1. I invented punk rock.
No, piss off, I did. Some of it, anyway. I invented a particular part of punk rock.
Alright, a part no-one else took up. Including me. Though I sort of did, because I couldn't be any better than I was.
A proper explanation? Fuck that for now. Back to the beginning first, and a lightbulb coming on over my head. The Portsmouth Sinfonia had a lot to answer for.
*
Hard to believe now, but in the 1970s british TV had only three channels. Three. So you ended up watching a fair percentage of what was on.
Some of it you just couldn't. Seaside Special, Come Dancing (strictly shit), Little & Large. Mireille Mathieu and Nana Mouskouri and Val Doonican in his fucking rocking chair, but no rock bands. The Black & White Minstrel Show was still around for most of the decade.
But I used to come home from a holiday job and enjoy Terry & June. It gets bad press now, but Terry Scott was a funny man and June Whitfield added something to every sitcom. Sexy, too. A few years later, I directed her in a radio commercial, and there was a twinkle in her eye. Thirty years older but hey.
Test cricket was live and free, and people came home from the pub for Match of the Day followed by the late-night horror films with happy endings.
On the BBC, the early evening news was followed by a magazine programme called Nationwide. I didn't watch it much. It was mostly local news from BBC regional stations. All I remember is the eccentric 'roving reporter' Fyfe Robertson, an irritating old scot with a beard and trilby whom I appreciate a bit more now. And two pieces of music. Well, one piece. The William Tell Overture each time, but played by very different people.
They used to have live music in the studio sometimes, and one day I'm watching William Tell being played by a steel band.
Steel bands are naff, of course. For one thing, everything they play sounds the same. For another, they're just naff. But the pace of William Tell suits them. And this was live, and any live music is worth a listen. Near the end, my dad walks in.
Now, my old man was seriously into opera and that kind of singing. And he didn't just listen to it. There's a recording of him as a young man in Italy, a very pure voice, if a bit creepy somehow. I saw him on stage a couple of times in England, Ave Maria and what have you (we had it sung at his funeral).
Anyway, he hears the steel band, enters the room, watches till the end with a bemused look, then pronounces his verdict. You know, he says in his italian accent, that's the best version I ever heard. I could see why.
But the other William Tell - that was the epiphany. I happened to be watching when the Portsmouth Sinfonia ran across my bows. If I hadn't, the history of music would never have been the same.
The Nationwide studio wasn't very big, so it's just as well this was a small orchestra. It seemed to be mainly violins. I'm wondering what they're doing on the Beeb - I mean, William Tell is a bit done to death - but it soon dawns on me that this isn't your normal middling string section. These people are playing classical music badly!
I can't sing in tune. But I don't think I'm tone deaf. I can tell when other people are singing or playing as badly as me. I watched the Sinfonia with gathering glee.
What was good about them was they didn't play very badly. The overture rattled along quite normally, but every so often it screeched a bit, or a violin bow went down when the others were up. Brilliant.
I couldn't work out if they were all good musicians who played deliberately badly, which takes some skill - or most of them were good but a few couldn't play at all. And I didn't get an answer when they were interviewed immediately after the piece.
Memory says they looked like a bunch of middle-aged civil servants, men and women (I was nineteen or twenty). The interviewer may have been the main presenter, Michael Barratt, I can't remember. He's smiling when he asks if they think they're good at what they're doing, and they look at each other then say no, not really.
Priceless. By now I'm grinning full on, and I can't wait to tell someone.
*
In October 1973, my first week at university, I turned up for the football trials. I'd put Worcester College down as first pick because it was the only one in the whole of Oxford with its sports field on the premises. The others you had to cycle across town.
To reach our pitches, you walked alongside Worcester's famous lake, which you hoped would act as an aphrodisiac for girls you took round the grounds (only once, in my experience). You can see my priorities didn't lie with the academic work.
After the football, I'm wandering back to my room when I'm approached by a slim guy with longish yellow hair. For the rest of that first year, I knocked around with the Two Steves, who were both in my french class and both played football. Blond Steve was better, though the other one was skilful too. He was almost a year younger than us and I imagine he got even better when he left for Leeds.
Blond Steve is called Steve Sutherland. He invites me to his room and we have coffee and a natter and find we get on. After that, we're pretty much inseparable and even share a house in our last year. He's lived in Paris for decades but we were firmly in touch for most of that time.
He was a lot better at football than me. I was stronger in the tackle, but he could beat a man from a standing start, something I never managed.
When I told Steve S about the Sinfonia, I thought I'd be announcing the second coming or a confirmed sighting of the yeti. But he already knew about them, maybe because he lived on the south coast.
Portsmouth Sinfonia? Oh yeh, hilarious.
I've been thinking, I said. How about a rock band that's deliberately bad? He huffed a quick laugh, then we got back to talking about normal student stuff. Football and girls and proper music, and girls.
But I was half serious. I mean, a band that can't play, playing in public - how could it fail? The Sinfonia toured Europe and brought out albums.
So I start wondering who'd ever be mad enough to form a rock group like that. Then I looked in the mirror.
Well, I had the right CV.