THE ODD THING – I found myself telling William – is that me and Genesis began with Cliff Richard. At the age of thirteen I had one great ambition in life: I was going to be Cliff. I don’t mean that I was just going to imitate the man (who, I should stress, was then still a heathen rocker) but I was actually going to become him. It seemed to me that to be Cliff Richard would give you everything life had got to give. Now thirty-five years or so later, I realise that I may have been mistaken, but the arguments would not have cut any ice with my starstruck teenage self. Still, as luck would have it, reality soon caught up. I couldn’t sing – and the dreams were clearly not to be. So I settled instead on a future as Cliff’s guitarist, Hank Marvin.
Of course, being Hank Marvin was no steal, either. God, in his wisdom, had thrown a few obstacles in the way by arranging to have me born tone deaf and by giving me the worst fingernails a guitarist could hope to have. And not just that. These nails extended not from the slender fingers of an aesthete, but from the ham-like mitts of a fitter’s mate.
These factors might have quashed my musical career early on had it not been for my best mate Duncan. He was a cool friend to have – lively and wild and a little shifty – and he stood apart from the rest of us at the boarding school where my parents had despatched me. While we young degenerates would bicycle off to some pub to drink and smoke, Duncan would stay behind and put in his regular three hours a day of guitar practice. He was a prodigy and in the holidays had lessons with John Williams.
One summer, experimenting together at being fifteen, Duncan and I met a couple of girls whose pursuit kept us occupied for the whole holiday. One of them – a tall, willowy blonde who could knock the breath out of you with one glance and a swish of her waist-length hair – really was called Eve. Her friend was, by contrast, dowdy-looking, with a lank brown fringe that she continually checked for split ends. I can’t remember what she was called, though I do recall a rather sweet smile on the rare moments I looked her way. But my attention was entirely taken up with scrambling over Duncan to get the seat beside Eve, or edging him off the dancefloor, or racking my brains for some witty remark that would prompt Eve’s gaze in my direction.
We carried on thus for several gruelling weeks, with sometimes Duncan and sometimes myself gaining a fleeting ascendancy, and Eve playing it for all it was worth. And then one day Duncan brought along his guitar to an evening at Eve’s house, when her parents had gone up to London. As he played a series of pieces cunningly selected to win the heart of a fifteen-year-old girl, he stared deep into Eve’s eyes, and I knew that I had lost.
Eve’s friend knew it was time for both of us to go. In a humane gesture that might well have saved my life, she guided me towards the bus stop, chatting away as the sound of Duncan’s guitar faded, and when her bus came she made me look her in the eye and promise that I’d cycle straight home. I pedalled slowly through the streets of Haywards Heath, past the bowling alley and along by the Rose and Crown, sobbing into the night drizzle, blankly following the path home, hoping for death. It feels pretty bad when you’re fifteen.
Back at school, miraculously still alive, I set about combatting a future of celibacy. I bought an old guitar from Duncan, with the promise of a few lessons thrown in. I fingered it with awe – the most potent weapon of seduction I could imagine – and set about trying to tune it. It was then that I realised I was tone deaf. Music teachers will tell you there is no such thing as ‘tone deaf’ but there is, and I was it. Not only was I unable to tune the wretched guitar, but I couldn’t tell when it was way out of tune. I would blithely stumble through ‘House of the Rising Sun’ with no idea why corridors were clearing and study doors slamming.
But I stuck with it. Once a week Duncan would tune the guitar for me and I would practice till my fingers cried. My progress was barely perceptible; I would achieve in three months’ relentless practice what most players would do in a week. However, by the end of term I had achieved mastery over the chords of E minor and A major and the changes between them. That’s not much. There was an ocean of music out there for me to navigate, and I had barely got the boat out of the harbour. Still, I figured that there was a certain seductive pathos to those two chords, and intelligently deployed, who could say what I might not achieve?
The next summer I went on a school trip to Austria to try and learn German. Among our group was a boy called Skinner, an arrogant, spiteful bit of work, who was rich, good looking and could (as we all tried to at the time) sing and strum Beatles songs rather brilliantly. On a long trainride to Salzburg, Skinner delighted an entire girl’s school contingent with his performance, only to dampen the effect by rolling his eyes and sneering pointedly whenever anyone had the temerity to join in.
Sensing I had nothing to lose I waited until I identified from the position of his fingers an A or an E minor, and then plucked and strummed along, making my tentative display seem more like musical shyness than incompetence. Oddly enough it had the desired effect. Margie, the glittering prize from the girl’s school contingent, egged me on to ever greater two-chord triumphs, before deciding that proficiency with the plectrum was not the whole story. For the next three years, until she left me for a louche and handsome poet, Margie eclipsed my world.
At my boarding school, Charterhouse, it was obligatory to be a member of the Corps – the boys’ army unit – and this involved two afternoons a week, and even the occasional weekend, of the most unmitigated silliness: square-bashing, polishing kit and learning things that were not of the least interest to anyone other than a homicidal half-wit. There were a few ploys, though, by which you could improve your lot. The best was to join the ‘Band and Drums’, for which you either had to play some sort of brass instrument (and polish it) or bang a drum – an occupation for which my musical talent fitted me well.
I signed up and was issued with a little book of drum music, a pair of hickory sticks and a snare drum – rather pretty with braid ropes and coloured hoops. On those dismal afternoons when the rest of the school stood at attention in the rain, yelled at and insulted by a man known as the ‘Quagger’, who took the business of playing soldiers very seriously indeed, we drummers would fool around unsupervised in the Drum Room, smoking, joking and doing our paradiddles, rolls, flams and ratamacues.
Once or twice a term we would have to go out and perform the stuff we had supposedly learned. We would emerge from our Drum Room as disgracefully shabby a bunch of boy-soldiers as you could imagine, apart from Osborne the drum-major who strutted his stuff with the twirly batons at the front, and Hopkins the Welsh oaf who banged the big bass drum. These characters had all the pomp and menace of a two-man Orange Day March but fortunately they were outnumbered. The rest of us would shuffle about sniggering and smirking as the Quagger got more and more apoplectic. We wheeled left when we should have wheeled right; we halted when we should have marked time; we dressed right when we should have dressed left; and we did it all convulsed with suppressed laughter.
Still, the result of it all was that I learned to play the drums. It became a strange sort of obsession. You carried your sticks everywhere and at mealtimes you’d do it with knives and forks, rattling out marches on the refectory tables. And thus my schoolboy military career led me into Genesis.
A year above me at school was a boy called Gabriel, who played the drums for a jazz band, the League of Gentlemen. He had a big old-fashioned drum kit with floppy leather skins that went ‘whomp’ when you hit them. In an idle moment or two he showed me how, using the pedals, cymbals and a little syncopation, I could adapt my military drumming skills to jazz.
Jazz drumming hit me hard. I was hooked, straight off, and began to hang around anybody who was playing – there were at least a half dozen bands at school – and jump onto the stool as soon as they got off. I got in such a state about it that I would feel sick at the sight of a drum kit. I dropped the guitar completely in favour of my new obsession and practised day and night.
My mentor Gabriel, meanwhile, had begun to sing and play flute with his group. For the flute bits, at least, he needed his hands free, so he asked me to take over the drums. It was an invitation to enter Paradise and of course I jumped at it. We played soul and R’n’B, which was what Gabriel loved most: “When a Man Loves a Woman”, “Knock on Wood”, “Dancing in the Street” – Otis Redding, Percy Sledge, Wilson Pickett. We played at school functions and at parties in the holidays, and somehow or other got a reputation as the best group in the school. We used to take occasional melodies from the hymnbook, which was perhaps why, along the way, Gabriel re-named us Genesis.
And that would probably have been it, if the enterprising Gabriel hadn’t sent a tape to Jonathan King – a maverick who had been at the school a few years earlier, and had notched up a number one pop hit with an awful song called “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon”. Realising, shrewdly, that he was no popstar, King had begun to forge a reputation as a music producer. He listened to the Genesis tape and, for some reason no one to this day seems able to fathom, decided there was something in our songs of adolescent whimsy that might just propel us into the charts.
King arranged a recording session at an eggbox-lined studio off Tottenham Court Road and the group of us trooped up to London in a state of disbelief, to record three or four of our numbers. They were not the most obvious pop hits – nor, to be honest, very good – but a single was released featuring the most memorable song, “Silent Sun”. It sold about a hundred copies. It looked like being a while before we would rival Cliff.
Genesis, however, were a committed bunch, and pressed on with the music business. But my own role in their story was nearly over. I pouted for a few publicity shots and then, at the insistence of my parents, returned to school. The others, whose parents took a more liberal view of pop music as a choice of career, left and set about making an album. They needed a grown-up drummer, so I was given the boot.
It was a good decision on their part – I wasn’t really much of a drummer – and I was never going to become Phil Collins. But at the time I was distraught. It felt almost as bad as missing out on Eve. But then Peter Gabriel showed up with a cheque for the startling sum of £300. Apparently Jonathan King wanted everything neat and tidy, and signing a piece of paper would clear up the question of any future rights in the recordings.
I could hardly believe my luck. This was a lot of money.
The following year I left school – with just the one exam pass for Art. No obvious career beckoned so I decided I might as well have another go at becoming a professional drummer. I took some drumming lessons and put an advert in Melody Maker, the musicians’ paper. It ran as follows: ‘Gentleman, 18, seeks position as drummer.’
As I expected from such eccentric wording, I got eccentric replies. One came from a Glenn Miller Big Band that played in the Hare and Hounds in Brighton on Thursday nights – a ‘rehearsal and drinking band’ they called it. I sat in with them a few times and got very drunk. The other (there were only two) came from Sir Robert Fossett’s Circus, which made its living touring the Midlands and north of Britain.
I was interviewed and given the position by Henry Harris, a rather old and classically sad-looking clown, who lived at a caravan site outside Brighton when he wasn’t on the road. A part of Henry’s act was to galumph around the ring playing “My Blue Heaven” on the trumpet while smoke poured from all those orifices not directly involved with blowing the instrument.
The other member of the circus orchestra was a precise, neatly groomed man called Ken Baker. Half-Polish and rather effeminate, he had the sort of delicate hands I would have liked for my guitar playing, and played that abomination amongst musical instruments, the electric organ. ‘I’m so pleased to meet you, Chris,’ he enthused at our first meeting. ‘I’m sure we’re going to make an absolutely marvellous team.’
We opened the 1972 summer season at Queens Hall in Leeds. Ken and I sat in a box on high wheels, wearing red sequinned jackets and bow-ties. We had run through a couple of rehearsals before the show, with Ken playing the tunes and me thumping away alongside. ‘Just add a few rolls for suspense,’ said Henry the Clown, ‘and you’ll be just fine.’
But Henry had neglected to mention that Ken had a problem, and a big one for a circus organist – he couldn’t busk a note and had to read everything he played. Now in a circus you tend not to play a whole song. What you do is play something stirring and lively while the artiste enters the ring; then something atmospheric while they do their stuff; then, as the acts run their course, you mix the songs up, with the odd heart-stopping silence, before a crisp crescendo drum-roll and crash of cymbals as the artiste flops into the safety net or flings the last knife. Then comes a finale as your artiste sashays out of the ring.
It’s not as easy as it sounds, for the organist, at least. There may be snatches of up to a dozen songs in a long act – audiences would get bored with an uninterrupted ‘Nellie the Elephant’ while Nellie ambled disconsolately around the ring, knelt down, got up, stood on a tub, etc – and each snatch has to be synchronised with the actions. Ken couldn’t see the artiste because his head was buried in the music. He had a great sheaf of papers on top of his organ and for each new snatch of song he had to fish out the piece, put it on the music-stand, pull his cuffs up, and strike in. So a crucial part of my role was to relay information to Ken about what was going on in the ring. And with the crashing of the drums, the roaring of the organ, the bellowing of the crowd, and the caterwauling of André the ringmaster, it was often impossible to make him hear.
That first performance, our musical act began to come badly undone during Serena Barontoni’s trapeze extravaganza. Serena was a distant member of the Fossett clan, and with her brother Rocco, she did a rather lack-lustre juggling act which consisted mainly of the two of them padding morosely round the ring tripping over the heaps of dropped skittles, batons and brands. But Serena fared better on her own on the trapeze. Her act was not a thing you’d go a long way to see, but it was halfway competent – and it must take a lot more courage to prance about on the ropes and bars at the apex of a big top if you’re a mediocre acrobat than if you’re a virtuoso.
Serena came on after Zelda, a circus beauty with jet-black hair drawn tightly into a pony-tail, who did ballet-steps standing on the back of one or more horses as they cantered round the ring. All the little girls ooh-ed and aah-ed and formed desperate resolves about their future careers as she sped round and round the ring raising and lowering her perfectly-sculpted legs. She made her exit to “The Magnificent Seven” if I remember right.
‘Okay, Ken,’ I hissed. ‘Zelda’s gone – it’s André. Then Serena next – “Brazil”.’
‘Ladeeez ad Jedderbed’, howled André. ‘De ider-cweddibawl, luverlee ad glabberuz… Biss Serreeedaaaa BARODTODI!’
‘Here she comes, Ken… KEN!…“Brazil”!’
Serena strode into the ring with a look of fierce determination, set above a rictus of a grin. Silence reigned. She swivelled around giving more of the audience the benefit of her simultaneous smile and scowl. The silence continued.
‘Ken, she’s in – “BRAZIL”!!’
‘Alright, Chris, alright!’ Ken was getting tetchy. The music had slipped sideways and he couldn’t read it sideways. At last the opening chords of “Brazil” blasted shakily out from the organ, but it was too late. Serena had arranged the rope about her person and, with a black look at the orchestra box, started to climb up it as gracefully as her muscular frame would allow. ‘“Fly Me to the Moon”, Ken – for Pete’s sake, man!’
Ken was still blithely playing “Brazil”. With Serena halfway up the rope, the tune lurched to a halt and Ken started fumbling about. A long silence, then he started into “Fly Me To The Moon”. Again it was too late. Serena, now a small glittering figure high up on the flimsy trapezes, was summoning her nerve for a swing into the void. This called for an eerie silence broken by a long crisp drum-roll to build the tension and the terror. RrrrrrRRRRRRRR B-BOSH!!! But the tension was somewhat spoilt by “Fly Me to the Moon” trailing after the drum crescendo.
‘Right Ken, she’s into the swing. Give it all you’ve got, “Sabre Dance”!!’ At this point I would leave the organ and follow the swings and drops and tumbles of Serena’s act: BRRRR-BOSH, BIDDLER BIDDLER-BIDDLER BOSH, BOSHBOSH, BIDDLER-BOSH, BOSH-BOSH-BIDDLER… ting ting titing. Meanwhile, “Fly Me To The Moon” chundered on, before a silence and then the first hesitant notes of “Sabre Dance” croaked from Ken’s organ, as poor Serena hurtled to and fro amongst the hoops and bars at the top of the tent.
At last the wretched act drew to a close and Serena took the rope to return slowly to the sawdust: “There’s No Business Like Show Business” came limping from the organ.
‘No, Ken, for Chrissakes! She’s still up there – it’s “Fly Me To The Moon”, again.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Chris – where’s that got to now?’ and he delved again deep into the mass of music that shrouded his organ. Serena slithered on down the rope in silence, with only the scrunching of crisp packets, chattering of small children and the distant grumble of the generator as accompaniment. ‘Mummy, why is that lady so cross?’ rang out a toddler’s voice from the front row. The answer was drowned by Ken bursting into a desperate repetition of “Fly Me To The Moon”. It was too late. Serena flounced from the ring.
‘Forget it Ken, she’s off.’ But no – Ken had to plod his way regardless all the way through “No Business Like Show Business”, drowning out André’s next ‘Ladeez ad Jedderbed…’
‘I’m so sorry, Chris,’ said Ken afterwards.
I melted. ‘Don’t worry, Ken, it’ll get better with practice…’ But of course it didn’t. It happened daily, twice on Saturdays, and as the weeks went by I found myself in constant confrontation with poor Ken. On one occasion I even hurled a drumstick at him during a show, an incident provoked by Ken dropping a whole heap of papers on the floor in the middle of an act by the Flying Manzini Brothers, a troupe of volatile and I thought potentially homicidal Italian acrobats.
The Brothers were whizzing round the ring, about a dozen of them piled four high on a one-wheeled bicycle, when, all of a sudden, the music stopped. A muffled oath from the orchestra box, the silly sound of the drums clattering tering on alone, then round whizzed the Flying Manzini Brothers in silence. Round they whizzed again, cool as cucumbers but mentally hurling knives at the box. Once more they whizzed round. I’m no clairvoyant but I had this strange sense that both Ken and I should avoid walking in the dark behind the tent, especially in the area behind the generator truck where shouts are rather easily masked.
The Fossett Circus travelled all round the north of England and well into Scotland; Leeds, Halifax, Rochdale, Liverpool, Wallasey, Preston, Carlisle, Glasgow, Kilmarnock. I got to know the public bathhouses with their tiled cubicles, enormous baths and polished brass taps gleaming like the controls of ancient steamships, and was initiated into the particular pubs that circus folk frequent. But what I most remember were the long hauls through the dawn of Sunday mornings, after we had packed up the tent at the end of the second show on Saturday night.
Taking down, travelling and setting up the circus was like a battle. As soon as the public started filing out on a Saturday night, you could feel a sudden slackness in the tent as the guy-ropes all around were loosened off and the tent-boys started knocking the six-foot iron pegs out of the ground. The tent-boys, a motley crowd of desperados and runaways, were the lowest of the low in the circus hierarchy – but everyone, even the top artistes, lent a hand to strike the tent and pack up.
It took a couple of hours to drop the big top, which was then folded into impossibly heavy and unwieldy rolls of canvas and loaded with its massive poles onto the trailers.The circus beasts – which back then featured lions and tigers, elephants, a poor old camel, a llama and a pair of ostriches – were stuffed into their trailers ready for the road. All the seats and the booths and the duck-boards and the poles and guy ropes and flags, the fencing and cables, the lights, the ring, the ropes and bars and hoops and trapezes, the ladders and winches had to be loaded up and lashed down in their appropriate trailers. This was all done in the middle of the night, more often than not in driving rain.
By three or four in the morning everything would be packed and stowed, the trailers hitched to the tugs and the convoy ready to leave. Now was an hour to drink tea and soup, all quiet but for the thundering of the huge generator that ran the lights. Then at last the generator would stop and the remains of the camp sink into a blessed silence. We would climb into the cabs of whatever vehicle we were allotted – I drove the meat-van – and rumble out through the park gates.
We were circus-folk, and this was one of the bits of it that I liked best, crawling in sheeting mists of rain through the few hours that remained of the night, listening to the thunder and whine of the huge road-machines, the ceaseless slapping of the wipers. The headlights picked out the roadsign through the rain: Kilmarnock 50. At our rate of progress that was four hours and more. Drunk with sleeplessness, slumped in the cabs, we were the circus coming to town.
And thus a happy summer passed. I suppose if I’d stuck with it and done a lot of practice on those rolls, then I could have made a pretty good circus drummer, made a career out of it. But it was time to move on and try something else. In Carlisle we set up in a park between the castle and the river and the sun shone all week. One morning I went into town to go shopping, my £20-a-week musician’s wage weighing heavy in my pocket, and wandered into a record shop to browse along the shelves. Eventually I decided on a flamenco album.
I can’t remember what it was that nudged my destiny in this curious way; I had never heard flamenco and I knew nothing about Spain. But that afternoon, back in my cubbyhole in the accommodation trailer, I got out my little battery-operated record player, stretched out on my foam mattress and played my new record. The guitar was just dazzling. I had no idea you could do things like that with a guitar, or indeed that fingers could ever get so fast. I wasn’t altogether sure about the music, but the technique – those fast tripping runs, the deep dark chords and the machine-gun-like percussive effects – sent me reeling.
Suddenly my little repertoire of Dylan and Donovan songs seemed pathetic. I would have to go to Seville and become a real guitarist.