5

The Violin on the Wall

‘Did you learn to play the violin at school?’ I asked.

No, not at school. A chap used to come round, he wasn’t a teacher but he used to come round on a bicycle. He held violin classes in a room in a cottage up the road, I must have been eight or nine I think. We had to pay so much for lessons and we had to pay so much a week for the violin, though they were a bit rubbishy; they were Czechoslovakian, mass-produced. But once we’d paid for the violins he just disappeared. So we were left on our own. Some of us dropped out and the rest of us just taught ourselves. I remember a saying once, the trouble about a violin, it’s a most marvellous instrument but you have to play for four or five years before anyone wants to listen to you.

When I got older and left the village I played for money in the streets. People used to drop a penny or two and then one time an old colonel said to me, ‘Why aren’t you at work young man?’ and then he blushed and dropped in a sixpence in my bag to cover his confusion, because nobody was at work during those days. People were just wandering all over England, trying to find work. That’s how I started but when I got to Worthing I played outside an old people’s home and the porters were pushing, in wheelchairs, these very old pomaded women and I reckon until I was moved on by the police I made – they were paying me in two-shilling pieces, and I think I was playing ‘Danny Boy’ at the time, one of those and then a hymn tune or two – I made 38 shillings, which was twice the amount a man could make in a week in those days if you had a proper job. So I knew I was onto a good thing. And it kept me going and through a year in Spain I was able to live on it and come back with £10 into the bargain. But I didn’t get that through playing the violin. There were other methods.

That was when I went to work in a hotel during the winter. I saved my tips. I used to work in the kitchen in the day and play in the saloon at night. I’d play the sort of stuff you used to get in the Palm Court in Bournemouth. I had a little German friend called Rudolpho and he played a squeezebox. I’ve still got one of the programmes. And the stuff we used to play: paso dobles, divertimentos, Mozart, Irving Berlin. We just gave it to them, all these old ladies sitting around; this was before the tourists had started to come. We had a captive audience with nothing to spend their money on but booze and us, with this great sea; the hotel was on the beach, with the sea splashing against the hotel windows in the winter. We’d go into some Wagner, ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ or The Flying Dutchman, we used to stir ’em up. I’ve never enjoyed life so much as at that time.

Then we’d go off into a market with all the produce. All the people and their children used to come and gather round, step on your toes, and just gaze at you, because there wasn’t wireless and there wasn’t television, and a musical instrument was a treat. They did not have to work, there was no work, it was a sort of a fiesta, a holiday. We never got any money from them but the old ladies used to throw me biscuits from upstairs rooms. I could always live on it.

I suppose I was in my early teens when I realized the one thing that was important in village life was the weekly dance. I got a little band together called The Three Blind Mice.

I knew a couple of other chaps were interested in playing dance music of a very rudimentary kind. We filled in a gap because at that time in the dances in the various villages around, there were no discos and no electronic music to dance to; it was long before those days. And the dance music would be performed under a very strict guide by perhaps some local well-meaning spinster. And if you were dancing and you swung a girl off her feet this well-meaning spinster, Miss … I’ve forgotten her name now, she would ram the top of the piano down, lock it and go home. Well you can’t do that when youth is having its fling. So what we decided to do, the three of us, the chap on the drums was the local beekeeper who used to make honey and mead up the valley, the chap on the piano was a brother-in-law I think, Harold, from Stroud, and me on the violin. We collared the market, because it was very important to have a free-for-all dance once a week, a penny dance, not particularly sinful.

We got a chap who loved going out at night, he drove a little taxi and he loved getting away from home. There was no television so there was no reason why he should stay at home. He was a non-alcoholic. In order to get out of his house, he used to come and pick us up once a week and take us, free, to Bisley, Birdlip, Sheepscombe, Painswick, Slad of course, Ruscombe, Chalford. We were coining it. We were paid five shillings a dance and free lemonade. We were rich and not only that, we were able to transmit early jazz which we learned. The beekeeper had a lot of old jazz records and we could learn it from those.

Why we called ourselves The Three Blind Mice? Because none of us at that stage could read music. But we did very well.

The music we played was old-fashioned, most of it, all by ear, it could have been well-known foxtrots, or something you had learned from the cinema. Then some very odd dances. A type of barn dance, I can hear it now, though I don’t know how to dance it. The Hesitation Dip was another one, perhaps you’d hear it on Come Dancing. The Hesitation Dip, very formal, Roger de Coverley was another one which was up the sides and down the middle. But generally speaking the foxtrots and rhumbas. I remember a girl in Painswick coming up and saying, ‘Laurie, you’re driving me crazy.’ I thought, I’ve made it, I’m the Mick Jagger of the district. Then I realized she wanted a tune called ‘You’re Driving Me Crazy’, which I can still hear now. It was a great disappointment … but only one of many.

I moved on later to grander things, out at Painswick. We had a larger band called The Painswick Orpheans, based on the Savoy Orpheans, and we used to play at the Institute there. We wore black ties and white shirts that only came down to one’s middle. It was a con actually. They were actually made of paper, or something very like that, if you can imagine; disposable dinner jackets, or dinner shirts, that’s what they were. But we reached a zenith of importance; we were the only ones providing dance music in the whole of the area. Boys and girls used to come on their bikes from miles around. We had a saxophone, trumpet, violin, piano, drums, though not a guitar, this was before guitars came sweeping in from Europe. And one or two radiantly attractive ‘groupies’. We’d made it, we had power. In all of our little area, there was no one to compete with us. We had the power that now follows the rock bands of today. We had it yesterday.

Power, sexual power, that comes from leading a dance band. I tasted in those days such a sense of glory, of fame. Then the Beatles arrived and my life was finished. I had to take up classical music instead, which, seriously, has been the great consolation of my life. Jazz, I discovered Ellington when I was about twelve or thirteen, Duke Ellington and Satchmo, Fats Domino and the rest of them, I used to save up to buy their records and as you know, they were the great prophets of jazz, the classicists of jazz, ‘Mood Indigo’ and ‘Creole Rhapsody’. My mother didn’t like that and made me go and play them out in the privy, that’s when I had a wind-up gramophone.

Before then, not having a gramophone, when I was keen on learning and extending my knowledge of classical music, I used to buy from Stroud for about three shillings these little seven-inch records, Schubert and Brahms. But there was nowhere to play them. So I used to take them in a carrier bag and bicycle in the rain right up to Birdlip where I had friends, in order to put on this record, which they did not want me to play, but they were very kind. I’d play it and then bicycle all the way home.

To think in those days music was such a unique treasure, and had to be suffered for. Now it’s everywhere around you, you can’t get away from it. Music is on the walls, on the floors, in the pubs, supermarkets. Music in those days was a sought-for experience. And I think it made it more appreciated.

I first learned to play the violin as a young child at home. In the kitchen there was a violin hanging on the wall, it always intrigued me, this shape. I didn’t really know what it was to begin with, it was one of the first symbols of exotic interest. You had bed warmers in those days and you had pictures of the family hanging on the wall but this shape fascinated me. I asked my mother what it was and she said, ‘It belongs to your father.’ Well, dad had already left home, left us and gone, but it belonged to him. And she said, ‘You play it, it’s a musical instrument.’ So I got it down and we dusted it up and we got it into running order, and that’s when this chap used to come round giving lessons. Instead of buying the Czechoslovakian mass-produced one, I had this one. It was a copy of a ‘Strad’, it had a wonderful tone. I kept this first violin for years, I took it to Spain with me. It got crushed by a passing bull in Malaga. It was partly that, partly the heat, the heat melted the gum, but I like to say it was crushed by a passing bull who had a very bad ear for music.

And I thought, I’ve come to the end now, I’m not going to be able to live. But just at that time I met a German student who’d fallen in love with a Spanish girl and they were going to run away together and they had to travel light. And he said:

‘Oh, by the way, do you want a violin? I’ve got one and I can’t be bothered with all this stuff. We’re going over the sierras tomorrow.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘funny you should say that.’

‘Come round tonight and we’ll meet in the tavern and you can have it. I’ll be glad to get rid of it.’

So I moved into that one and it was even better than my imitation Stradivarius. And that’s the one I’ve got now.

And from then on when I got back to England I played seriously. But having no sense of coordination I can only play one note at a time. I can play the Women’s Institute recorder, no trouble at all, but I can’t play a piano because I can’t do with my left hand something that is separate from my right hand. But the violin was made for me. It’s portable and I can follow the line with my left hand on the strings and by this time I could read music, and I discovered other musicians, pianists, cellists, and we moved into this world of cosmic music, I’m going to be pompous now, but it is a world starting in Gloucestershire. I only realized when I got back here that this was a country of memorable composers: Elgar and Gustav Holst, Vaughan Williams. I was going to say Rimsky-Korsakov but he was only here as a refugee briefly and he didn’t like the country, it wasn’t cold enough for him. But there was a local tradition for music and I moved on with great satisfaction.

You can go anywhere in Ireland because there is a tradition of playing the violin, Irish reels and laments. They play on their own and you can go round the country on your own. That’s what I always hoped, that one day I might tour Ireland with my violin, because you don’t need any accompaniment and you are always welcome.

These days I cannot play, I cannot see the strings, they are almost breaking up. I cannot play ‘Killarney’, there is too much jumping around, I can play ‘Early One Morning’. I can play ‘Abide With Me’.

The only thing left now with my eyes going is music. I can’t read. Music is my constant companion, especially Beethoven, Bach. How lucky I am.

My brother was older than me, he was what is known as a fixer. He was always getting out of things. He never ran errands, he always went and hid in the grass when mother was asking us to go and borrow a screw of tea from Miss Turk up the road, he’d never be visible. We got rid of him, we sent him to Australia. We had a collection and bought him a single ticket to Australia where I think he’s doing very well. I get a postcard with sheep from him occasionally.

Mother got him a violin because he had to do what I was doing. He went to the classes later on, but there was only one bow, which came with his violin. Father’s violin didn’t have a bow. So I found in my school music teacher’s report, it says, ‘Lack of bow has spoilt his chances, but think he will do well.’ I used to go in there, brother Jack having the bow, and, may I say, little talent – Jack are you listening, I’m paying off some old scores now. He had the bow and the violin and I had the violin and no bow. So I had to spend weeks and weeks going through just left hand and just waving the right hand about.

I learnt the violin in a class in a cottage up the road but here in this schoolroom, this lovely long room, is where I held my first public performance, which was a raging success. I was playing with Miss Eileen Brown. In the parish magazine I remember the headline:

‘Violin and piano duet with Miss Eileen Brown and young Laurie Lee.’

And we were playing, well we hoped we were playing ‘The Poet and Peasant Overture’, but it wouldn’t stay on the music stand, it kept falling on the floor. So I hissed to her, ‘Give ’em “Danny Boy’’’, so as a back-up we played ‘Danny Boy’. We didn’t know how it was going to go, we weren’t very sure, then suddenly we got together and we played. We found, as it were, a meeting place halfway through the tune and it then flowed like honey and the whole audience, the old women, my mother, my sisters, they all began to sing in chorus with us. And that was it, because until then they’d just been fidgeting. But then they began to sing with us. But not only were they paying us this great compliment of accompanying us; we’d stirred this ancestral memory in them, but they were using their hymn-singing voices which was the great compliment. It showed how seriously they were taking it, tears running down their faces, down my mother’s face and Eileen’s mother’s face, running down my sisters’ faces too, sister Marge bless her. I like the thought it was emotion but, well it could have been, could have been. But I think they were tears of laughter.