SONGS AND SCRIPTS AND DUNKING BISCUITS

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I’ve written bits and pieces on BBC Radio 2, 4 and 5 comedy shows, worked in the script team for two series of Channel 4’s comedy-drama ‘Shameless’ and am currently working with The Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool as part of their script development programme. I am also a songwriter with songs on all major platforms.

ELTON AND THE FIRST CONCERT COVERING FIRST LOSS

Today I saw that Elton John has just turned 77.

Wow.

Elton was the first live act I ever saw, at the Liverpool Empire theatre on the 4th May 1976 on the ‘Louder Than Concorde But Not Quite As Pretty’ tour that was essentially the tour to support the Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy album from 1975. He had not long turned 29!

Elton John performs, 1976. Getty Images

To obtain a ticket I queued for seven hours around the Liverpool Empire a couple of months before. I remember telling my mother that I was going to try and get a ticket. At the time she was ill in bed, with a bad cough and an ache in her lower back. She was just unwell.

Only she wasn’t just unwell, but we didn’t know that at the time. In between queuing for the ticket and the concert coming around my mother has passed away from lung cancer.

Now this seems searingly poignant. And of course, it is.

But on the night of the concert all I can recall is excitement. The sheer thrill of my first concert seeing my rock superstar hero. And on that same night my football team were playing away at Wolverhampton Wanderers, knowing a win would make them English Champions. I recall Elton standing on his piano in the middle of a song holding up a board with the score. Liverpool had won 3-1. I cheered even louder than I was already cheering during the show.

I even remember the jacket I was wearing, a waist length black zipped, lightly corduroyed jacket with a short collar.

But I don’t remember how I felt that night about losing my mother just three week’s before, a seismic event in my life that has had reverberations every day since. How odd that is.

I remember the pain of it, the tears, telling my grief-shattered father during the funeral that she was no longer in pain.

Yet here I was less than a month later ecstatic.

She had known about this concert, she was part of the build-up, yet now she was gone completely from it. But I was 17. Part of what had happened I had not enough life experience or maturity to absorb and process.

Yet isn’t that how she would have wanted it? She gave me life, she help keep me safe for the first seventeen years of it and now here I was so soon afterwards living that life, embracing it, celebrating it.

I hope so.

Happy Birthday Elton, and thank-you. Thank-you so very much.     

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7 responses to “ELTON AND THE FIRST CONCERT COVERING FIRST LOSS”

  1. Clive Avatar
    Clive

    Definitely a case of mixed memories for you. Losing your mum at 17 must have been hard – I can’t begin to imagine how I’d have coped if that had been me.

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. Paul Ariss Avatar
      Paul Ariss

      Thank-you Clive. Obviously the gig was so exciting for me that night, and a welcome distraction. But whereas now I would see the tragic irony of talking to her about buying the ticket (I remember how pleased she was for me) and not being there just a few weeks later when it came around, I don’t know whether that struck me at the time. Not sure if it really matters. Everything was so raw, not sure how we process things at that age.

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      1. Clive Avatar
        Clive

        I’m not sure that I ever could process something like that, to be honest. I guess we are resilient when we are young, and that helps us get through tragedies.

        Liked by 1 person

  2. Hugh W. Roberts Avatar
    Hugh W. Roberts

    I’ve seen Elton John in concert several times and loved all his shows. He’s a real showman. Knows how to put on a great entertainment.

    And isn’t it strange how certain events in our lives act like beacons. They continue to shine right through the rest of our lives as a reminder of what happened, whereas other parts of our lives can be lost for good. It’s the same with certain songs for me when they come on the radio. Thank goodness you were there for your father, Paul.

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    1. Paul Ariss Avatar
      Paul Ariss

      I think that it was my first gig, seeing my hero at the time and Liverpool winning the league that certainly helps make it memorable anyway. But it’s the contrast of the tragic irony of what had happened and the celebratory nature of the night that in later years has always had me wondering how I was processing everything.

      I was always closer to my mum than my dad, partly because he worked shifts for many years, but we became a lot closer after we lost my mother. It helped us both.

      Thanks for your comments Hugh, and for the retweet.

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  3. Janice Reid Avatar
    Janice Reid

    Isn’t it strange how there are always little pockets of happiness even among the saddest of time. Thanks for sharing, Paul.

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    1. Paul Ariss Avatar
      Paul Ariss

      Thanks Janice

      Liked by 1 person

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