There wasn't a lot of music in my house when I was growing up. My Dad played the Jazz coronet (and was apparently well into his jazz, even frequenting some of the hipper jazz clubs in Leeds in the 60s) but gave it all up in favour of folk music. My Mum had been a teeny-bopper, as I believe the term was, in the 60's, had seen The Beatles play at Yeadon Town Hall, ironed her hair under brown paper to get that essential 60's look and wanted to kill Jane Asher not for her cakes but for her romantic entanglement with Paul. However, she didn't bring that love of music with her into the 80's, or at least not her record collection anyway, so as a consequence there wasn't a huge collection of music for me to listen to when I was a nipper.
There were two records that I remember being obsessed with to the point of knowing all the words. One was The Red Album by the Beatles - yellowing sleeve held together with sellotape, and a shiny new copy of Staus Quo's greatest hits - I think it was called 12 Gold Bars or something like that.
Imagine if I had chosen to follow the Quo, instead of The Beatles. Would I have grown up hating good music? The answer is probably no, I would have developed taste elsewhere, but the point remains, I could have grown up regarding music as background, a disposable product to form only a passing attachment to, rather than a thing that surrounded and shaped my life, provided soundtrack and accompaniment. Sounds rather grand and pompous doesn't it? But when I ask people what kind of music they like, if they don't know, cant list their top 27 albums, cant tell you the first, best and latest gig they attended, then I view them as a person to be regarded with deep suspicion.
So The Beatles. The Red Album - or properly 1962-1966 - was the first music I fell properly in love with, when Paul sang about 'All the lonely people' on Eleanor Rigby, I got the first glimpses of how music could convey emotion, but my favourite song on the album was Nowhere Man. Possibly because my love of The Red Album went hand-in-hand with my love of The Yellow Submarine film, which I watched over and over until the VHS tape almost wore through. I still, however, couldn't quite get my head around the fact that the same band could write Yellow Submarine AND Only A Northern Song. My tiny brain wasn't quite ready yet for such eclectic musical diversity...
Also, when we were at Uni, we had a Fantasy Beatles Covers Album idea. This song would have been covered by The Pixies. Imagine how cool it could have been with Kim singing the lead and Black Francis on harmonies....
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