When The Music Starts To Play I Want To Be Around

I taught in a High School in North Blackpool for twenty five years. By the time I regenerated- that’s retired to you- my kids were big into Dr Who and said “Daddy you haven’t retired. You’ve regenerated" and that was good enough for me. Regenerated. Wow! And indeed I have. I’ve been regenerated- that’s stopped working to you- fifteen years now. During that time I‘ve set out to do all the things I’ve been saving for years to do. Like writing for the Dead Good Blog for instance.

During those twenty five years I rose to the dizzy heights of senior management. And boy was it dizzy when I looked at those around me and listened to what they had to say about education. I also hobnobbed with the school governors when I was up there in that rarefied atmosphere, rather short of oxygen. One day I was chatting to the chairperson of said governors. Well you do don’t you, chat to them so that they know that you’re there running yourself ragged to make his school successful while he basks in glory at the top of the mountain. Wanting something to chatter about, it transpired we that were both “into” music. He was lamenting the fact that one of his favourite albums he couldn’t find on CD. This was “Twice around the Houses” by Jonathan Kelly. Not that I am a bottom polisher, but I told him that I had got said LP but not on CD. I wasn’t even sure that it was on CD then or even now. I stand to be corrected, of course, because somebody reading this is looking that up right now, I bet.

Then he suddenly invited my wife and myself to his house for a “Desert Island Discs” soiree. So when your boss invites you and your wife to his “Chair of Governor’s House", you jump up, fall in and say, of course, “Oh Yes Please!” Don’t you?

I had readily agreed to accept his kind offer. I said I was a bottom polisher. However the most frightening thing that I had to do was to tell my wife that of which I had committed her to. I knew she would hate it. But you can’t go to soirees at the boss’s house without your wife can you? It would be the height of bad manners and both social and professional suicide and I knew that she would push me off the mountain, leaving me to retire, regenerate or whatever I wanted to do. All without oxygen and no tea or anything else for a year. However after goodness knows of how many pretty pleases and promises to take her everywhere she ever wanted to go for the next fifty years or something like that, the time arrived several weeks after the invitation to go. I forget to slip in that there would be another couple there, the lady of which was also a school governor and her partner who was consulate doctor. So hey this was serious stuff.

Still the next thing to do was draw up my list of Desert Island Discs. Thankfully we only needed to pick eight, just like the BBC programme, since that would give us an epic twenty four discs to listen to and discuss anyway. 

So where to begin? I had been buying records since I was twelve in 1963. The first of which was “Blue Bayou” by Roy Orbison. It will stagger you if I tell you I have been buying, purloining, borrowing, and copying records ever since. And guess what, just like T.S. Eliot measured out his life in coffee spoons, I have measured out my life in records. I have still got them all, every single one. Sad bastard. And I can remember where, why and when I got my grubby little mitts on each one. Well actually my mitts would need to be clean wouldn’t they? I mean, come on, I’m not irresponsible.

Anyway after pondering, sweating, and sleepless nights passing, I made, at least, I wouldn’t like to say how many lists and that was, in fact, the most enjoyable thing of the whole lot because I love music. Then after a lifetime of decision and selection- right word there because my collection –rather a grand word- went back to a time I was twelve as I said. It was indeed a lifetime’s journey. I was famous for talking about music none stop. A friend of mine once said, “You’re nobody until Bill Allison has been to your house and looked over your records”. Right on! So I eventually made the CD with my selection. More of that later.

The evening approached. Like what do you wear when you go to your boss’s house, and spend an evening with him and his wife and other guests from the rarefied mountain top! ”Just be yourself”, my wife said. So I went with my jeans and trainers on. That vogue mode of mine had got me to most other places I had been to. It wouldn’t get me into Buck House or the Posh Friday Night Pubs in Poulton le Fylde. Nevertheless it was more than good enough for this night. Slick Shit Ho!

My wife looked gorgeous as she always did. I have to say it at this point she doesn’t really like music. It all sounds the same to her. Especially the music I am addicted to. Somewhere in “The Merchant of Venice”, it says that you shouldn’t trust anyone who doesn’t like music. It’s a good job that we really do love each other. I always turn the music off when she comes home.

So we drive up. Knock and are invited in. Offered sherry. Escorted into- what the Estate Agents call- a reception room. Introduced to our fellow castaways and disc jockeys ready for the Grand National of our lives. The guidelines are laid out; the male of each couple will play their selection and talk about that particular selection and why they have chosen it and what it means to them. Very much like the beloved BBC Radio programme of the same name. “Desert Island Discs”. We didn’t get round to the Bible, Shakespeare, a third book of choice or a luxury item. Maybe next time. Shame!

Anyway while we savour our sherry and limber up, here’s an hors d’oeuvres

Roy Plomley, originator and first host of Desert Island Discs

Out of interest, over 2500 episodes of Desert Island Discs have been broadcast since 1942 and they are all archived on the BBC Radio 4 site and all are available as podcasts. Pick as you please from them all above- because down here we’ve got the green light and we’re off. I was first up because well as you can guess my surname has always been the blight of my life. Allison. First for everything except the things that matter. No - just kidding. It’s always good to be first but anyway I can’t do much about that now, I suppose, can I?

Suddenly this turns serious as I talk to you about my selection as to how and why. I am a very dedicated muso. I hope that you have gathered that by now. If not you will have gathered it by the end of the article. You have to remember that the Desert Island Discs evening I am describing took place some years ago and that my selection may have changed after all these years. There was a criteria for my selection. It traced out different aspects of my life. As I said measured out, not in coffee spoons but music. But there was a method and madness in each piece of music. Let me unroll that for you now if I may. What follows is a version of what I said at the time. There was so much more to say, there always is, but time was of the essence. Are you listening comfortable? So here goes…

1 “Surf City” - Jan and Dean
First up was a 1963 hit by Jan and Dean written by Brian Wilson and Jan Berry. I remember listening to this on Radio Luxemburg, fading in and out, on my tiny transistor tucked under my sheets at home in my little box room at the top of the stairs with my mum snoring in the next room. It was all there, Californian sunshine set to high harmonies - another world, far from grimy Bolton. The chorus ran "two girls for every boy". That’ll do for me.

2 “That Would Be Something” - Paul McCartney
The Beatles changed everything. They opened the garden gate to somewhere else. Every boy in the world had a cheap guitar and a Beatle wig and thought they were going to make it. Most didn’t. But The Beatles did. However I didn’t want to play some Yeah Yeah Yeah stuff because by 1971 it had fallen apart. Everything put together falls apart. Out of the end, amongst other things though came Paul McCartney’s first solo- really solo, he played everything on it- album- 'McCartney'. It was laughed at and ridiculed at the time. But as far as I am concerned it has more then stood the test of time with some great songs. “That Would Be Something” – the whole album was more than just something. Much more.

3 “Waterloo Sunset” - The Kinks
One of the most wonderful sets of opening chords you could imagine. Instantly recognisable, everybody recognises it and sings along as the vocals start. It was one of the first songs where Ray Davies staked a claim to be a poet in a well-established English tradition and has walked that road ever since. As long as I gazed on Waterloo Sunset I was in Paradise. Say no more.

4 “Mr Tambourine Man” - The Byrds
If the Beatles opened the garden gate, Bob Dylan kicked down the front door. Sitting listening to Bob on such a joyous evening approaching midnight might not have been the best thing to do in such an esteemed gathering, so The Byrds were the next best. Another great opening. Dylan said that it was groovy because you could dance to it. He was impressed that somebody had made his music danceable to. Let’s twist again like we did last summer.

my younger self (left) and Dylanologist John Bauldie

5 “Tinker’s Blues” - Bert Jansch
“Tinker’s Blues” is a short guitar instrumental from guitar maestro Bert Jansch from his second album 'It Don’t Bother Me'. I wanted to show how important so called folk music and so called Folk Clubs were to me in the late sixties. 'Bert Jansch and John Renbourn', an album of acoustic guitar instrumentals they play together is one of my all-time favourite records- then and now. Folk Clubs were ancestors of online dating. A Famous Clancy Brothers Folk Song went “The boys won’t leave the girls alone.” Too right.

6 “Spanish Radio” - Jimmy Webb
This is a song from Jimmy Webb’s wonderful 'Suspending Disbelief' album. I guess that's what music does at its best, asks you to suspend disbelief. Well come on now-Someone left the cake out in the rain. How much suspense do you have to disbelief to get that one? Macarthur’s Park is melting in the dark. Really? Webb said if The Beatles could write about newspaper taxis and glass onions why not melting parks? Webb has written some of the most intelligent and romantic songs – if that is not a contradiction in terms- of the late twentieth century. “Wichita Lineman”, “Galveston” “Up, up and away” and plenty, plenty more. Everyone should be a Jimmy Webb fan. More cake anyone?

7 “Tom and Alexi” - Mike Heron
“When the Music starts to play I want to be around”, the title of this piece, is the opening track of the first Incredible String Band’s self-titled 1966 album. Mike Heron was the co-partner of Robin Williamson, the front men of this hippy dippy band for nearly ten years, splitting up in 1974. They were underground favourites and I fancied myself as a bit troglodyte then. Still do!

Heron should have been a superstar in his own right if all things were equal. But, of course, they never were. “Tom and Alexi” came from a solo album. It’s a song about a Russian and an American astronaut sharing a space ship pazzing around the Earth. Far from being troglodytes!

There was a method in madness picking this song. All joking apart, music can be and often is a very serious part of your life. Most of the time that’s why you listen to it. At the time I heard this song I was involved in wrangling over contact for my daughter. There’s a line in the song as these astronauts look down on the Earth –"It’s hard to be geopolitical from up here”. They had seemingly put their own vested interests and differences down on Earth to one side whilst looking down on her beauty. At the time I just wished my ex-wife and I could have done that.

8 “ The Girl from Ipanema” - Astrid Gilberto
Last but not least some Bossa Nova. Some romance on Brazilian beaches. But I guess we go back to where we started from. Two girls for every boy. Well in this case one. A sister song to “Pretty Flamingo". Springsteen does a great live version of that. Check it out.

So there it is. Eight songs peppered and flavoured with lots of others to boot. All done.

That was it. Ordeal over. I kept my job but got told off for taking too much food from the buffet. I can’t remember any of the sixteen tracks the others played. Still music was always like that. You loved yours, couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t like it and you couldn’t understand why they listened to the crap that they did. On the way home my wife reminded me of the title of a Richard Thompson song. "Never Again".

Thanks for reading. Bill Allison