003 - 46 and Failing?

46 and failing?

So I’m sat here starting to write this on May 10th, 4 days into being 46. But, truth be told, I’ve been thinking about this for a good few years. There are myriad threads running through my mind but I guess the main questions I’ve been posing myself are:

Am I a failure? Am I ‘successful’? And, to a large extent, what is ‘success’ - as nebulous as that term is?

I suppose I need to give a bit of a back story here. Anyone not familiar with my path may be thinking ‘what the hell is this twit talking about?’ And, even those that are, may be thinking similarly. Maybe they’re correct? But much like the awful Star Wars prequels, every story has a beginning or a prequel; hopefully mine is better than that bit where Christopher Lee fights the CGI Yoda…I know, let it go, Mike.

When I was a kid, a painfully shy kid with a stammer who blushed at the drop off a hat, I longed to be ‘somebody’. Make of that descriptor what you will - ‘famous’, ‘important’, ‘popular’ et al. Fed on a steady diet of films and books and getting fat on notions of ‘dreaming big’ and ‘chasing them’ my future looked set; achieving them was, I was assured, a shoo-in. The story is a classic hero’s journey that Disney never bought: shy stammering twit from England takes up the drums and becomes a rock god!!

So, take up the drums I did!

I could already blag a bit of piano and was by no means a ‘prodigy’ but did seem to take to the drums like a natural. In fact my first experience of playing the drums - and also a lesson in why we should always be encouraging as we never know how chance encounters and random words of encouragement could change a whole life - was a guy came to my secondary school music lessons and bashed some drums. I - surprisingly for one so shy (but I was also a bit of a ‘wannabe class clown comedian show off’, so that side did come out *more on this later!) - and a friend started low key heckling the guy, ‘play some Iron Maiden’ we exclaimed! He then turned to us and came up with the genius rejoinder ‘why don’t you come up and play some Iron Maiden!’ Touche!!

So he got my friend and me up in front of the whole class and challenged us: ‘play this!’ And went into a standard rock beat. Not bragging or nothing, but my friend went first and couldn’t do it. My turn. Perhaps my ‘8 Mile Moment’ and I never even realised (mainly cos Eminem and 8 Mile wasn’t around yet!). In a bizarre moment of foreshadowing, my knees WERE weak and my palms WERE sweaty! Tensions were high. Expectations were low. But I sat at that kit and actually nailed something!! For an underachieving loser, this was a pretty big moment. Hey as a 46 year old with a son and a busy life: if I can remember something IT WAS BIG! The guy, wanting to save face, then hit back with ‘ok, well try this!’ And played something else, but something a bit more complicated this time. And, perhaps because I didn’t know enough yet to know I didn’t know enough, I nailed that too! He seemed pleasantly surprised. The whole class cheerer!!

…That latter bit there probably isn’t true, there were probably some lukewarm nods of approval from actual cool kids who were probably thinking about snogging someone at break. But let’s maybe stick with this 46 year old’s fuzzy rose tinted memory, eh. AND, perhaps now I could play drums I’D get a snog too??!!

I didn’t.

But what did happen was the drummer guy came and found me afterwards and said ‘I’d take up the drums if I were you - that last thing was pretty hard and you did really well’. Oh my giddy aunt!!! Praise from an adult!!! And an adult who seemed to know what he was talking about!!! I don’t know who that guy was and have a vague picture of him in my head, but he possibly changed the course of my whole life; not bad for a one time meeting. And reiterates the point I made earlier: we never know what we say or do to someone may lead them, so, if you get the chance, be that guy.

So, unlike in the movies, there’s not really a nice neat little linear timeline here. That happened and then being an uncomfortable ‘fat stammering lazy eyed f**k’ (see my stand up set for context!) meant that, for a while, that was as far as it went. But then I discovered this hip little beat combo called Motley Crue and saw Tommy Lee on a massive drum rollercoaster going out over the crowd’s heads in an arena and how he was working his way through half the ladies of Hollywood, and thought: I wanna do that!!! And also play some drums!!

There’s a whole other part here that I’ll quickly paraphrase here as we all want to get this done, skip to the end and be home for tea, so I’ll be brief even though concision and brevity are not really my thing. The next few years were basically more ‘growing fat’ on the ‘dream machine from Hollywood’ and around this time the first Wayne’s World came out. Myself and my lovely lifelong friend Scott were probably - even though I don’t know if he’ll admit this - were probably both parts Wayne AND Garth! Geekish but also wanting to be rockstars; I do, however, like to play. And we both loved Megadeth. There was much jamming and playing, sometimes with my brother - a much more talented musician than I who I dearly wish would do something with that talent, but that’s a blog for another day, and another lad called Dan. We formed an upbeat party band called Tomb singing ballads and odes to our mothers.

But around this time I was still living in Dibden, near Hythe, and attending Totton College studying Business Studies. Which I fookin’ hated. The latter I mean, although the former didn’t really inspire me much neither mush (I’m being idiomatic).

Here, dear reader, is a feeling that will continue to come back in this story, but I was actually very lost and very depressed and often didn’t see a way out. It’s no wonder Pixar haven’t picked this up, eh? Why had films lied to me? Where was my wild haired professor turning up in an unsuccessful sport’s car to take me to fix my family’s past mistakes?!

The salvation came one day whilst reading a magazine called Rhythm. Turns out there were actual courses you could take in Drums!!! Even a degree!!!! What the fudge?!

So with a focus and fervour I didn’t even know I had I set my mind on this: I’m going to move to London and study the drums properly! The first thing I had to do was contact them and have a lesson and see what it was all about. I could play ‘Ten Ton Hammer’ so surely that was all I needed right?! On my first lesson the guy - a weird French guy who at one point leaned down next to me and put his hand on my thigh and said in soft tones ‘keep playing’ - asked me to play ‘a shuffle’. I was like ‘I din’t bring no cards mate!!’

Safe to say, I needed to learn A LOT.

But they gave me an audition and were pretty impressed with what I had taught myself and said all I’d need to do was give them £3000 and commit to a lesson every week, oh and move to London for the course - a One Year Diploma In Popular Music Performance. Easy, right.

Well I told my mum and a lot of people and they all thought it was a pipe dream. But I had a ‘feeling’ - an ‘energy’ that I have since encountered at various points in my life, almost leading me to believe that either we have done this before or that there are energies that lead us certain ways, like a wave that we just have to surf. My mum said ‘there’s no way we’ll find the money.’ I said I will.

Over the course of a weekend I’d sold my car - a lovely Mazda 323 with fancy lights that popped out of the hood if you please, and a load of other gear, special important gear. I raised about £2000 and it was at this point my mum knew I was actually serious and to her enormous credit backed me 100% - even helping pay the rest of the money and rent whilst I lived there. She also would drive me to and from London initially for the lessons and later to band practices with a band in Winchester…because like an idiot I’d sold my car!!!!

Wooo - the ‘dream’ was building momentum and becoming a reality. I’d also managed to find myself my first ever proper REAL partner. Oh yes, agents were surely gonna want a taste of this Ugly Fat Stammering Lazy Eyed Fuck becomes Rockstar’ rags to riches story?!

I write this flippantly now, because I’m ‘the other side of it’ but I think I genuinely believed this then. Hey, it’s what happens in the movies, right?

Again, in the interests of concision, I’m going to try to condense a lot of the next chapter into a much smaller paragraph than it deserves - you wanna finish this at some point, yeah - but hopefully maintaining the same high level of gravitas and intrigue.

During this period I joined a band with a friend - who is another lifelong friend, called G Kinch. No that’s too obvious, let’s call him Geoff K. The fact we still do music together now blows my mind (I’m allowing myself one emoji 💕) And we made what was, to me, my first album. A delightfully subtle affair called Scar Poems and it had a dead rat on the cover. I did my first tour, realised that the saying ‘what happens on tour stays on tour’ genuinely means ‘don’t let anyone know the sheer mind numbing boredom of a lot of it, coupled with farts and sweat and Moral Dilemmas about shagging your mum to save your dad amongst other wholesome activities.’

Still shy. Still happy to stay in ‘the background’.

I quickly developed a friendship with the handsome young man who played bass in that band, a real rockstar called Jonny T (no one called him that!) Jon Tufnell. He had that certain ‘something’ and I think I was in awe of him initially. He was much like my Tyler Durden - everything I wished I was but assumed I wasn’t. Turns out, though, he was real and not really me all along. The Bastard.

It was at this point I probably accepted I was ‘co star’ in this movie and not ‘the star’ as originally hoped. But, hey, it’s just as cool to be Richard Dreyfus and it is to be Roy Scheider, right? Jon was definitely ‘the leading man’ which, at the time I accepted, but over time - if I’m being 100% honest - grew to resent.

But back to the timeline.

We hit it off so well, in another act the seems bewildering confident when I look back, I saw his band play and just decided that he was going to be going places and I was going to be going places with him and I just said to myself ‘I’m going to play in that band.’ And, I can’t remember the words I used, but pretty much told him that too.

So we had an audition and I not only learnt the songs, but because of my training at Drumtech - the establishment that taught me drums and got me felt up by a Frenchman, could play very comfortably with a click track. We went through the songs and it was like we all knew that was it: I was in the band. I’d usurped another person though, and that probably should have given me an early warning of this cutthroat biz; it goes both ways.

We gigged and really developed a strong local following. We had a particularly confusing name ‘Karmic Jera’ (meaning Karmic Earth…hey I didn’t come up with it, just pushed another drummer out to get in so don’t judge me!) and coupled with Jon’s great writing and producing and good looks (Tyler Durden, remember) we really were getting attention, locally at least.

We then entered a competition in Kerrang Magazine to find ‘the best unsigned band!’ And we naively thought ‘we could win that!!!’

But, here’s the thing: we bloody did!!!!

The dream was coming true baby!!! Of course it was!! I had it, I pictured it - we pictured it - and it was happening!!! Just like the movies and books had told me. And we worked hard! We gigged and wrote and rehearsed and practiced and worked on our image - well as much as an ugly fat stammering lazy eyed fuck can. The record label - the aptly titled Dream Catcher Records (I’m not making this up!) Assured us that, even though it had initially been a ‘gimmick competition’ to get some free advertising in the magazine, they were 100% behind us and bought me a drum kit cos I was cheeky enough to ask, and gave us £10,000 to go record an album!

We were in Kerrang a fair few times and Metal Hammer and on Radio and at the first ever Kerrang Awards our music and. Song ‘Death Race’ was used for the whole front end of the show and when rockstars came up to give or receive awards - luminaries like Marilyn Manson - it was our music they walked up to!!! We’d made it!!!! …hadn’t we…?

Well. Being succinct, again, the short answer was ‘no.’ Trouble with the label amongst other things, but as close to the dream as we got: we never quite got there. I’ve included some photos of some magazine article we featured in, mainly cos I’m a low-key hoarder and I’ve kept all that shit…but also so you know I’m not making it up. The picture of me stood behind a flipping gate should have been an indicator that maybe I’d been relegated to supporting cast and not even co star. But that’s kinda Robert Shaw territory, and that’s still cool; to be fair HE is the one you remember most, right? It’s been nice reading them again, and there’s some nice words from Jon in the article about us. If you read the words in the live review it says ‘This time next year, somewhere in the region of 22,000 excited punters will claim they were here tonight. Hopefully’

It difficult to read words like that and not believe them.

After this the band had many different guises and seemingly similar flirts with ‘fame’ and ‘success’ most notably as Plastic Toys where we were briefly managed by some lovely people called B Channel and then (a decision I didn’t really want to make) someone called Jonathan Shalit of Shalit Global, who’d managed Jamelia and even Charlotte Church at one point; he was, and perhaps still is, a c**t. He did get us backstage to Top Of the Pops and I had a dance off (including a pole dancing section) in front of Andy Peters, Minnie Driver and Razorlight.

And all these flirts, you’re thinking ‘this is it!! It’s taken slightly longer than expected BUT IT’S COMING BABY!!!’ You deserve it. It’s your dream, after all, and all you have to do is dream it, work hard and it’ll happen, eh?

To have been this close and it not have ‘happened’ was, underneath all my flippancy, quite heartbreaking, and I think there was a real part of me that went through a ‘mourning’ of sorts.

I wish the pathetic grabs at ‘fame’ and ‘success’ ended there. But, sadly not. Over the next decade and a half (cos this story so far takes me to my late 20s early 30s) I tried to become my own Tyler Durden and not be anyone’s co-star. That’s what held my back: I needed to be my own star in my own movie!! So I wrote my own songs. Learnt to sing and re-found the piano and learnt guitar.

Got close with a few things: got played by Janice Long on BBC Radio 2 for instance. Woo - made it again!!! Not so.

Played drums for many other projects who also all almost ‘made it’ whatever ‘it’ is.

Then I discovered I was perhaps a stand up comedian after all (*I said there’d be more on this later didn’t I? You can relax now) and dipped my toe in those waters, only to realise that not only was I not Robert Shaw, I wasn’t even that guy who gets eaten by the shark at the beginning (I’m making Jaws references by the way).

So, how could all this happen? I’d had ‘the dream’ and I’d worked single mindedly towards it. Films and TV wouldn’t have lied to me, would they?!

Well, what I’ve realised is there are infinitely more people wanting to be the next Ed Sheeran/Tommy Lee/Jimmy Carr than there’ll ever be Ed Sheerans/Tommy Lees/Jimmy Carrs. Yet, no one ever really seems to talk about this. We’re sold ‘the dream’ but not the reality: it’s like you’re on the Titanic and several hundred people WILL get into a lifeboat but not all, not the majority, will.

I honestly feel that myself and others who have been through this face a few tough choices: either accept it for what it is and move on, continue doing ‘it’ and ‘creating’ and ‘performing’ but just cos you LOVE it OR, which is perhaps more the case for me, because for whatever the reason you’re compelled to do it. Against rhyme or reason I still feel impelled to get in front of an audience and sing a song or tell a joke or - luckily for me - do both. I think I’ll be doing that till the bitter end.

But, I can’t lie, there is a grieving process, learning to accept that just cos you had that dream and no matter how many people told you it was going to happen, chances are it won’t, at least, not in the ‘selling out Wembley and buying a mansion and making all the people at your school realise you were the coolest after all.’ Kinda way.

So - how are you? Still there? I hope so, thanx for joining me on this sojourn into my past. So where does that leave us? Well, dear reader, it leaves us where we began, with the question: am I a failure? And, to be 100% honest I don’t know. My goal was, essentially, to make a living as a musician. And that’s exactly what I do. I teach music (I even teach drums to the daughter of one of the first other people mentioned in this blog, Scott) as ‘the day job’ and I can’t lie I do love my job. I get to jam AC/DC and teach kids stick tricks all day and the pay is pretty good; for contrast I cleaned excreta off a wall for minimum wage once. Not only that I run 2 Open Mic Nights, do at least 3 or 4 comedy gigs a month (only last weekend I did 4 in one weekend) and rent a recording studio where I produce and record my own projects and projects of people I care about. And, somehow I get by and make it work.

Not only that I have a BEAUTIFUL (saying that mainly cos he looks like me) son who I adore and I’m lucky enough to be engaged to his beautiful and wonderful mother and we share a lovely home. Also my incredible mum is still here and for that I thank the stars daily. Ok, I’m allowing myself another emoji 💕

So is that ‘success’? I mean I’ve not sold out Wembley (…yet…curse you Hope - I should have read Pandora’s Box in more detail!!!) so is that failing? Or is it just that success, over time, looks different and, really, being happy and content is perhaps the biggest success of all.

Or is it all relative - I mean compared to the aforementioned Messrs Sheeran, Lee and Carr, I guess I have ‘failed’. Hmm, answers to these questions, it seems, are as difficult to answer as that dance off at Top Of the Pops was to win.

I think I’ll finish this blog reiterating the words from my erstwhile bandmate, Jon Tufnell (who is still as talented and handsome as ever and is in the band Saint Agnes who are DEFINITELY worth checking out!) ‘“Before we got the deal we were still serious about the band, but we also had to work shitty jobs and were making music as a hobby. Now we have the opportunity to make it our lives, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

And, I guess, when all is said and done, that is what I’ve done: made music (and creating and performing) my life. So, in that sense, perhaps that is success.

Still an ugly fat stammering lazy eyed f**k, though. *🤷‍♂️ #winning

*third emoji **😫
**fourth