My grandfather sat beside the record player and I played him various records from my parents' collection when I was five years old. I was amazed that he didn't like The Beatles since, as I explained, 'they were old too.' No, he didn't dig The Beatles (a trait which skipped a generation.)
I confessed that I thought that I was too young to understand music and it was true. I was attracted to the records, their colourful, stiff card covers and their uniformity, in much the same way that I gravitated toward the club biscuits, with their varying designs, in the grocery shop or my mother's collection of herb jars with their colourful plastic lids, but the music itself meant nothing to me.
In fact, the only 'grown up' song that I liked was 'Yellow Submarine' and the only children's record was 'Bobby and Betty Go to the Moon,' although I didn't like the musical 'B' side, only the story-narrated 'A' side.
I anticipated liking music and only a few years later I did. By 1980 I was listening to the Top 20 every Sunday evening as I lay in the bath. I clearly remember 'Call Me' being announced as No. 1 and I was happy! My first love was Debbie Harry you see, I fell deeply in love with her. Having no idea about romance and little knowledge of human relations, I dreamt of a town house with many stories, each story housing a different Blondie band member, me with my own story and with Debbie, the matriarchal figure, in the penthouse.
Around this time my mother enrolled me in piano lessons but I was completely unmotivated and without talent. When I was eleven, I borrowed a violin from the comprehensive school that I went to after two awful terms at a boarding school, but I showed little sign of musical ability.
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