When I was 15 I left school to go to Art College and it was here that I first made the decision to take up a ‘stringed’ instrument as opposed to a ‘wind’. One evening some of us were sat in the locker room waiting for our evening class to begin, a group of older students were sat passing a guitar round and singing stuff like
‘Streets of London’ and one or two Bob Dylan and Tom Paxton songs, “Blimey!” I thought, “I never knew all these people could play guitar, just imagine if I had a Banjo now I could really astound them?” I wanted to be different, no normal instrument like Guitar for me, had to be something more obscure!
I wanted to be like Luke Kelly or Barney McKenna of the Dubliners. So I had a word with my parents and as Christmas was just around the corner they agreed to buy me Banjo on the strict proviso that I would learn to play it and not mess about and get fed up when the going got hard. My musical education was just about to begin...
So just before Christmas 1971 I got my first Mandolin, I had wanted a 5-string banjo but when we went to the music shop in Wakefield the banjos were all around the thirty quid mark whereas there was this nice little Neapolitan mandolin for fourteen pounds something or other, I’ve often remembered it as £14/17/6d but decimal coinage came in in 1971 so maybe it wasn’t? Anyway I got it home and carressed it, looked at it lovingly, stroked it, did my best to play it and made a determined effort to practise daily. I also made a determined effort not to do the usual thing and smash it against a wall in disgust when things weren’t going well!
A word on tutor books here, it’s difficult for the modern student to imagine just how difficult starting to play a musical instrument was back in the early seventies. I had bought a tutor book which gave you the very basics of playing and how to tune up etc, it started from the standpoint that you could read music, which I couldn’t, at least not very well. I had had some experience in the school brass band but that was all. Luckily I had a ‘good ear’.