SONGS AND SCRIPTS AND DUNKING BISCUITS

I have just finished reading the enlightening and entertaining autobiography ‘Lightening Seeds, Football and Cosmic Post-Punk’ by Ian Broadie, the songwriter, lead singer, producer and beating heart behind Liverpool based band The Lightening Seeds.

The Lightening Seeds had several excellent and memorable hits, mainly in the 1990’s, such as ‘Life of Riley’ and ‘Pure’. Broadies path to success has been far from linear, and being short of stature or having any desire to be out front he is far from the average rock poseur.

Much of his progress has been hampered by side steps, some backward, but from his early days as a teenage guitarist in the 1970’s he was always in the thick of things. Seemingly dead-end pursuits with cash strapped mad-cap characters also searching for direction forged relationships with people who went on to achieve success out of anonymity, such as Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Echo and The Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes and Oasis.    

Reading Broadies autobiography made me realise I’ve never belonged to a gang who hung out with their obsessions. I’ve not been in a band, toured and slept in the back of vans and felt part of a movement. I’m not a muso, debating for hours the benefits of one amp over another, or coming to verbal blows over different chord progressions.

I wasn’t a punk, a new-wave romantic or even a heavy-metal air guitarist (well not beyond the confines of my own bedroom mirror, but that’s between you and me, right?). In my twenties I looked towards the west coast of America to Jackson Browne, The Eagles and Linda Ronstadt, and this didn’t register as cool in my particular part of north-west England.

In doing so I feel a bit of a musical imposter, despite writing and releasing my own songs. Like I’ve not earned ‘my chops’ as they say in the US. I don’t have kudos or credibility because I don’t have an array of battle-hardened guitars lined up against a rehearsal room wall.

But then I thought about it more, and realised that is being somewhat disrespectful to my younger self, then a lyricist in a song-writing partnership. If I didn’t have the musicians badge of honour, I certainly had something equally valuable: a unrelenting passion for what I wanted to do.

From my late teens to mid-twenties, despite being the rather introverted and introspective type with limited social scope, I would regularly take trips to London and quite literally knock on publishers doors. Some big publishers in the bargain, with very big doors!

I spent my Saturday nights happily at home watching TV but I was also someone who had established contacts at Polygram Music and EMI, had meetings in plush rooms while next door a songwriter such as Gerard Kenny, who had recently written the hugely successful ‘Made It Through The Rain’ for Barry Manilow, practised on a white grand piano.

Labi Siffre, an artist with great respect who received an Ivor Novello Award for his anti-apartheid song ‘(Something Inside) So Strong’ and had a number two hit record just months before with ‘It Must Be Love’ (covered by Madness) was once told off for interrupting a meeting I was having at Polydor. And Siffre apologised!

I stood for hours on trains when all the seats were taken. I walked across London for hours because I didn’t feel confident on the tube. And the only force that drove me to do these things was passion. We’ve all had times when passion compelled us to do things that sat in stark contrast to the way we live the other parts of our lives.

Passion is still driving me now in my solo song-writing but also in my script work. Long hours sat in front of a laptop, scripts dissected in workshops, a rejection here and a thumbs up there, the agonising whether a line will take off or sink when played in front of a live, paying audience.

I have memories of being invited to meetings in the West End of London but also of a script being pulled apart by a BBC executive in the pouring rain of Manchester. That one nearly finished me, but here I still am, driven by the one vital ingredient above all others – passion.

I envy someone like Ian Broadie for the skills he possesses that go beyond my abilities. But sometimes it’s good to look at our own apparent shortcomings and not make too harsh a judgement.

Films I’ve seen lately: Lee, It Ends With Us, The Critic

TV shows I’m watching: A Gentleman in Moscow (Paramount Plus), We Are Lady Parts (Series 2, Channel 4)