Early this week....off to Aberdeen.....

I have said it before but it is worth repeating.

I am constantly shocked by how 'skint' almost everyone in the music industry is.  In the 'surveys' which pop up when you visit our www.makehits.com site or our www.makehits.co.uk site the question is asked: "What is holding you back from joining The Serious Writers Guild?".

The single most common reason is 'cost'.  And that fascinates me.

Now, there is no one going to tell me that the price of a good cup of coffee a day is too much to ask for the information that will break music guys out of Novice mode and show them how the 'big boys' get their success?  So - what is it that has almost everyone connected with music so broke?

Your story couldn't be as bad as mine!

OK, when I came to the UK from Ireland all those years ago, I became broke very quickly.  I read engineering at Dublin and had just taken my first position with the Chief Engineers Office for the railway company in Ireland.  Great career ahead of me.  But, I saw the music opportunity in the UK and took it.  As all successful guys will tell you, it's a bumpy road at the start, and the period while you are waiting for Royalties to come through, and payment for gigs etc. can be pretty mean.

40 years today, 14th Dec.

It is precisely and exactly 40 years to the day when my first track was released 14 Dec. 1962.  So at this moment, I can look back and tell you that I was freezing - in  the coldest Winter ever recorded in the UK, I was starving, just a tiny bit of porridge each day, but I could taste the success coming.  Because I knew we were doing it right!

My Brother and I stuck it out.  [how come it is always the brothers in a band that 'do it all'....UB40?  Status Quo?  Spandau Ballet, Beach Boys?]  The partner we had, at the time, just pushed off back to Ireland...as he was to do many times, when it got rough.

I can remember sleeping six in a bed to keep warm!  That would be considered kinky today....but when you have six inches thick of ice on the inner walls of a house then you do strange things to keep warm.  We collected orange crates from the rubbish tips of clubs around the West End in London to bring home, break up, and burn...just for a tiny bit of heat.

Skills you learn come in handy

My Engineering education came is useful.  I devised a method for connecting into the landlord's communal electric supply in the hallway, so we could have a little light and one bar of an electric heater.  It is hard to imagine, today, what it was to be shivering and hungry.  BUT......

I knew we were doing it right.  We looked right, the music was right, the analysing of current Hit toons, for years, just had to pay off.  The years of music tuition, the piano playing, the guitar practice, the years of live gigging, from when I was 12 years....we knew it had to pay off.  We just knew what we were doing.

Study great performing talents:

We had spent years standing in the wings [the side of stage] on the various shows we had done...watching, in awe, at those great talents on stage with us.  We didn't spend the time in pubs or clubs boozing, we studied our craft....we copied the way 'The Drifters' bowed, for instance...still do it to this day!  We copied old timers, the way they handled an audience [just the same as Freddie Mercury copied the old timers!].

I had a funny chat with Adam Faith last week.....we laughed when I told him that I stood in the wings of The Theatre Royal in Dublin when I was 15....just studying everything he did on stage....I learned from him how important it was to have an innovative, unusual, audience gripping start to an act...so important.

 

Every recording session we did......I was sitting beside the greatest pop guitar players in the world...watching, asking, learning....Jim Sullivan, Judd Procter, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones.  I was standing beside the greatest arrangers in the world...conducting and adjusting their masterpiece arrangements....Reg Guest, Ivor Raymonde, Artie Harris, Art Sneider, Phil Coulter [yes THE Phil Coulter].  When we played The Ed Sullivan Show [I was fifteen!] first, I was there watching and learning all the tricks! 

AND IT DID PAY OFF!   BIG TIME!

Dec with Nancy Sinatra last week!

So - what do I think when I get a 'private' Email which tells me sad tales?  I have to say that this is a 'private Email' .  So we will keep it private...no names.  But I had to quote it...the sender's name will never be mentioned!  I apologise for the 'language' in advance...but it was a private message only for myself.....

I am breaking a few rules here just to give you an insight into 'life'.  Especially life for a music guy.

Good "minute" with you this week Dec....thank you!....trouble is .......what do you do when you hit the skids?

Sure I've been lower than this before.....and picked myself up etc......just this seems bigger.....more real..

in true rock and roll fashion I lost three of my players this week....( sudden forced emigration, death of partner with now a disabled son to look after (so bloody sad, his wife was only 45) ....last but not least, the third member was poached to a better paying band in Glasgow...(fair play).).....all in a fucking week!!!.........trouble is....living in northern Scotland you don't get the quality of players (or the amount) that you have to choose from in the South.....so it will be difficult to form another band...(though I have the energy to, if required)...........but........thinking about it.......I already had the best players around.......before they left............

Just feeling pretty shitty at the moment.........

At 42.......I have to be realistic......

Running a solo band and being the bill payer....is hard work when you have a young family as well.....

is it time to concentrate on selling my songs I wonder....look after myself...whilst just performing on my own in the venues locally (plenty around)......

confused and upset......with stuffing kicked out of me.......

can't afford to record to good demo standard at home.......no money for recording equipment of decent quality.......

how low have you been??

Much Love

****