Noise Damage E-Book

James Kennedy

• Herausgeber: Eye Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

'Harrowing, funny and 100% true' Ginger Wildheart The tale that follows is not another clichéd collection of rock'n'roll debaucheries (sorry) nor is it another tired fable of triumph over adversity (you're welcome). It's the story of a half-deaf kid from a tiny, remote village in South Wales who was hailed as a genius by the UK's biggest radio station and headhunted by major record labels, only for the music industry to collapse. It crashed hard, taking with it an entire generation of talented artists who would never now get their shot. CNN called it 'music's lost decade'. Along the way, there are goodies, baddies, gun-toting label execs, life-saving surgeons, therapy, true love, loyalty, hope, breakdowns, suicidal managers, betrayal, drummers and way too many hangovers. James Kennedy shows that the best lessons are to be learned from good losers. It really is all about the journey. Part memoir, part exposé of the music world's murky underbelly, Noise Damage is emotional, painfully honest, funny, informative and ridiculous. It's also a celebration of the life-changing magic of music.

Leseprobe

Published in 2020

by Lightning Books Ltd

Imprint of EyeStorm Media

312 Uxbridge Road

Rickmansworth

Hertfordshire

WD3 8YL

www.lightning-books.com

Copyright © James Kennedy 2020

Cover by Nell Wood

Cover photo © Gorka Rodrigo, www.facebook.com/GorkaPhotography

Author photo © Tom Damsell, www.facebook.com/fragmentimagery

The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

ISBN: 9781785632136

For Mum and Dad

CONTENTS

INTRO: SOUNDCHECK

CHAPTER 1: HASH AND BEANS

CHAPTER 2: HEROES WALK AMONG US

CHAPTER 3: A BETTER KIND OF EDUCATION

CHAPTER 4: EVIDENTLY LEAFY TOWN

CHAPTER 5: MADE IN CHINA

CHAPTER 6: WHY DO WE DO IT?

CHAPTER 7: COLLATERAL DAMAGE

CHAPTER 8: BOOM AND BUST

CHAPTER 9: BLUE-RINSE BINGO BRIGADE

CHAPTER 10: SECRETS OF MY THERAPY

CHAPTER 11: YEAR ZERO

CHAPTER 12: BARE-ASS NIGHT TERRORS

CHAPTER 13: ARE WE THERE YET!?

CHAPTER 14: MYSTERIOUS WAYS INDEED

CHAPTER 15: ‘IT’S OK, MAN’

CHAPTER 16: ADVENTURES IN ANTHROPOLOGY

CHAPTER 17: LEGO RECORDS

CHAPTER 18: KNOW YOUR ENEMY

CHAPTER 19: FEAR AND LOATHING

CHAPTER 20: SORRY, LILLE

CHAPTER 21: METAMORPHOSIS

CHAPTER 22: HOME

CHAPTER 23: BY SHOWING THE DARK, MAY I GIVE YOU THE LIGHT?

CHAPTER 24: ENCORE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRO

SOUNDCHECK

I know what you’re thinking. ‘Wow, another music book that opens with a hangover scene. Yawn.’ But hear me out, this is not that story. And as far as hangovers go, it was a good one…

With my brain begrudgingly getting its shit together, my first visual clue was the ceiling – just two feet above me and smeared in red clay and boot prints. To my immediate left, the dashboard of our poor, rented transit van was also entirely smothered in clay, as if it had been appropriated by a tribe of hairy, grunting Neanderthals – which it had. My last memory was of us innocently having ‘a few quiet ones’.

Full terrain scan. OK, so I slept in the front again. Gear stick in my back, I’m fully clothed (sunglasses and boots still on) and the entire cabin, it seems, is daubed in sticky, wet clay. Still, my cramped boudoir of despair and I have survived each other for another night. There’s no sign of movement from the back – the other beasts have yet to rise – so it’s time to figure out what the actual fuck is going on and where the actual fuck I am. I’ve taken to gaffer-taping used towels and dirty t-shirts over the windows as curtains, and now it’s time to peel them back and face the fear. Today is going to hurt.

I emerge from my mobile cave, recoiling from the morning sunlight like a wilting vampire, to see the entire contents of the van’s cabin strewn all over the road. CDs, clothes, empty beer cans, maps… Ah, now I remember – France! We’re in France! But the problem with living out of a van is that you have to do everything together. I can’t explore the town and leave the other guys without a key, nor can I lock them in. And under no circumstances can I wake them up. So, I wait.

It looks nice here. The sun is shining. It’s green and idyllic. And there’s the boat we’re playing on tonight! As to what happenedlast night, I’m still drawing a blank. Another one of my increasingly standard blackouts, although I have that familiar and uncomfortable feeling that it probably included making a complete wanker of myself and offending half of Lille. Nice people walking their dogs are now crossing the road to avoid the clay-covered madman in his rubbish-tip playground, but I’m past caring. To say this tour had been a tough one would be the piss-take of the century. It’s been beyond slapstick in its scale of unrelenting, soul-shaking injustice. And that manager of ours? I’m going to fucking kill him when I get back. Oh no, that’s right; he was going to kill himself…

‘I don’t need this right now, mate, OK? I did something stupid and I’m in hospital.’

‘I know, man, but we need the money.’

‘Don’t you hear what I’m saying?! I did something stupid, OK?! And I don’t need this right now!’

I knew he was bullshitting. I felt bad for thinking it but, deep down, I knew. That bloody American band would be on my arse again in a few hours nagging me for their ‘fucking money, bro’, and they cared even less for our ‘suicidal manager’ sob story. I can’t wait till it’s all over. As soon as I leave the stage tonight, I’m heading straight for Calais.

Sucking the warm dregs of someone’s bottle of water that I found in the van foot-well, I hear groaning from the back. They’re up! Bollocks, the moment of truth. The Fear gives me another good, solid yank and I brace myself for yet more stories of my embarrassing drunken puerility. First out of the back – Glyn Bateman on drums.

Glyn was the new guy in the band. Kind, genuine, hilariously gullible, a serious believer in the most outlandish conspiracy theories, one hundred and ten per cent enthusiastic about everything all the time and an absolute animal behind the kit. When Glyn isn’t taking pictures of everything, banging on tables, ranting about aliens, losing his man bag, downing litres of milkshake or ‘spanking skins’ (playing drums) – he’s asleep. And when he sleeps, his body is possessed by the devil.

There are people who snore and there is Glyn. The soundly sleeping drummer has no awareness of his person being used as a channel for Satan of an eve, but anyone who has slept in the same building as him, let alone a van, will testify to the torrent of twisted screams, deranged groaning and tormented wailing that come from the boy as he slumbers. Frustratingly, this also means that he’s way more supercharged than the rest of us every morning, having slept like a little demon baby while the rest of us toss, turn, and cry all night. Hence, I now sleep in the front.

This morning, though, I swear he’s avoiding my eye, talking under his breath and being evasive. Or maybe I’m being paranoid. I ask a leading question.

‘Good night last night, eh?’

‘Uh, yeah, I think. How are you feeling?’

Shit. I knew it.

‘You were pretty upset last night, man,’ said Matt, climbing out of the back of the van and psyching himself up for an Evian shower. You’ve never had an Evian shower? Oh, it’s where you strip down to your pants in a crowded public place and pour freezing cold drinking water over yourself with one hand, while frantically trying to lather up with the other. It’s preferable to showering at many service stations, believe me.

Matt Warr on bass. Where to begin! Not only my best friend and long-time accomplice in all things alcoholic and loud, not only the best musician in the band, who pulverises stages like Godzilla, but one of the most loyal, considerate, and hilarious people you will ever meet. A deeply devout disciple of the Church of Metallica and a practical prankster of professional calibre, Matt’s other Top Trump powers include a seeming inability to get drunk no matter what the poison, an encyclopaedic knowledge of irritating movie one-liners, and being the member of the band most popular with the ladies. He also has the curious knack of making Glyn Bateman believe literally anything he says.

‘You were pretty upset last night, man.’

Of course I was pretty upset. I’ve been pretty upset for years! But last night, the final thread of my final thread snapped. I could guess what had happened easy enough. I’d taken my broken heart, my exhausted reserves of morale, patience, hope and attempts at good leadership; all my bottled up years of anger, disappointment, resentment and frustration; I’d taken all of that – and hit the lovely town of Lille like an emotional Molotov atom bomb desperate to blow. I then got colossally, unashamedly, nastily hammered. After getting kicked out of most late-night bars, I’d crawled ‘home’ and done the transit van equivalent of trashing my hotel room. If Donald Trump were tweeting this, he’d end it with ‘SAD’.

These limp, hopeless displays were becoming too frequent now. I tried so hard to keep it all together, but the last scraps of my human faculties had completely burnt out. I was less than nine stone in weight, an insomniac; I’d been pissed every night for over a decade, I’d cut off my family, ruined a long-term relationship, was being a dick to my band mates, being even worse to myself; I was broke, I hated my life and I regretted the day I ever picked up that fucking guitar. I was angry, bitter, frustrated, and saw my life as one consistently, pointless cringe-able fuck up. This was notthe dream I had been sold.

And yet only a few days ago I was the frontman of a kick-ass rock ‘n’ roll band, jumping around a giant outdoor stage. On a beach. In the peak of summer. By the sea. In Italy!

I know.

Last night’s impotent outburst was just another warm-up, a mere rehearsal for the full-scale meltdown soon to come. It was a long time coming but when it came, it came complete. The stark, crashing demolition of not only my dreams, and my life’s work, but my very sense of self and meaning. Everything I’d overcome, everything I’d achieved; discarded like a carcass.

It was the best thing that ever happened to me.

* * *

What follows is not another clichéd tale of rock ‘n’ roll debauchery (sorry) or of triumph over adversity (you’re welcome) – you’ve heard all of that before. And you already know about ‘the other guys’ – that exalted one per cent who monopolise our airwaves, pages and screens; the guys who make the big bucks with big promo budgets. The guys who’ve been all the way to the top. Nope, this is the untold story about the rest of us. A story of a vast legion of super-talented, hard-working bastards whose masterpieces you will never hear, but who – driven by an unstoppable passion for something, anything – lead lives that are rich, not in pounds but in stories, wisdom, excitement and service. It’s a story about why you learn better lessons from good losers. Why it really is about the journey. Why failure is your friend. Why motivational self-help is bullshit. Why music is the best, and why, in the end, it’s all rather simple.

Our story takes place during a very specific and unique period in the music industry’s history; a period that affected the lives of an entire generation of artists, and that CNN called ‘music’s lost decade’. So, make your way across that sticky venue floor, come hang backstage and let me show you the real music industry. We’ll meet goodies and baddies (mostly baddies), heroes and villains (OK, just villains), gun-toting label execs, suicidal managers, life-saving surgeons, drug-fried PR guys, con artists, models, therapists, hopeless romantics and drummers (I’ll explain). There may also be heartbreak, brotherhood, love, and betrayal – and definitely way too many hangovers.

We may even learn some things.

CHAPTER 1

HASH AND BEANS

Right, then. Who the hell am I, anyway?

I guess it makes sense to start…well, at the start. But if you’re like me, you find being dragged through some stranger’s treasured childhood memories for several chapters a horrific way to kick off a book, and speed-read through to the juicier stuff. So, I promise to make this easy on both of us and rattle through it.

I was born on 15 March, 1980, at the Heath Hospital in Cardiff, South Wales, UK – the Land of Song, Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey and male voice choirs. I know, I know, you thought I was younger! The era following this momentous accident was one of long red-brick terraces, TVs that were bigger than the car but only had four channels, anti-Thatcherism, cassette tapes, football on asphalt, smoking in church, miners’ strikes, street parties, tragic clothing and punishable, ozone-destroying hairstyles. To be honest, my childhood was pretty cool – huge apologies for the lack of tales about my ‘traumatic child abuse’ and ‘drug-addled, vacant parents’ etc. I’m gutted, too; selfish bloody parents ruining a good story. I have an older sister and a younger brother, with me planted squarely in the middle, seven years either side. My folks were young, working-class parents and when I was one year old their flat burned down, so we moved from Cardiff to Barry Docks, where we stayed until I was eight.

We moved house a good few times around Barry, but all of my memories stem from the last house we lived in on George Street. It was a regular terraced house at the top of a really steep street, which made it perfect for playing that popular Eighties kids’ game, ‘Skateboard Down The Hill as Fast as You Can Without Getting Killed by Traffic’. It was here where, one evening, startled by the forced entry of the local police while cooking beans for our tea, my mum quickly threw the weed they’d come to catch her with into the pan. Only, she was too late, and they’d seen her do it. This earned her her first front-page feature in the local newspaper, under the classic headline: ‘Hash and Beans for Children’s Tea’. We were so proud.

There was a ‘park’ down the side lane called The Patch. The Patch was unlike any park I have ever seen, in that it was made exclusively of concrete, steel, broken glass and dog shit. Many joyful afternoons were spent there, running from bullies, collecting injuries and mud-bombing the ginger kid’s house. It was here I earned my first nickname. I had no idea what it meant and no idea where it came from, but the older boys gave it to me, and I owned it with pride. From then on, I would knock for my mates to come out, rocking my Beatles bowl haircut and introduce myself politely to their parents…as ‘Jock Strap’.

‘Hello, Mrs Jones, I’m Jock Strap. Can Steven come out to play with me?’

I was always drawn to things of a creative and solitary nature, even in the early years. I loved drawing and creating my own comic books, writing stories, singing, dancing, and I was addicted to Lego. We had this old wooden box filled with random odds and ends of Lego parts, and I would build my own toys from them – my pièce de résistance was building the big red truck from the Mask cartoons (another addiction), complete with moving parts. Looking back, I realise that I’ve been doing something similar my entire life: building for myself the things I didn’t have. I used to wear my pants on top of my trousers, clip a bathroom towel around my neck with a wooden peg and patrol the streets as a mini, multicoloured Superman – to the distress of my long-suffering teenage sister, who at that time was very much into boys, perms, and Madonna.

There was always good music playing around the house and I am thankful for having cultured, lefty, weed-smoking atheists for parents, continually blasting Pink Floyd, Zappa, Kate Bush and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Books were everywhere in our house, too; my mother reads voraciously, and she encouraged me from a young age to do the same. And I mean the heavy-duty stuff – Orwell, Huxley, Blake, Solzhenitsyn, Pilger. Neither of my parents had any qualifications or a professional job, but both were – and are – sharply intelligent, resourceful and resilient people, who did the absolute best they could as young parents on a low income to provide for their family.

We were far from middle class, but we always had food on the table, shoes on our feet, and lots of fun. My dad (Aitch, real name Howard) was a bit of a Del Boy: he always had a new ‘scheme – I mean, job’, a new car, a new guy-who-knew-a-guy, and both of my parents had a curious ability to master a wide variety of trades when needed; plastering, building, carpentry, plumbing, car repair, you name it. My mum (Sal, real name Sara) had avoiding bailiffs down to an art form; even Ibelieved the house was empty as we hid behind the sofa. My dad could turn into a qualified legal authority every time he got fined for anything – and always seemed to get off. Somehow, some way, we always got by.

Don’t get me wrong. We were definitely The Simpsons, not The Waltons. Despite the romantic portrayals of working-class life in our culture, there is no glory in being poor. It’s hard. My parents would have these volcanic arguments, usually about money, and I’d lie in bed crying under the quilt, trying to block out the din of desperate screaming, slamming and breaking of things coming from downstairs. I remember an all-consuming feeling of confusion, guilt, and powerlessness. Whose side should I take? Why can’t Ido anything to help them both out? How can I ask for things for school without adding to the stress?

Now I’m older, I can see it for what it was: two young parents, doing their best but drowning under the pressure, with no instruction manual and ‘not a penny to scratch their arse with’, as my mum says. But at the time, it was my first paralysing realisation that the world outside could be unfair, and not rigged in the favour of good people or those in need. It was the planting of the seed that I would one day, by whatever means necessary, save my family from this grind and be able to look after us all. That I should not be a liability and that instead of asking for things, I should help. That seed would yield a monster.

However, it was time for the reign of Jock Strap the Invincible to end on the mean streets of Barry, as we once again relocated our eccentric caravan of characters, and this time to somewhere very different…

I’ve no idea where they found this place, but it was a long way from Barry. Not, as I later came to understand, in terms of distance (only thirty-five miles) but in its essence. After eight years of living in the throbbing, graffitied heart of a congested, industrial, urban city, we moved to somewhere called Little Mill, and Little bloody Mill is in the middle of bloody nowhere.

Constructed entirely from fields, it had no post office, no school, no clubs, and a grand total of zero shops. ZERO.

It had a pub.

And. That. Was. All.

I have often wondered whether my dad moved us all out there to be as hidden as possible from someone connected to one of his many ‘schemes – I mean, jobs’. You never knew with him. Anyway, it turns out that moving out of Barry at that time was a smart move.

Looking back, living in leafy Little Mill sent my life in a direction it would not have gone had we stayed in the gritty city. Our new house was one of ten houses that were joined in a semi-circle at the top of a mile-long lane from the main village. Only one of the families there had someone near my age, and recreation now involved taunting cows, roaming the woods, and not getting killed on the railway line that ran through our garden. The house was part of an old, converted farmhouse with odd, higgledy-piggledy-shaped rooms; some small and pokey, and some with ceilings ten metres high. It had log fires – even the kitchen oven was powered by one – and unlike the little concrete slab of a garden we had in Barry, the garden here was a field in its own right, although it was not connected to the house; it was opposite, across the street. The place had character, for sure.

From the tall, imposing red-brick strictness of Barry’s Jenner Park Primary School, I was now the new kid at a charming little bungalow called Goytre Fawr Primary School, in the quaint neighbouring village of Goytre. In the class photo taken that year, as all the other kids stand proudly sporting their school uniform, I can be seen right up front, sitting on the floor, and wearing jeans. So, to answer your question; yes, I have always been this cool.

Being the new kid in town is weird, especially when you’re a city boy randomly plonked into remote, alien, pastoral land. The kids there enjoyed activities such as ‘rabbiting’ (you know, butchering bunnies and pulling their guts out by hand) and setting fire to woodland – oh, and there was this one kid, let’s call him Bernie, whose favourite game was to kick the living shit out of everyone. His welcome gift to me was to throw me in front of a moving car. This new world was gonna take some getting used to.

I’ve come to realise, though, that kids have an unrivalled ability to adapt. Kids just get on with it; it’s adults who are the problem. Kids are also fickle. It wasn’t long before my old friends were long forgotten and I had a new crew, a new, larger, greener ‘patch’ and a new normality had taken root. We were far away from any extended family, so it was mostly just the five of us – and that was fine. For a kid, country life was actually cool! I’d go exploring in the woods, discovering rivers, and climbing old bridges. One day, I was kicking a football around in the garden when the whole of the sky suddenly went blood red – spontaneously, and as far as the eye could see. By the time I’d run across the street into the house to tell my mum, it had gone back to normal again. Over the years this happened many times, and I later learned that it was caused by a nearby arms factory that did tests in the area.

Soon, it was my ninth birthday, and life changed forever.

* * *

It wasn’t the third shot of Jack from the stripper’s bosom that did it but… I’m joking, this was way better. Dad went out and rummaged through the boot of whatever car he had that week, and re-emerged in the living room, where I was waiting eagerly for my birthday bounty. Except he was carrying a very unexpected item. Now, I can’t remember what I’d wanted for my birthday but more than likely it would have been whatever sweatshop-made, unethically marketed and grossly overpriced piece of plastic evil was being bashed into my defenceless eight-year-old brain through the TV at the time. So, I was thrown a curious curve-ball when my Dad handed me…a guitar.

It was one of those little Spanish ones. I’d never played a guitar and as far as I can remember, hadn’t expressed any desire to do so. Hmmm, interesting. I wasn’t sure where this was going but I was raised to be polite, so I humoured him and feigned intrigue. It turned out that along with his closet legal/ plastering/ plumbing/ building/ car repair/ quantum physics/ leper-healing talents, my dad could play a bit of guitar, too! I can’t remember any of my other childhood birthdays except this one, and this moment is crystallised fondly in my mind. My dad took this thing – which as it turned out, he’d nicked from somewhere in a desperate effort to get through yet another bloody kid’s birthday – and with two fingers made it go:

‘Doo do dooo do doo do dooo do.’

It was the blues. I was mesmerised. Transfixed. Curious. My little nine-year-old pupils fully dilated. How is he doing that?! Two fingers, two strings, two frets. Hell, I can do that! Let me at it, let me at it! Aitch patiently showed me the ropes and I picked it up almost instantly. In the true, fickle nature of kids, a guitar was now all I’dever wanted. I played that damn riff over and over (and over), maybe a thousand times, and the fact that I could actually dosomething with this thing made me feel like I’d just discovered a buried superpower. Like I’d just discovered fire from rubbing sticks. If my dad hadn’t shown me that riff, and if I hadn’t been able to pick it up right away, that guitar would have been in a charity shop by the summer and the rest of the ensuing Greek tragedy would never have happened, so, thanks, Dad…I think.

I have often wondered what might have become of me had I not chosen the path I did after this pivotal, obsession-triggering juncture – perhaps I would have got a ‘proper job’ or had an actual career doing ‘something useful’. But sometimes the poison chooses you, and the distinction between blessing and curse is debatable. Either way, it was a magical, life-changing moment – and what were those little frets at thetop for?! I can’t remember much else about that year other than the relentless, callous water torture of ‘Doo do dooo do’ all day and all night. My poor family.

While I’d always loved music and it had been a constant presence in our house, supplying a soundtrack to the dysfunctional, improvised theatre of low-income life, the idea of making music had never occurred to me. Having a natural talent for it was a rare gift; something I wouldn’t come to understand or appreciate until many years later. For over a decade, I was blissfully unaware that many people would give their right arm to be able to play an instrument – although that probably wouldn’t help their cause.

I have never fared well with formal teaching and I’m self-taught in everything I do. I lasted a respectable total of one guitar lesson in school before deciding that I knew better. Fortunately, there was a guy in the village called Sid. And Sid could play. Sid was your archetypal rock guitarist: unemployed, stoned, long hair, devoted worshipper of Hendrix – and he had a prosthetic leg. He’d agreed with my parents to show me some stuff, so off I’d trot down the long lane to the village, little Spanish guitar in hand, to sit in Sid’s smoky living room and watch this guy do things with a guitar I’d never dreamed imaginable. He had a ‘whammy bar’. He was bending the strings, wobbling his fingers back and forth, hitting the fretboard with his otherhand – and he was doing it all with his eyes closed, his head waving around and silently mouthing something with every note, which I just assumed was him channelling the spirit of Jimi. I wanted in.

Sid wasn’t a teacher and didn’t know how to share his mystical secrets, but he was totally cool with having this mop-topped, woolly jumper-wearing, polite little nine-year-old sit and watch him do his thing. I would just sit there, silently studying his every move as his fingers danced across the fretboard, eagerly making mental video tapes of the shapes and movements which I would try and replicate later. Basically, I learned by interpreting what I thought I saw, rather than by being formally shown anything.

After a few sessions, Sid obviously thought I was ready for the big one. He let me borrow a VHS tape with some guys on there called Joe Satriani and Steve Vai. Those who know will know what that means. Another crystallised memory: Sid’s two hands outstretched, bearing the grail. A well-worn VHS tape illuminated in a dazzling yellow halo. The clouds parted and a thousand angels sang ‘Highway To Hell’ in perfect chorus. Running home, bagless guitar over shoulder, I breathlessly punched in the tape and sat on the floor about a foot from the screen. I’d never seen or even imagined anything like it could be possible. These guys were aliens. More than merely playing the guitar, these leather-wearing, cool-looking motherfuckers made it squeal, scream, sing and cry. Staring up at these guys, legs crossed, it was as if my spirit had floated upwards to a new dimension of limitless wonder. They had gizmos I’d never seen, operated things with their feet, swaggered around the stage like kings and produced sounds I’d never heard before. Silently and motionlessly staring upwards, my tiny mind had been blown forever. I knew right there that my path in life had been pre-ordained and nothing else mattered any more. God had spoken to me. I was A Guitarist now.

Except there was…well, a bit of a problem.

CHAPTER 2

HEROES WALK AMONG US

‘I think this poor fellow is very unfortunate in having bilateral cholesteatomas. I have explained the nature of the surgery to Mrs Kennedy and I cannot give her any idea as to whether one will be able to restore any functional hearing or not.’

Four days after my tenth birthday, our local doctor received the diagnosis from the hospital specialist. I’d been having this smelly discharge from my ears since the days of Jock Strap the Invincible, but our GP in Barry said it was ‘just something that kids got’. Turns out I had huge tumour-like things growing inside each of my ears, which were rapidly ravaging their way through my hearing apparatus. I don’t recall being that bothered about this news, but my heart breaks in hindsight for my poor parents, told that their ten-year-old son, who had only just discovered an insatiable passion for music, may never hear again. I needed serious surgery and I needed it quick.

‘I AM LISTING HIM TODAY TO COME IN AND HAVE THE RIGHT SIDE DONE FIRST’, said the surgeon’s report in capitals and, indeed, it wasn’t long before I was setting up camp at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport. I was to spend a lot of time at this place over the next few years. My guy there, Mr ITG Evans, was a short, older gentleman whom I remember as: 1) looking like the teacher from Back to the Future and 2) always having a circular mirror thing on his head.

The operations were to be heavy-duty affairs and involved cutting the skin around my ears so that they could be pulled out of the way, giving access to the middle ear, where the offending articles were hiding. I’ve still got the scars. The middle ear is a minuscule cavity, housing three tiny, fragile bones, and if any of them becomes damaged it’s game over, so this was a delicate procedure which required me to be under a general anaesthetic for many hours at a time. Sporting the little half-dress with the arse out the back, I was wheeled to the operating theatre in my mobile bed by two friendly doctors – one Indian and one Scottish – who chatted with me about which beers were my favourite. It’s quite surreal nattering with people from an upside-down perspective, as they race you through a strange building in which you can only see striplights and air vents. I did my best to be polite and do as I was told, but in truth, I was petrified. I can still remember doing the countdown, muffled through my face mask.

Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Zzzzzzzzz.

I can honestly say that I have never felt worse than when waking up after a general anaesthetic – except maybe the time I tried to match drinks with my brother. Disoriented, hungry, hurting and gasping for water, which you aren’t allowed to have. And there is a noxious, rubbery smell which consumes all your senses for at least a day, as if the chemicals are escaping through your every pore. The dehydration was the stuff of nightmares. Again – my poor parents. It must have been unbelievably upsetting, having to sit there and deny their ten-year-old boy water, as I begged, complete with big, thick bandage around my head. Eventually, the nurses would relent and give me a weird pink liquid in a plastic cup. I was supposed to paint it on my lips with a little sponge, but I would try and suck the liquid out of it instead. The memory of that torturing dehydration still makes me shudder to this day.

The first operation was an enormous success, though! I came out the other side with sixty per cent of my hearing still functional, despite the initial fears that I might lose it altogether. What was needed now was much rest and recovery. I had to stay in hospital for quite some time, with a heavy, bulbous bandage around my head, and I couldn’t do much outside of my bed due to a newly acquired lack of balance. Thankfully, as would continue to happen through the rest of my life, I had music and books to save me. It was here, of all places, that I discovered Led Zeppelin and, as if by magic, my woes instantly dissolved. I began dreaming of all the things I was going to play on my guitar once I got outta Shawshank.

There was still my left ear to go, though, and it wasn’t quite so plain sailing this time. The surgery on my left ear went exactly as the first, but after recovery it transpired that the cholesteatoma had come back, so I had to go in again for a third operation. There were complications this time, too, which left me on a life-support device. It was all rather frightening, but I’ll say it again – the biggest victims here have got to be my poor parents. I can’t imagine how they must have felt, having to just wait and helplessly witness all of this. Long story short; I recovered, and this time the damn cholestea-thingamajig was a goner. As before, I came away with sixty per cent hearing in my left ear intact. The only difference was that the double surgery had left me with a loud, windy sound which hissed away constantly, day and night. It’s still there now and it never, ever stops. There is no cure for tinnitus – once you’ve got it, you’ve got it. And it can get worse. Some sufferers have even taken their own life to escape its distracting, sleep-depriving, maddening evil – yet most musicians choose to inflict this lifelong misery upon themselves because wearing earplugs is uncool. My way of coping with it is to consider it ‘normal’ and not something I want to get rid of. As if it’s the perfectly standard background hum of being alive.

However, aside from my new buzzing friend and XL-size ear canals, I came away from the whole ordeal better than we could ever have imagined, and I owe all of it to the absolute genius of ITG Evans and our beloved NHS, without whom I would most certainly have been deaf, or worse.

People who sing, or pretend to be other people, or argue about laws that don’t really exist, or dump corporate waste in rivers; they all enjoy far too much space in our culture. Musicians and actors aren’t saving lives, politicians are often on the make, and many business leaders would be behind bars in a sane society. Who is it that truly does the heavy lifting in society? Who forms the real fabric that holds civilian life together where we need it the most? Are we calling Piers Morgan, Kanye West, or any of the Kardashians when the kids’ room is on fire, when nan needs her treatment or Fido needs the terminal walkies? No, it’s the nurses, firefighters, volunteers, care workers, police, bus drivers, doctors, teachers, trades people, soldiers, ambulance drivers and…you get the picture. All those nameless heroes who every day and night are working stressful jobs under difficult circumstances and usually for way too little pay, security, support or respect.

Somewhere along the line our values seemed to go all squiffy (I blame the Eighties, although it’s worse today) and being grossly wealthy, famous for nothing and airbrushed beyond all human recognition became the new benchmark by which we all became measured. To be ‘normal’ was to have failed. Yet, these are the people we should champion most in our society, and it is to them I have owed my life on several occasions. The NHS in particular is such an important and essential public asset, which every day falls further under the snake-shaped shadow of private interests. All of us have a duty and a responsibility to ensure, at all costs, that we NEVER lose it. I, for one, would certainly not be here were it not for the NHS, Mr Evans and the incredible nurses and staff at the Royal Gwent Hospital – but please don’t hold that against them.

I was so keen to get the hell away from the Royal Gwent and get back to being – by now – a teenager that I never got to thank ITG Evans for saving my life. This calm, reassuring, kind gentleman – utterly world-class at his job – may no longer be with us, and it is a weighty regret of mine that I never tracked him down and thanked him personally. I hope at least to honour his genius by continuing to use these miracle lobes of mine to their fullest potential.

* * *

While all this ‘going deaf’ malarkey was going on, I’d started at high school. Caerleon Comprehensive was almost an hour’s bus ride away from Little Mill. The bus would speed through winding lanes and passing villages until eventually arriving at the historic and painfully picturesque town of Caerleon. From there, there was a further walk through a long fosse encircled by Roman remains before we got to the school. Soon, these handy ancient ruins would be the private venues for first snogs, first smokes and much hiding from class.

All in all, my operations and recovery periods lasted for over two years, with ongoing check-ups for another three, so much of my time at high school was interrupted. Luckily, I was never much of a school kind of guy anyway, and I used the excuse of my oh-so-fragile ears for such Brucie Bonuses as avoiding getting my arse kicked by bullies, getting out of PE class and regularly ‘not hearing’ about the homework. Physical education, I quickly learned, was basically a racket whereby the smaller, weedier kids like me were used as practice cannon fodder for the school rugby team. The first time I stood there clutching a cold oval ball on a colder March morning, as a pack of bloated, salivating hyenas stampeded over me, I learned an important lesson – and it had nothing to do with playing rugby but everything to do with avoiding it.

The downside was that I was down by nearly half of my hearing now and I hadn’t figured out yet how to navigate life at this new, lower volume. I did miss things in class, and when you mishear things (or don’t hear them at all), people don’t assume that you’re hard of hearing, they assume you’re thick, ignorant or arrogant. At the same time, you don’t want to make a special case of yourself, you want to be ‘normal’ and doing things the same was as everyone else is doing them. You don’t want people to have to make special accommodations for you, and you don’t want to make yourself a burden to be around. So, foolishly, instead of acknowledging my new needs, I pretended they weren’t there and battled on through. No hearing aid, no learning aids or special allowances, nothing. Not even a mention of my hearing problems – unless it was to my own heinous advantage.

It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I wasn’t interested in Bunsen burners or maps, I was interested in rock ’n’ roll – and by now, I could play. I’d been teaching myself for a good many years and I was into the proper players like Vai, Petrucci, Satriani and other blokes with funny names. Music at school sucked. I had to play Eastenders on a recorder, for Christ’s sake! I did try and show interest, but Mrs Andrews wasn’t familiar with Reign in Blood. Or Slayer. I stopped going. My disdain for school and teachers reached such depths that I earned my class’s ‘Record for the Shortest Time in Class’ – an accolade that I have possibly made up. It went like this.

Pupil enters classroom.

Mr Scuse: KENNEDY!

Kennedy: Yes, SCUSE?!

Mr Scuse: Right, that’s it, GET OUT!

Pupil exits classroom.

I was always getting busted for, among other things, not wearing the school tie. Once I was almost strangled by a teacher who lifted me from the ground by a tie that I’d magically acquired upon arriving at the headmaster’s office – the place he’d just sent me for refusing to wear said tie in class. There was another guy, who looked and behaved just like the PE teacher from Beavis and Butthead, complete with bursting vein in forehead and military vernacular, but dressed in tweed. Finally snapping at my cocky disinterest, he screamed at me so hard that his voice broke and made a hilarious, whimpering, squeak, which of course I mimicked theatrically right back at him, to a roar of laughter from the class. He fucking lost it; it was like a ‘Nam’ flashback or something. Colonel Tweed began violently torpedoing books at me from behind the cover of his open desktop, with genuine intent of harm. Clawing his way to me, he clutched my needlessly oversized school bag and frantically lobbed it over his head, nearly breaking the neck of the kid behind; a kind of improvised variation on a mic drop. He then grabbed meand threw me through the door into the hallway, where he proceeded to throw me from wall to wall, through another door, and punch me in the chest as I finally landed in the outside world. There was a lot of throwing. My Mum went ape shit. The problem was, on the day she had it out with the headmaster, he took immense pleasure in telling her that I was skiving off school as they spoke. I ran away from home that day.

‘How was school today, love?’ Mum calmly and knowingly enquired through the phone box handset.

‘Yeah, great, mum, I learned loads!’

‘Son. I’m going to ask you one more time. And think about why I might be asking you this.’

Fuck the tweedy, throw-you-around-the-place guy; my mother’s calm, controlled demeanour was ice-cold and terrifying. Might she actually…killme? I sprinted out of that phone box and took to the nearest horizon with more resolve than Forrest Gump on speed. After about an hour of running, it was getting dark, I was getting hungry, and the fields just led to more fields. It was time to face the music. I wish. Time to face a titanic ass-whipping, more like.

I would frequently truant. Either hanging about the hallways or in the woods, drinking with mates. I would raid my parents’ drinks cabinet at night, but not so much that they’d notice. I’d pour just a little of each spirit into a plastic Coke bottle, eventually accumulating half a bottle of a disgusting and lethal cocktail. I was basically drinking methylated spirits. One morning, unable to cope with the prospect of another monotonous day at school, I started swigging from the bottle on the school bus. Literally paralytic in geography, I asked if I could go to the toilet, and never came back. I’d also taken an interest in the little mushrooms that grew around the village and, by the age of fifteen, I was frequently chomping those salty, slimy fungi and lying in the grass, staring skyward as spaceships passed through me. There wasn’t much else to do.

The guitar, though, that was serious business. My parents knew when I was awake because they’d hear the amp switch on. As soon as I got home again, the same. This was waaaay before the internet, free YouTube lessons, music scores and help forums, so I taught myself by studying the finger patterns of mythical legends on grainy video tapes. Play, pause, rewind, repeat. Then I’d go to the magazine shop and take mental photographs of all the wonderful notation inside those unattainably overpriced, glossy scrolls of sexiness, before getting kicked out. Kids today don’t know they’re bloody born, whatever that means.

We had a neighbour who had every Bob Dylan album on vinyl, and I made it my mission to copy each one onto cassette. I designed tape sleeves for them all by hand, complete with track listings and info, and because this was analogue piracy, copying meant having to listen to the entire album as you stole it. Then I’d set my alarm so that I could get up in the middle of the night and record (on more clunky VHS bricks) whatever late-night music festivals were on TV, and I’d make compilations of my favourite music videos, intercut with random snippets of whatever tragic Eighties movie I’d recorded over. I guess it was my teenage version of drawing comics and Lego building – the perfect passion for a guy who liked to do his own thing, by himself. I was a ravenous sponge for anything and everything that made a sound. I didn’t care for genre, fashion, or being cool, I wanted to hear ALL of it.