morningless condition that afflicts the unemployed: late nights and up after midday. This offended my father’s sense of the way things should be. He arranged for me to go and work on the bins. I quite enjoyed it; I was physically strong; I enjoyed being out of doors and I had the incentive of finishing by 2.00 and 11.00 on Fridays. All for a fairly decent wage and plenty of time for music. It was not the most pleasant job; the night soil run: I couldn’t hack that. The worst thing was a bloke eating a pork pie after we’d just finished collecting shit! I did the job for two months and then went to work at Calmic as a Works Study Officer. When asked why I should get the job, I answered that I had the “air apparent” for it and I think this witty answer clinched things. I was then made redundant and went to work at Ideal Standard in Middlewich. Theoretically excellent, I failed on the practical side of my Industrial Degree. Why was this? I was hopeless at stopwatching and observing peoples’ work rates. I felt it wasn’t possible to do this unless you’d actually done the job yourself.
By anyone’s standards I was upwardly mobile: a homeowner with a respectable job, married to a teacher. I had conformed, with some difficulty, to my father’s ideals as well as keeping faith with the music.
However, I was again made redundant. Both redundancies were carried out on the last in first out principle and I found myself on the dole. I had failed to fit in with the educational establishment and the economics of management consultancy had also ejected me. It was at this moment that the musical imperative took over and my career went in a more conducive direction. With hindsight it seems obvious that I was always going to spend every waking moment on music and music-related activities: the karma was just so strong. The jerky rhythms of recent times were about to end.
Cabinets And Coffins: A Plum Business
There was an important convergence: aged twenty-two, I once again came across David Ernest Barrow – a man I had known since the age of fifteen – at the dole office. Plum was out of prison; I was out of work. During the time in the mid Sixties when we were going to The Oddfellows on a Sunday evening with our rock band Axe, along with most of the other local musicians, I realised that there was a potential market amongst this fraternity for repairing and supplying equipment. I had the eye for a good venture and a good musical purchase and Plum had the practical skills. Here was an opportunity for collaboration: making, hiring and selling speaker cabinets. So we started a partnership using Plum’s front room in Ford Lane. We subsequently took over a workshop in Hewitt Street, just off Nantwich Road – where, incidentally, coffins used to be manufactured. Eventually, in 1971, premises on Nantwich Road were taken on the proceeds of the Hewitt Street business and I came off the dole. We had started with nothing but built up the business steadily and gradually: buying and selling guitars, making and selling speakers and hiring out sound systems. We bartered speaker boxes for instruments from other shops; we made equipment for local bands and I continued to collect guitars. In those days they were not worth a great deal but I saw a future in it. I used to go to Birmingham and Manchester to buy and I would buy to order as well. Once a month there were enough orders from Crewe musicians to warrant a 5 a.m. journey to London. A thousand pounds would eventually convert into fifteen hundred pounds worth of sales. Plum thought I was off on a nice day out: a view that was to lead to a rift between us.
Orders flooded in and I continued to travel about to buy for people. Everybody wanted to play in a band and there were plenty of local venues in those days. And young people had money.
Endings
Loss has been tangible in each decade of my being and has set the tone of my life. Music is by nature emotional and intuitive. As a musician I
By anyone’s standards I was upwardly mobile: a homeowner with a respectable job, married to a teacher. I had conformed, with some difficulty, to my father’s ideals as well as keeping faith with the music.
However, I was again made redundant. Both redundancies were carried out on the last in first out principle and I found myself on the dole. I had failed to fit in with the educational establishment and the economics of management consultancy had also ejected me. It was at this moment that the musical imperative took over and my career went in a more conducive direction. With hindsight it seems obvious that I was always going to spend every waking moment on music and music-related activities: the karma was just so strong. The jerky rhythms of recent times were about to end.
Cabinets And Coffins: A Plum Business
There was an important convergence: aged twenty-two, I once again came across David Ernest Barrow – a man I had known since the age of fifteen – at the dole office. Plum was out of prison; I was out of work. During the time in the mid Sixties when we were going to The Oddfellows on a Sunday evening with our rock band Axe, along with most of the other local musicians, I realised that there was a potential market amongst this fraternity for repairing and supplying equipment. I had the eye for a good venture and a good musical purchase and Plum had the practical skills. Here was an opportunity for collaboration: making, hiring and selling speaker cabinets. So we started a partnership using Plum’s front room in Ford Lane. We subsequently took over a workshop in Hewitt Street, just off Nantwich Road – where, incidentally, coffins used to be manufactured. Eventually, in 1971, premises on Nantwich Road were taken on the proceeds of the Hewitt Street business and I came off the dole. We had started with nothing but built up the business steadily and gradually: buying and selling guitars, making and selling speakers and hiring out sound systems. We bartered speaker boxes for instruments from other shops; we made equipment for local bands and I continued to collect guitars. In those days they were not worth a great deal but I saw a future in it. I used to go to Birmingham and Manchester to buy and I would buy to order as well. Once a month there were enough orders from Crewe musicians to warrant a 5 a.m. journey to London. A thousand pounds would eventually convert into fifteen hundred pounds worth of sales. Plum thought I was off on a nice day out: a view that was to lead to a rift between us.
Orders flooded in and I continued to travel about to buy for people. Everybody wanted to play in a band and there were plenty of local venues in those days. And young people had money.
Endings
Loss has been tangible in each decade of my being and has set the tone of my life. Music is by nature emotional and intuitive. As a musician I
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