first. This was too much for John; he could barely contain his mirth.
“You’re drunk, Lol!”
We walked back toward my other brother’s house. I was peering intently at the ground, trying not to attract any other large holes toward my clumsy feet while trying to stay upright. This didn’t feel quite as wonderful as the first minutes of being drunk, but I presumed it would pass. I thought I probably needed to drink more to get back to that original state.
I walked up to the door of what I thought was Roger’s house. I rang the doorbell and started shouting for him to come and answer the door. Unfortunately, it wasn’t his house. John dragged me up the road to the actual door. My head by now was not feeling so good, so I walked into the kitchen and grabbed another glass of red wine and knocked that back. Surprisingly, to me at least, it didn’t seem to improve matters, and soon my head was swimming.
As for the rest of the party, I remember the following: a white bathroom and the shiny surface of the toilet bowl as I knelt over it and vomited. The concerned face of my sister-in-law as she tried to help me from falling down on the stairs. The anxious faces as I turned and spiraled down the staircase again, ending in a heap.
That’s all I could remember.
The next day I awoke with the parched, awful taste that was to become part of my life for the next seventeen or so years. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I lifted my head and immediately wished I hadn’t as the dull low throb of my first hangover came marching in with full force. I lay back on the pillow and wondered how I had got there, as I couldn’t recall much of the last portion of the evening. This pattern would become a constant part of my life over the coming years.
Blackout is how doctors refer to it. When you can’t recall what happened the night before, or sometimes even whole days before. It took me many years to understand that this wasn’t how normal people felt or reacted when they drank. They might get an occasional fuzzy recall, but in general, they got a little tipsy then backed off and went to sleep without forgetting what had occurred. They didn’t lose control.
This was not how it worked for me. From the very beginning I was a blackout drinker. When I didn’t have enough money to drink to my heart’s content, I would have a few beers, go home, go to sleep, and remember everything about the previous day. But from that day on, if I had the funds, I drank to get drunk, and when I got drunk I blacked out.
I blacked out quite a bit.