People ask me sometimes if I still do any music and I always tell them that music is a garden and, once you’ve been there, you never stop going back. It’s true. Then I go and talk to someone else. I know people ask my old band mate Damon the same thing sometimes, possibly just to annoy him. It is really annoying, actually. Never ask anyone who was once in a famous band if they’re still doing music, unless you want to annoy them. Of course they are. It’s heroin.
I’ve got a big show on Friday. It’s at Geronimo’s pre-school. He asked if I’d come in with my guitar. Claire’s going to play tambourine and we’re doing ‘Bob the Builder’, ‘Dig dig digging’, ‘No more Heroes’ and a finishing big with ‘Rivers of Babylon’ — all his favourites. I rediscovered ‘Rivers of Babylon’ in an old songbook and started playing it at the weekend. I’d never noticed the words before and I was in tears by the end. Amazing song: written by someone who was trying to get closer to God. Music, carefully employed, can always bring you closer to what you want. I guess when I was younger, being in a rock’n’roll band brought me closer to all the things I needed then, things I don’t really need any more. Now it’s bringing me closer to my children. It’s magic stuff; the older I get, the more I believe that.
Every Christmas I get a little bit better at ‘Walking in a Winter Wonderland’. It won’t be ready for Friday, though, no way. The first chord of that song is B flat 13. I’d had a number one in Japan before I knew what that meant. I’m still not sure if anybody does, really. The more you look at and know about B flat 13, the more impossible and unlikely it seems. Taken literally, it seems to be all the notes in the scale played at once, which, intriguingly, is the way that Geronimo attacks the piano.
I’m not expecting to get a Christmas present from EMI this year, not just because my musical output consists only of nursery rhymes and mangled Christmassy jazz chords. The company has been lambasted in the business pages for wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds on Christmas presents for its artists. There will have been a board meeting and someone will have said, ‘This has got to stop. It’s ridiculous.’ That was what was good about the music business, though. Making records is ridiculous. It can only be done by ridiculous people, and in a ridiculous manner. I always particularly looked forward to EMI’s present. They were consistently well chosen. My favourite one ever was a candle thing that makes cherubs go round in a circle ringing bells. I wonder if Queen have still got theirs, and Paul McCartney. I’ve still got my one.
I suppose EMI could send us all some music. It wouldn’t cost them anything and if they could work out how to do that properly, maybe they wouldn’t have so many problems right now. Still, I’m not sure if rock’n’roll is the future any more, not just for me. It used to be the future, but now it’s sounding more and more like the past. That’s the real crisis facing record companies at the moment.
The best music I’ve heard this year was at a sort of diplomatic cocktail soirée in St Petersburg. It was a handful of pieces for unaccompanied voices, and nothing ever sounded so enchanting. It was the simplicity of it that made it so appealing. It made me want to join in, which is the only hallmark of a great performance. Most of the people there talked all the way through it, though. The composer arrived on the bus, rather than by Bentley, and he looked a bit like a monk. Perhaps that’s the way forward for musicians. Out of the rock’n’roll fast lane and into the spiritual bus lane. Much like academia, making music is its own greatest reward, really.
The Chipping Norton Band came a pretty close second on Saturday. They were playing carols outside the Co-op with their gloves and coats on, like poor church mice. Geronimo hated it; he said it was too loud and nearly dropped his gingerbread man in his protestations, but the sound of a 20-piece brass band was one to take to bed. The band was way bigger than the crowd. There were three tubas, all sorts. Maybe we don’t need rock stars quite so much now that we have so many celebrities. As long as Chipping Norton has a big band, it really doesn’t bother me.
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