Note: This publication, it turns out, is as much about relationships and life as it is about music. My first post was about Ziggy (Steve not David), and our sharing of musical finds and obsessions. Then there was the ‘unforgettable’ record I found in my Dad’s cupboard when he moved out of his house. This post – He was the nazz 1 – and the piece that follows it – is about my oldest friend, Phil. The first part is my version of the story, and Phil picks it up himself in part two. We hope you enjoy it. If you do, please subscribe (for free!), or better still, tell someone else about it!
He was the nazz
This is a bit of Phil’s story – and a bit of mine – and Ziggy (the Bowie version this time) threads through it. Last year we (Phil and I) celebrated our joint 130th birthday (our combined ages as we both turned 65), and to celebrate we did what we’ve always done – went to some gigs and had a trip or two, and some curry and beer might have been involved (though I’ve been cutting right down lately since discovering Brulo zero alcohol beer at the Left Luggage Room - highly recommended!).
Since we met, aged eleven, on the beach at Whitley Bay, we’ve shared a friendship that’s still going after 55 years. It’s a musical story too, and this seems like a good place to begin to tell it. This bit is about how Phil ended up playing rock music on a Sunday night, to a crowd of cheering punters.
So where were the spiders?
The musical part of this story probably starts with Ziggy. The album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, came out in 1972, and we would have been 14 at the time – a prime time for Bowie teens. Phil and I lived near to each other and the church youth club at the top of our road was a hub of our teenage lives. School, for me, was a dire struggle (and we didn’t attend the same school), so a lot of my social life began to revolve around Phil and this group of youth club kids. There was always music playing amidst the table tennis and clumsy flirting. Ziggy and Bowie were at the heart of it, together – for Phil and me – with the first few Queen albums and Mott the Hoople.
Phil has always been more of a rocker than me (photographic evidence above: the Motorhead T shirt), but back then our tastes were pretty similar. Our first foray into rock stardom together was at the youth club, Geordie-themed talent evening. We made full-size guitars out of cardboard (I think mine was painted bright red), and mimed to Geordie’s All Because Of You2 – working into an increasing frenzy until we smashed our props in a performance that was described as ‘memorable’ (though I can’t remember who said it - it might have been my Mum!). Sadly, neither of us revealed our nascent talent on that stage that night, but one of us kept going and was able to have his time in the spotlight fifty years on (spoiler alert, that person wasn't me!).
Having said that, I was the first of us to be on stage as a ‘musician’, starting around the time I was in Upper Sixth. I’d taken some piano lessons when I was a kid, and had developed a reasonable party trick of being able to do a blues piano improvisation in the key of C. It was impressive for around three minutes, by which time I had run out of anything new to play. My left and right hands would find themselves working in different timezones and directions and things would break down pretty rapidly. Somehow, though, I convinced a couple of guys at school who were setting up a band to take me on as keyboard player, and we had a year or so of minor local fame playing mainly Wishbone Ash covers. We were probably the worst band in the world…
To be fair, Gert (the drummer) was pretty handy with the sticks, and Gordon, (lead guitarist and amplifier owner) was a talented guitar player. His singing, on the other hand, shall we say, lacked ‘projection’; think downbeat emo from the early 2000s – in 1976. We played heavy rock covers, so this wasn’t a great combination, and we were running headlong into the first days of punk.
Nevertheless, soon we were also joined by Nick, a lovely, studious and talented lad, who was taken on as second guitarist. We (that is, Nick and me) starting writing some songs together. I supplied the lyrics and he did the tunes. Bernie Taupin and Reg Dwight we were not, but perhaps, I thought, perhaps we were on our way! I think the band even grudgingly played one of them (cringingly entitled Dawnbreaker – I can still remember some of it).
I bought a battered old portable Hammond B3 organ, which I thought would sound something like the backtrack on Bob Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone,3 but, instead, just made a terrible screeching noise on most settings – and that was before my inexpert playing. Phil, who was the only one in our group with a car, became manager and roady, and so Friedelkraft4 (yes I know!) went on the road. The road we went on was mainly the one between Gert’s house in Earsdon where we practiced and stored our gear, and the Rex Hotel on Whitley Bay seafront (where we once headlined the ballroom), with a youth club gig or two thrown in between.
I was hopelessly out of my depth and the Hammond B3 kept breaking down. Gordon was a bit of an electronic engineer and fixed it on a couple of occasions, I think. One time, however, I arrived without any gear at a gig at the Rex Hotel, and had therefore planned to use the massive seaside-style organ with foot pedals and stops in the function room we were playing in. Alongside the usual mistakes I made at every gig (see hand directions problem, as described above), on this occasion I also managed to play the riff to Free’s All Right Now in completely the wrong key, on a very loud instrument, for the whole song.
To add sea-salt into the wound, that particular gig was recorded. The set had started impressively, with recorded wailing police sirens and a bank of flashing traffic cones that Gert had nicked from some local roadworks the previous night, and ended with a cheering audience! However, those mistakes, which might have been lost and forgiven in the heady drunken, aftermath of a triumphant performance, were preserved for posterity on a cassette tape. Proof right there that I wasn’t band material!
Soon after, we recruited a bassist, another Steve. He and Gert made a pretty tight rhythm section, and Gert could be a wild drummer! I had high hopes for a punkier direction for the band; maybe that we would write more of our own songs, and – please, please – let us change our name! Unfortunately, at that stage, Gordon, Gert and Steve had already decided they had to ‘break up the band’. They teamed up with an experienced local singer, and went off to play the club circuit doing Eagles and country and western knock offs. They did them well, it has to be said, but it’s fair to say they didn’t catch the zeitgeist!
As for me, I was rubbish at keyboards and deserved to be broken up with! Nick didn’t, though, and I hope he kept playing and writing music – he was seriously good.
Just the beer light to guide us
Phil and I moved on from the band, and on in our lives too. I went to Liverpool (musical highlight, the Undertones at Mountford Hall, October 1979) to do teacher training, and to visit Anfield as much as I could. There I met Mary and Jenny (then aged 1), got married in the spring of 1981, started a teaching job in Banbury and settled there for the next 30 years. Mary and I brought up our three amazing girls (the aforementioned Jenny, plus Sarah and Ruth) and in the process (I have no doubt) imbued them with impeccable musical taste (thought Jen did go through a very dodgy Happy Hardcore phase in her teens)!
Phil married too. The first time a false alarm; the second, for twenty years or so, resulting in gorgeous twins, Ruth and Philippa, who were and are a credit to their parents. In time, however, that marriage came to an end, and Phil seemed to settle into being single for a while. During all these years, Phil and I stayed close and saw each other as regularly as we could, sharing beer and music, and catching gigs together (musical highlights Crowded House, and Paul Weller at Whitley Bay Ice Rink – 1994 and 1995 respectively, T in the Park in Strathclyde Country Park, 1994, and later the Mott the Hoople reunion at the Hammersmith Apollo in 2009).
In 2008, Phil got together with Anne. They had worked together a while back and now found each other again. It was an easy relationship from the start. They shared a lot of interests - in particular music and running – and it soon turned into an inseparable partnership, though they both enjoyed their independence, as well each other’s company. They ran and raced together, went on mountain bike trips, took in gigs and generally had a great time.
Then, one day, Anne stumbled when out running. She thought nothing of it first, but then it happened again and again, and it became clear that there was something seriously wrong. At first, they thought it might be an autoimmune disorder of some kind, but after a few months of investigation, in May 2013, she was told she had Motor Neurone Disease. It’s a devastating diagnosis, and Anne was a relatively young, active and very fit woman who, until 2012, was running marathons and trail events all over the North East of England.
In October 2013, Phil and Anne got married – they were determined to make the best of what time they had together. Anne, who had learned to play on an electric keyboard, bought herself a beautiful upright piano to advance her playing. It still sits in Phil’s front room, and I still trundle up and down it now and again when I visit – through I have the same issue with the hands! Phil became her full-time carer, and in three short years, they had to fit in a lifetime’s worth of love and sharing. Predictably, Anne’s condition got worse – the prognosis for her version of MND is between three to five years from onset – and she died in September 2016. The night after Anne’s funeral, after all the guests had gone home, Phil and I sat in the backroom of the house he’d shared with Anne, and reminisced. Music that she and Phil had loved was played, and we talked and talked into the night with, as the Spiders would have it, ‘only the beer light to guide us’ (well, there was also a bottle of whisky, but I didn’t want to spoil the lyrical flow!).
Ziggy played guitar
How do you deal with a devastating loss like that? The truth is that you don’t – it deals with you. Whatever we try to ‘do’ to ‘get over’ or ‘come to terms with’ is just trying to fill up the space. Doing stuff can keep us going, perhaps, but the space is where it’s at. It’s a person shaped hole – an Anne shaped hole, in Phil’s case – that never ever fully goes away. People can help, of course, but they are never that particular ‘person’. Music can soothe and almost seem to heal, then we might hear their favourite song, and it doesn’t feel healing at all. Red wine can seem like it’s helping too, and I think Phil had his fair share of that.
In the final analysis, though, Anne wasn’t coming back. She knew that, and knowing Phil so well, she had made plans for him. Get out and be with people (he did, even though they were and are not Anne). Keep moving (he kept running in her memory and took up volleyball). Get a purpose (he took a sports massage course). And don’t just sit at home drinking red wine, keep busy with something you love…
Phil loves music, and he once smashed his cardboard guitar on the stage at St Mary’s Church Hall, so the choice was obvious really! He bought a guitar, and then another, and started to teach himself in earnest. And Andy (the guy in the middle of the photo at the top) started teaching him and he got better still. Andy is an integral part of an ‘open mic’ night held every Sunday at the previously mentioned Left Luggage Room, and he invited Phil along. The evening works on the basis of each performer singing two songs, and there is a group of experienced musicians always there to help – providing bass, guitar and drum box backing if needed. By the end of the evening, everyone seems to be playing with everyone, and it becomes a bit of a jam. It’s great fun, no-one judges, everyone joins in and applauds wildly (though the ‘beer light’ probably has something to do with this bit!)
The Left Luggage became a regular fixture for Phil to go and listen. Then, a year or so ago, he told Andy that he’d like to learn to play a couple of songs at one of the sessions and gave himself nine months to do it. Eight months later, on Sunday 19th November 2023, Phil was on stage giving his first performance. He messaged me with photos the following day: “Last night I did this!”. Then, in response to my heartfelt congratulations: “Thanks. What you can’t see is my hands shaking and the enormous butterflies in my stomach”.
As I told him, the shaking and the butterflies made it even more impressive. It takes serious guts to stand up there with an instrument you’ve only recently started learning, and singing songs by singers you love when you’ve never sung in public before. He was there again the next week, and the next, and by the time I was up again in Whitley Bay at the beginning of December, he was the seasoned rock and roller you see in the photo at the top of the post. And now he’s got his own microphone, amplifier and probably another guitar or two at home (I’ve lost count).
The man is, seriously, the nazz… and he’s my best friend.
Epilogue
It occurs to me that music is all about relationships. It is about all the connections in all the years I’ve been a husband, dad, grandpa and friend, and an activist, teacher and therapist. And although I know that music cannot always heal the deepest personal wounds, nor change the world in the way we would sometimes like it to, I also know the very things that CAN heal and WILL change the world are also embedded deep in the human musical experience: in our intimate, complex relating, in the collaborations and ecologies held there – and in the simple beauty of a song that can make us laugh and cry all at the same time.
Phil’s musical life has been integral to his relationships – with Anne, with me, with his kids, with his gig buddies in the North East, with his musician friends and teachers. Likewise, his love of music and the music he loves is an integral part of the person he is, has been and always will be.
And I realise, as I write this, that it is just this peculiar, alchemical set of poetic equations that Ziggy’s Lament has been set up to explore!
The songs
At his most recent performance at the Left Luggage, these were the two songs Phil chose to play. In the next post, he talks a bit more about his choices, but here’s a taster of both.
Dreamy Skies is from the Rolling Stones latest album, Hackney Diamonds. Phil found the song on Youtube in this ‘short’, acoustic version by Mick Jagger sitting on top of what looks like it could be a compost heap, but probably isn’t:
I Wish I Was Your Mother, by Mott the Hoople, originally on the album, Mott – the first album in Phil’s collection, bought for him by his Mum on a shopping trip to Newcastle. Street cred gone right there. The version below is a 2001 live performance by Ian Hunter ( the songwriter and Mott the Hoople’s lead singer).
Next time: Phil tells his version of this story, including a bit about how he says I nearly killed Billy Bragg… though I think he’s saving the full details for a future exposé.
Lyrics of Ziggy Stardust can be found at https://genius.com/David-bowie-ziggy-stardust-lyrics with playfully changed references to ‘He was the nazz’, ‘Ziggy played guitar’, the ‘beer light’, the Spiders etc.
Phil has a better memory than me and I’d forgotten the song we mimed to. Phil knew straight away that it was the band, Geordie – featuring Brian Johnson as lead singer – playing the Glam stomper All Because Of You. The video I’ve linked to is possibly the performance we were trying to emulate – though they don’t smash their guitars. Apparently, Phil also tells me, Geordie thought they’d made it after appearing on the telly. Instead they were dropped from their label. Brian Johnson worked as an automotive engineer for a while, and then joined as lead singer of AC/DC. And the rest, as they say, is history.
The genius organ track on Like A Rolling Stone enters 30 seconds in and then threads behind the whole song giving it a texture I think it would lack if it was just a guitar and harmonica job! My opinion, but a valid one I feel! My keyboard work never sounded like this!
Friedelkraft, the band, was apparently named (by Gordon, lead singer, guitarist and owner of the amp - or possibly his brother) after the Friedel–Crafts reactions: “ a set of reactions developed by Charles Friedel and James Crafts in 1877 to attach substituents to an aromatic ring”, according to Wikipedia. Nope. I haven’t a clue either…
My favourite post so far. I loved playing out the whole post as a little home made movie in my head as I read it. Beautiful in all the right kind of happy and sad ways x
Another incredible post dad! Funny, devastating and inspiring - what a beautiful friendship and so proud of Phil for getting on that stage! Amazing! I'm loving hearing all your musical stories from the past. :)