Magic of the City - Magic of the North

MAGIC OF THE CITY - MAGIC OF THE NORTH: Nostalgia, Imagination and
Time Travel - The true story of how a musically-inspired vision of a
city gained during childhood would become the creative driving force
behind a photographic and writing career developed later in
life.


For this edited version of an article which originally
appeared on my website in 2003, I have kept secret the name of the
city. Read the tale and see if you can guess! At the end of the piece
there is a link to the original version where you can find out the
answer and also see photographs I selected go to with the
piece.


Today the city I live in is considered to be one of the UK's
most dynamic and vibrant. But to rediscover the true magic of the city
you have to go back to an earlier era, my childhood years, an
experience influenced by music and the transformative power of the
imagination.


Northern England as it was when I was born on the 9th of
January 1958 is a place we remember in black and white, a region which
had changed little in since pre-war times, burdened with a heavy
atmosphere of the 19th century. My home city, blitz-scarred, still
smoky from coal fires and steam trains, is part of a landscape of
mills, factories, chimneys, railway viaducts, hills, and moors that
stretched all across northern England.


As a child my neighbourhood was my world. With three railway
lines close by, I could hear the huffing and puffing of the steam
trains at night, the growling of the buses as they started up early in
the morning. In winter it was cold, there were power cuts and icicles
on the insides of the windows. On sunny summer evenings the trees
outside my bedroom window were heavy with bright green leaves. I spent
my days playing out on the street and in the back gardens of friends'
and neighbours' houses.


As a small child discovering the world for the first time,
everything around me was exciting. The quarry beyond the railway line
was another planet. The playground in the park five stops away on the
bus was a far away land. The woods to the south near the half-timbered
medieval hall were full of enchantment, and the river to the north was
a dangerous new frontier.


Images that fall on your retina for the first time leave an
indelible impression - I was captivated by the ringing pinks and
purples of flowers in the park, the smooth shiny red and cream body of
a passing double-decker bus, the oily, soot-covered black exterior of
the steam engine, with a fleeting glimpse of the orange inferno inside
the firebox.


Every day I was bombarded with a deluge of images. At night
these images would hover and dance before my eyes.


And there was music in the air, the music of a new and
exciting era. It emanated from car radios, from snack bar juke boxes,
from loudspeakers in boutiques, milk bars and records stores, from
transistor radios, and from the old valve-powered wireless on the
sideboard. Much of the music wasn't heard on the radio, but it was
played on Dansette record players and Ekcoradio grams and in nightclubs
where older teenagers danced to it.


This was a time of change. After a decade and a half of
post-war austerity, Britain was about to be transformed by a new white
hot wave of modernity, a world of new possibilities, technology, shiny
silver planes and space travel.


This was a world without the Beatles - difficult to imagine
now - and the world was about to change. As the decade would progress,
new strains of music would fuse with the time and the place, conjuring
up a sense of magic never experienced before.


'Telstar' by The Tornadoes captured the mood the space age -
the quivery electronic voices of the 1962 instrumental, recorded in a
north London flat by legendary producer Joe Meek, are mingled with the
excitement of my first visit to the newly opened terminal building at
the airport. With its shiny new automatic doors, TV information
displays, chandeliers and panoramic views over the apron, it was like
travelling in a time machine into the future. You could look out at the
silver Viscounts, Argonauts, Britannias and Vanguards through giant
glass windows at the front, or from rooftop viewing terraces, which
extended to the very end of both domestic and international piers. The
airport was a magical place, the gateway to exotic destinations abroad,
places I looked forward to visiting as a grown up. Burt Bacharach songs
like 'Walk on By' (1964) and 'Do You Know the Way to San Jose?' (1968),
sung by Dionne Warwick, were a link with California, now just a few
hours flying time away.


Yet the airport was untypical of the northern urban
environment, which seemed mostly old, rickety, and smoke-blackened. On
a coach excursion to the Lake District I remember looking out through
the rain-speckled window of the bus, and seeing an endless succession
of red brick terraced streets and chimney stacks, until the scenery
changed and I caught my first glimpse of the cold dark waters of
Windermere.


The song which echoed from the radio on that day in 1966 (I
can now place the date of the trip I've checked the 1960's music charts
to find out when it was a hit) was 'River Deep Mountain High' by Ike
and Tina Turner - the association with rivers and mountains was obvious
- Phil Spector's echoey wall of sound was as big as the bank of clouds
about to empty another downpour onto the Lancashire landscape. When the
coach arrived back at the depot near our house, I forgot to pick up my
Beano's and Dandy's on the back seat, something which still upsets me
today.


On shopping trips into town I had my first taste of the big
city, and there really was a big city feel, which smaller towns lacked.
The big buildings, the new office towers, the department stores, the
busy streets, the strangely-shaped flat wheel hubs of the trolleybuses
all caught my eye, as did the brightly coloured tulips in the gardens,
and the grand food hall of the department store. At Christmas, the
gardens held a special magic, with their dimly illuminated Christmas
gnomes and the piped carols emanating from loudspeakers in the flower
beds. To a five year old, this was a truly magical experience.



The city had many bright lights at the time, especially in
the central shopping district, where there were neon adverts for John
Collier tailors and others. A song of the time, which in my mind became
closely associated with my home city, was the 1965 hit 'Downtown' by
Petula Clark . The song depicted the city as a place tingling with
excitement, where you could escape the drabness and worry of normal
life. For me, 'Downtown' means riding on the top deck of a red and
cream double decker bus through the city centre, peering into the
brightly lit windows of the clothes and jewellers shops on either side
of the street down below.


Another song of the time, with a strong feel of the city was
'Anyone Who Ever Had a Heart ' another Bacharach David song recorded in
1964 by Cilla Black.


The downtown area was exciting, with its big city buildings,
maze of back streets and shops of all descriptions. The red of the
Corporation double deckers was juxtaposed with the green of the buses
from the twin city across the murky river.


Buses seemed to play a very big part in my life, both riding
on them, looking at them from the front window of our house, and
waiting for them at bus stops. Little wonder that the song 'Bus Stop'
(1966) by The Hollies became closely associated with life in a city in
the north of England in the mid-Sixties. By contrast 'Strangers in the
Night ' by Frank Sinatra, reminds me of waiting at the Number 11 bus
stop on a visit to London under the old fluorescent street lights - it
was a number one hit around June 1966.


Bus numbers held a special significance. The 89, 92 and the
74, my direct link from doorstep to city centre, and the 71 which took
me to my sister's house, were my companions. By day they were a welcome
and reassuring sight pulling up to the bus stop, often with a cheerful
and whistling bus conductor. At night they were like brightly lit
ships, ferrying shoppers, day-trippers and workers back to their homes.
But like friends they could let you down when they were either full,
late or didn't come at all.


Talking of ships, the magic of my home city was also the
glimpse of a brightly lit superstructure belonging to one of the
ocean-going ships down in the Docks. I was fascinated by how they
looked, their red funnels, rusty railings and brightly lit portholes,
like strings of Christmas lights reflected in the oily waters of the
harbour. The drama and peril of the sea was brought to life by an
obscure ballad entitled 'They Called the Wind Maria', taken from the
1951 musical 'Paint Your Wagon' which had a galloping rhythm and
ghostly vocals. I believe Joe Meek produced the version I remember, but
I haven't been able to track down the artist.


In 1967 my mother took me to visit the Royal Navy submarine
Grampus which was visiting the Docks. I stood in a long queue and
eventually, helped by a crew member, climbed down the narrow hatch and
into the bowels of the vessel, which had an overwhelming smell of fuel
oil. As well dials, periscopes, pressure gauges, torpedo chambers and
control panels, I saw my first girlie pictures pasted on the bulkhead
next to the bunks.


Two songs held sway, which to this day bring back the magic
of a visit to the submarine moored in the Docks - 'The Last Waltz' by
Engelbert Humperdinck, number one in August 1967 and 'The Green Green
Grass of Home' by Tom Jones , a hit around December 66 and Jan 67, the
latter song with obvious associations for a submarine crew.



It wasn't just popular music which entered my consciousness.
Many of the more affluent areas around the city had an overwhelming
aura of the past, a Victorian life which seemed to ooze out of the
brickwork. One of these places was a residential district of grand 19th
century mansions, rambling gardens, tree-lined roads and croquet lawns.
It was full of old English quaintness, with a quality far removed from
the mills and terraced houses of nearby towns. In fact it was more like
a place from the south of England transplanted into the north.



I WENT TO VISIT MY SISTER who had an attic flat there. It was
full of early sixties chic, with straw-covered wine bottles for lamp
stands, knick knacks from foreign trips, sombreros, and most
interesting of all, a modern-style record player.


I loved to open the lid, releasing a dusty metallic smell
from inside, and carefully lift one of the LP records onto the
turntable, slowly placing the needle on the vinyl. To this day, the
scratchy staccato of the strings and the lyrical swoon of the opening
clarinet transports me as in a time machine into that attic flat.
'Ravel's Bolero' was probably the first piece of Classical music I
recognised - the discordant, iridescent, Hispanic-Arabic refrains gave
off an atmosphere of exotica fully in keeping with the
Victorian-Edwardian setting, though the piece was actually written in
1928. Compared with the slums, the terraced streets, even the
respectable semis of my home area, this was a place of wonder.



Theme tunes have a magical power, none more so than that of
'The Avengers', composed by Laurie Johnson . The opening four note
fanfare leading into the playful opening harpsichord, followed by the
lush and lurid main theme played on the strings was enough to open up a
door into the imagination, where I was the dashing John Steed and Mrs
Peel was my friend. The place I knew which captured the spirit of the
Avengers, with its special quality of Englishness, a never-never land
of Victorian eccentricity, with a streak of dashing sixties chic, was
that exclusive residential district where my sister lived, just a ride
on the 71 bus from my home. Lying awake in the middle of the night, I
would replay the Avengers theme, and in my imagination it was daytime,
I was driving down tree-lined avenues in a vintage car, chasing crazy
eccentric criminals, and visiting mad-cap scientists in rambling
Victorian mansions.


My local area with its large population, and vast size,
provided a wealth of different environments, different worlds, more
than any small town could offer. Looking out of the train or from the
top deck of the bus, I saw an endless landscape of towns, villages,
parks, rivers, woods, houses, factories, railway stations, viaducts,
sidings, goods yards, playgrounds, schools, playing fields, tree-lined
suburbs, terraced streets, trunk roads, dual carriageways, and here and
there a stretch of newly-built motorway. Glimpses of railway
landscapes, of rooftop views over housing estates, of coal tips and
slag heaps, became etched in my mind - To this day I'm sure there are
thousands of latent images captured in my mental camera waiting to be
unlocked.


The drawings of artist Trevor Grimshaw who tragically died in
2002 in a house fire, are the closest approximation to what I saw. For
more details about his work please contact me.


At primary school in 1967, I completed my first project about
my home city, with descriptions of buildings, photographs and
postcards. I took a keen interest in my local district, and in my essay
about a new shopping centre built over the river, I described the road
built in the 1930's as a 'splendid thoroughfare' and the new centre as
'very modern'. I got top marks from my teacher Sister Esther
(previously known as Sister Gabriel). Occasionally I would see old
postcards of the local area - The outmoded cars and shabby buildings
seemed dreadfully pass?.


At the time I was very keen on the exciting new skyscrapers
in the city centre. I regarded older architecture as old fashioned, and
paid very little attention to the facades of the Victorian buildings,
mainly because they were mostly covered in a layer of black.



In 1971, as a pupil at one of the city's foremost Roman
Catholic boys grammar schools, I did a project on the buildings of the
city, which I still have today - It has some photographs - a picture of
the airport taken from the end of the International Pier, and a photo
taken in Blackpool. There are also postcards, hand drawn plans, a
photocopied map of the city centre, and another of the surrounding
region. Though the project was supposed to be about buildings, I also
included a picture of a bus, justifying it with the thoughtful remark
'buses are like buildings on wheels'. The handwriting and photographs
weren't particularly good, but it was a foretaste of my career today.



At primary school I entered a poster competition - a painted
design featuring Tom Thumb - and received first prize. I was presented
with a Kodak Instamatic camera, replacing our ancient Brownie and was
pictured in the the local newspaper showing my poster to the Lord
Mayor. The following year I won another competition, this one organised
by the police and received a more modern Instamatic camera. The
experience of using cameras would be a formative
influence.


During the mid-60's, the wave of modernity was
counterbalanced by a tangible and melancholy mood of nostalgia, nowhere
better reflected than in some of the songs of The Beatles . The
plaintive 'Michelle' (1966) reminds me of the arrival of a girl of the
same name in my class at primary school.


'Penny Lane' (1966) is a classic of nostalgia, of special
memories of a magical place in England, remembered from childhood. It
conjures up vivid pictures of a real place, seen through the misty veil
of time. It's intensely real, but dream-like at the same time - the
lilting high-pitched trumpet gives the song an ethereal other-worldly
quality. 'Penny Lane' and the song on the flip-side 'Strawberry Fields'
have a special mood which seems to capture the visual quality of the
city, as I experienced it during my childhood. 'There beneath the blue
suburban sky' - Lennon and McCartney inspired me to capture similar
blue suburban skies later in life. This was not just a catchy pop song,
it was a mood-enhancing, life-transforming experience, conjuring up
mental images as vivid as an 8mm film show. There were of course no
videos in those days, you had to use your imagination.


Another song written by Lennon and McCartney which has a
powerful quality of nostalgia and melancholy is 'Those Were The Days'
(1968) by Mary Hopkin, who found fame on the talent show 'Opportunity
Knocks' presented by Hughie Green. The programme was broadcast from the
ABC studios not far from where I lived. We bought the record, which
reminded my father of his younger days, and I can still see the apple
label spinning on the turntable. The ballad, based on a Ukrainian folk
song, is intimately associated in my mind with a road close to the
studios, which I know very well. What formed the association with that
particular road I have long forgotten, but when I hear that song, I
think of that place, which I still drive past regularly
today.


For as long as I can remember, I have had a habit of
visualising places in my mind, which remind me of certain events or are
associated with music. Certain subjects, certain pieces of music make
me think of certain places - street corners, road junctions, views,
which I can picture very clearly in my mind's eye.


There was a sense of expectation of times to come, or using
words written some 10 years later by songwriter Pete Shelley, a
'nostalgia for an age yet to come'. I imagined my future, living in a
big house in the affluent suburbs - or maybe California, thanks to the
airport the two were pretty close anyway. I would have two cars one
designed by myself. The house would be big, warm and modern, like
George Best's, full of dayglo orange psychedelic colours similar the
ones I saw in groovy boutiques. Growing up in the midst of a cold grey
northern landscape, this glowing vision of the future sustained me.



Many parts of the city were suffering from terminal economic
decline, and had a thoroughly depressing atmosphere. Walking up road in
a run-down but once thriving area of the city, with the
crazy-discordant background music of a Laurel and Hardy film I'd seen
on TV - I felt like I had been transported in a time machine forty
years into the past. The area was deeply depressing and made me want to
emigrate.


The area of the city centre behind the big shopping centre
was another sad and run-down corner, with its ramshackle stalls selling
musty second hand books and old 78-rpm records.



The Tesco supermarket in the town centre near where I lived sold
ex-juke box records from a rack near the checkout. They cost two
shillings and sixpence. That's where we bought 'Those Were The Days' -
another record was '123' by Len Barry. I played them on a Dansette
record player bought second hand from a lady who lived on the other
side of the reservoirs.


It was around 1968 or 69 that a genre of urban popular music,
imported from the States, began to take on a special significance for
me and my experience of my home city and the north of England. This
genre was Soul , and more specifically Northern Soul, a continuation of
the rougher, gutsier form of Soul which the Motown record label had
left behind. Imported from across the Atlantic, this raw, urban
American music, produced by mostly obscure and unknown black artists,
was to be adopted by a new generation of English kids.


The term 'Northern' was coined by journalist Dave Godin in an
article written September 1971 and referred to northern England, where
it was especially popular. There was something about the rough hewn
vocals, the pacy impatient rhythms which had an affinity with the
North. The most famous Northern Soul venue was the now demolished Wigan
Casino. The music was also heard at the Torch Club in Stoke-On-Trent,
at the Twisted Wheel club in Manchester, and at innumerable discos
large and small all over northern England.


Northern Soul, whenever I hear it, conjures up a feeling of
northern England in the late sixties and early seventies. The
rough-edged vocals, the spiky staccato brass chords, the snare, tom
tom, and tambourine, the rubbery bass lines, the warm and tingly
xylophone, conjure up vivid and mostly night-time pictures of evenings
spent at discos and 'All Nighters', which unlike most dances of the
time went on till dawn.


I was too young to go to grown-up discos, so my main
experience of Northern Soul was at local discos for under-16's held at
the Scouts hall and later on, at school discos. I could only aspire to
the coolness of the Northern Soul lads who danced in their platform
soles, flared trousers, shirts with large round collars and tank tops,
bouncing from side to side and up and down the dance floor with
scissor-like leg movements, to the admiration of the girls.



Standing by the speakers and flashing disco lights, I
listened in to the instruments, the rhythm, and the voices, which had a
quality of treacle and sandpaper, each song, a perfectly crafted three
minute pop anthem. 'There's A Ghost In My House' recorded in 1965 by R
Dean Taylor on Motown Records, is the song which stands out more than
any other. Others I remember are 'Girls Are Out To Get You' by The
Fascinations ,'This Aint Nuthin' But A House Party' by The Showstoppers
, and many more I can't remember. There are thousands of Northern Soul
records, mainly produced by little known artists in the States with
pressings of only a few thousand.


This is the music that rang in my ears as I walked or rode
the all night bus home. Looking out at the dark, dimly lit side streets
and the nighttime urban landscape, this music fused with the time and
the place. In fact, through the power of my imagination and the degree
to which I identified with the obscure black American singers whose
music I had taken on as my own, northern England became
America.


MY NORTHERN INDUSTRIAL HOME HAD TRANSCENDED ITS ENGLISH ROOTS
and become a place that had more in common with stateside cities such
as Detroit, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and even New York, though on a
smaller scale. Unlike Cheltenham or Chester or Mansfield, it had a
big-city feel, skyscrapers, areas of downtown urban decay, freeways,
elevated railroads, warehouse districts with metal fire escapes, and
people from all over the world, including a large and growing
Afro-Caribbean population. Many buildings in the downtown area showed
an American influence, it had the docks, with direct shipping links to
North America, the nearby industrial park, where a famous American
automobile manufacturer once turned out cars.


Seeing America every night on TV, I wanted to be there but
couldn't. Instead, I turned the urban environment around me into my own
American city, and American Soul was the musical backdrop which
captured the aura the city had taken on. The music of the city was
broadcast from the nightclubs, and from the open bedroom windows of
adolescent music fans, in back street record shops where DJ's would buy
rare and cherished Northern Soul 45's, many ex-juke box. Only in later
years would this music be played on the radio.


For me Soul was the music of my era and my city. Black music,
in my opinion, was the original source and driving force of popular
music. Black music had the power to generate vivid and romantic images
of gritty urban America.


'Papa Was a Rolling Stone' by The Temptations conjured up a
night time vision of the ghetto, overlooked by downtown skyscrapers, a
story of rootlessness and heartache, a song with a sound so big only a
big city like Philadelphia PA - or my home city in the UK - could
provide a fitting backdrop.


Records by the all time greats of Motown played a big part in
my life. Soul music is all about genuine emotion from the heart,
something we northern English kids perhaps found difficult to express,
but recognised in the music.


'Move On Up' by Curtis Mayfield reminds me of visiting my
father in 1971 who was at a convalescent facility in the hilly
outskirts of the city. An uplifting message delivered against a
powerful brass refrain and an incessant rhythm conjured up images of
riding the D Train and looking out over the tenements of Harlem or
Brooklyn. In reality I was looking out at the rooftops of 19th century
English industrial suburbs, but in my mind the two merged.



There were countless soul hits of the time which seemed to
capture the mood of the moment, many of which now seem lost in the
mists of time, until you start to look through the chart listings of
the time and rediscover many familiar names. 'Here I Go Again' by
Archie Bell and the Drells was just one among many favourites.



Of all soul hits, the one that for me most vividly projects a
romantic nighttime vision of my home city is the instrumental 'Walk in
the night' (1972) by Junior Walker and the All Stars. The music
provokes monochrome moving images of a lonely figure in a raincoat
walking home along rainswept streets, alleyways, footpaths, viaducts
and railway footbridges.


Set against a swaying minor key backdrop, the three note
falling melody on the sax accompanies the figure as he walks through
shadowy streets. The chorus, with its heavenly choral voices and
improvised sax captures the background chatter of the people talking
and laughing in the nightclub he has just left behind. The magic of the
music and the magic of the city became one and the same with this
record. My nighttime photographs of alleyways and railway arches are
inspired by 'Walk in the Night' by Junior Walker and the All Stars
.


Another artist famous as part of a songwriting trio but less
well known as a solo artist is Lamont Dozier, part of the Holland
Dozier Holland songwriting team who wrote many Motown hits. He went
solo around 1972 and released 'Why can't we be lovers?' a song with
much of the passion of Marvin Gaye's 'What's going on?' with a powerful
feel of adolescent love in the city.


Two years later Lamont Dozier released the little-known
single 'The Fish Aint Bitin' , a song influenced by the movie 'Shaft',
exploring the paranoid feelings of a man pursued by a contract killer.
The title refers to the fact that the target hasn't responded to the
bait and is lying low.


This song, taped off the radio, was to me the sound of
quintessential urban America. I took it to heart and during summer 1974
I went on a very long cycle ride through the south of the city, past
the school I attended, and into the inner city area. With the song
ringing in my head, the district that had become home to many
Afro-Caribbean people became my 'Southside', the blocks of flats became
my 'Projects'. It was almost like being in America. Some 20 years later
this suburb would acquire the dubious and unjustified reputation as
being the gun capital of Britain, following the example of cities in
America.


On a happier note, and returning to the Airport, a song which
provided a direct link to America was The O'Jays 'Love Train' (1972)
which came into my head at the sight of Freddie Laker's Skytrain. I
remember standing at the end of the now inaccessible international pier
admiring the giant red black and silver McDonnell Douglas DC10, which
was just about to start carrying passengers across the Atlantic for a
cut-price fare. The happy, bouncy beat of the song and its soaring
vocal lines conjures up a vision of jetting around the world on a
plane, though the 'train' in the title refers to one that runs on
tracks.


Another record of the time is the novelty song 'Double
Barrel' (1971) by Dave and Ansel Collins, with its honky tonk piano and
reggae beat. It was going through my head as I went on another very
long bike ride past the airport, this time to visit my sister who had
recently married and lived in a leafy residential district, one of the
most affluent in the area. Soon after I started to visit her more
often.


Despite my return to a district of detached houses and
rambling lawns, the urban sound of Motown continued to stimulate my
adolescent imagination. Songs like 'I'm Still Waiting' by Diana Ross
have an atmosphere of sleepless nights, creating vivid mental pictures
of looking over moonlit gardens, of climbing the stairs in the dead of
night, and seeing an ornamental stained glass window lit up by
moonlight. These mental images are the inspiration for photographs I
have yet to take.


I always felt more comfortable with pop music than Classical
- for me it was superior, as it captured the mood and feel of now. But
there were many examples of Classical music which conjured up potent
images which were also part of the character of the city. Attending
grammar school and studying music, I came into contact with a
classical-German influence, exemplified by the world famous orchestra
founded in my home city by a German-English conductor in
1858.


The college I attended was built around a group of Victorian
mansions which were once private homes. They seemed to have a resonance
about them which tied in with classics of German music of the 19th
century. Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata is one among many classical
pieces of the Romantic era which for me have associations with the
famous concert hall in the city centre, now incorporated into a hotel
development. (Incidentally, the main melody of this piece, played
backwards, was John Lennon's inspiration for 'Because' on the Abbey
Road album).


A melancholy piano piece by I think it was Schubert caught my
imagination and became intertwined with visions of woodland - on the
southern fringes of the city, near the river. There are also
associations with a nearby garden, donatedby the family of a wealthy
German ?migr? as a memorial to his daughter who died in 1904 aged 26.



There was a tension between pop and classical I found
difficult to resolve. On the one hand I wanted to succeed in music - I
learned the piano from local music teacher Miss Bunn, and went on to do
O Level music at grammar school. But my enthusiasm for pop was often
frowned upon by teachers and certain pupils. On the one hand I was told
off one lunchtime by bespectacled senior boy and talented tenor Bernard
Longley for playing T Rex on the guitar in the room next to the school
chapel. On the other hand, doing O Level music I was classed as a
'square' by some of the tougher lads, many of whom were Northern soul
fans. I remember one incident which happened in the music room. The
music teacher had gone out, and a mean kid who was on report and had
chosen to attend A Level music lessons as a soft option, decided to put
his favourite record 'Little Piece of Leather' (1972) by Donnie Elbert
on the record player, I told him he ought to take the it off before the
teacher came back, then he punched me in the face.


A disco standard of the time was 'Rock Your Baby' by George
McCrae, a glittering, pulsating sound that marked the high point of
countless soul nights, and is still a standard today.


A major musical influence of the time was Bowie Roxy - both
extremely popular in my part of the world, with a large following among
trend-conscious teenagers. I missed David Bowie's performance in 1972
at a hall which has since become a B&;amp;Q warehouse, but I
remember seeing Roxy Music in concert, along with scores of young Ferry
look-alikes sporting green safari shirts and greased back hair, at the
art deco cinema which is still a major venue for touring
bands.


But Bowie and Roxy, though they had a big following in the
city, had, for me, few direct associations with it. Bowie had a strong
flavour of London, his home city, and later, places abroad, while Roxy
Music encapsulated a kind of retro laid back chic that hovered
somewhere over the mid-Atlantic. There were some exceptions: 'Street
Life ' by Roxy Music, reminds me of the whirlwind pace of the city, as
experienced during a taxi ride at night and David Bowie's
'YoungAmericans', with its smoky, soul-inspired nighttime feel has an
indirect connection with the city as I saw it. The track 'Right'
conjures up pictures of an imaginary skyline inspired by the archetypal
American city.


I was open to many musical influences at the time -
Progressive Rock, Glam Rock, Bowie Roxy, Folk and Traditional, and the
many appalling novelty records of the time which I won't mention, but
for me, there was only one type of music which truly expressed the
heartbeat of the city, and that was Soul . It was played to only a
limited extent on radio stations such as Radio Luxembourg, and Radio 1
which at the time broadcast only on medium wave. The opening of the
city's first FM music station in 1973 heralded a new era. I remember
listening to the test transmissions on FM. They broadcast from a
building in the city centre with a big office tower on the top, and in
my mind, it was like a giant transistor radio radiating Soul music all
over the city. Looking at it today, this building does indeed look like
a giant transistor radio placed on its side. It's an American style
structure built on an American scale, and is intimately associated with
music, especially songs such as 'You're the First, the Last My
Everything' by Barry White, and in a similar vein, 'Hang on in there
baby' by Johnny Bristol, both hits from 1974.


Another romantic connection with this building, only 10 years
old when I was in the Sixth Form, was the basement pub on the corner.
By the mid-seventies it had become a regular meeting place for the boys
from my school and the girls from the neighbouring convent. The boys
wore wide flared trousers, tank tops, and platform soles. The girls
wore high waisted floral dresses, feathery hair styles and lots of
make-up. Much lager and lime, Babycham and gin'n'orange was consumed.
Soul was still in the air, though it had become a lot softer and sugary
in the invervening years. Barry White, The Stylistics and other soul
artists provided the musical accompaniment for late night snogging
sessions at the bus stop or down secluded footpaths. Soul had become
smooth and syrupy, but being black it was still in good taste, unlike
many other unmentionable musical white acts of the time. The Stylistics
and other vocal groups with giant afro hair-do's could now be seen on
colour TV with excerpts from American shows such as Soul Train.
Converted from American broadcasts the colours were flickery and
over-saturated, with flashes across the screen when the sequins and
white teeth caught the studio lights.


Non-black music could also be evocative. With the
international hit 'I'm Not In Love', recorded at Strawberry Studios
(the name inspired by the Beatles Strawberry Fields) just ten minutes
drive from our house, the band 10cc captured a mood of the mid-70's,
now more suburban and subdued than the more frenetic years of before.
The song presented a vast low key impressionistic canvas painted with
countless vocal overdubs and echoey electric piano. It had a
semi-dreamlike quality and its soft-edged sound was the aural
equivalent to the soft-focus filter, much used by creative artists and
film-makers of the time, including photographer David Hamilton. I saw
the woods, parks and countryside of the local area through this filter,
which I would use in later years in my photography.


Round about 1975 I remember being transfixed by the roads,
the countryside and the landscape of England after a long car ride from
the south to the north - it wasn't just the city which captivated my
attention. But at this time I hadn't yet found a way to turn my mental
images into pictures other people could look at.


There was still a magic in the air, but the magic was about
to die. Maybe it was the fact that my childhood years were about to
come to an end and I had opted to study away from home. Maybe it was
the social and economic changes that were bringing a chill wind to the
comfortable certainties of the first half of the seventies. The oil
crisis, inflation, economic collapse were all bad news for my city. The
Docks by 1975 had all but ceased to function, the victim of motorways
and containerisation. My bus fare on the 192, formerly 92, had recently
doubled and I now had to pay with a pocketful of two shilling or 10 new
pence pieces.


Many of the local industries were in the process of
disappearing, along with many notable buildings, the destruction of
which I've only found out about in recent years. A quarter of the city
centre, including one half of the main shopping street, had been swept
away and replaced by the a gargantuan shopping centre with exterior
tiles similar to a public toilet. Many council flats were classed as
slums only a few of years after they'd been built. The city was in many
respects no longer the place it was.


Local government changes in 1974 brought loss of identity,
1000 year old county boundaries had been obscured - the town I was born
in was now apparently in a different county. The classic red, green and
blue colour schemes of the municipally run buses had several years
before been overpainted in an ugly dayglo orange and white livery. The
railways and steam engines had of course been absent for over five
years. Two out of the four city centre stations were now empty shells
used as car parks. As the summer of 76 approached, there was still a
residue of magic in the air, but it was rapidly disappearing. One soul
record of significance springs out and that's 'You To Me Are
Everything' by The Real Thing . This Liverpool band, another
'Opportunity Knocks' discovery, were hailed as the UK's answer to The
Temptations and other classic soul acts from America. Now the UK was
producing its own soul acts, though in number and influence, they would
never equal those from the USA.


In autumn 1976, in a sense, for me, the music died. Or at
least it changed - a crazed new form of rock was about take control of
the rising generation - Punk, leading to New Wave. I was involved in it
too, both on vacations at home and at college, where I saw early U2.
There would be new records withstrong local connections -15 years later
the city would get its very own style of music recognised the world
over. Soul along with Funk developed into Disco and what's now called
R&;amp;B.


Regeneration, started in the early 80's by the short-lived
Metropolitan County and gathering pace in the 90's, would revive the
city's fortunes and turn it into what many regard as the UK's most
vibrant and exciting city.


But for me, my experience of my home city during those early
childhood years, from 1958 to 1976, bathed in the music of the time,
left a deep impression. The magic of the city and the North would stay
with me and inspire my photography and writing in later years.



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out!