Chris Mullin

That’ll be the day

In a fourth volume of memoirs, Johnson reveals how politics were never part of his life plan. All he ever wanted to be was a rock star

We’ve had Alan Johnson the lad from the slums of north Kensington, Alan Johnson the postman and Alan Johnson Member of Parliament and cabinet minister. Now comes the sequel: Alan Johnson the rock and roll years. Actually, it’s not quite a sequel since it covers much of the same territory as two of the previous volumes, albeit from a slightly different angle. Although Johnson went on to hold five cabinet posts, politics was never part of Johnson’s life plan. All he ever wanted to be was a rock star and, who knows, it was an ambition he might have realised but for the fact that his musical instruments kept being stolen.

As recounted in This Boy, his wonderful and hugely successful first volume of memoirs, Johnson’s start in life was, to put it mildly, unpromising. Born to an impoverished mother and feckless father in a condemned tenement, orphaned at 12, he left school at 15 without a single O-level and stacked shelves in Tesco’s. By the age of 17 he was married to a woman four years his senior who was already pregnant from a previous relationship. And yet in the teeth of great odds, he has made a remarkable success of life.

This is his life story set to music. It covers 25 formative years, from 1957 to 1982. Each year is allocated a different chapter and each chapter bears the title of a pop song that caught his attention at the time, from Cole Porter’s ‘True Love’ to Billy Joel’s ‘Allentown’. En route, we take in Lonnie Donegan at the Chiswick Empire and a host of long-forgotten golden oldies. Who but the truly initiated now remembers the Vampires, Duane Eddy or Johnny Kidd and the Pirates? Although the range of Johnson’s interests is vast, the Beatles remain the love of his musical life and they recur throughout.

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