Music Journey Begins...

My journey in Music starts in 1996.  Just before Britpop enters my world, I'm floating around different rock artists like Queen, Bon Jovi and Bryan Adams.  I love listening to different songs but no artist has gripped me at this stage.  I was borrowing music biographies from the library and happened to be reading a Bryan Adams one.  The chapter where he described learning guitar put something in my mind and then around this same time I would notice a classical acoustic guitar sitting in the corner at my Gran's flat whenever I visited.  She had been taking lessons but it stopped and so the guitar was just lying there.  One day I asked if I could borrow it.  I had already bought a guitar book in between reading about Bryan Adams' experience and seeing this guitar at my Gran's place.

The guitar book had a variety of classic rock staples I remember... Mull Of Kintyre, Paint It Black, So Far Away, Light My Fire, Black Magic Woman, Pinball Wizard, etc...  It had the chords and the strumming patterns.  I messed around with that for a bit but didn't really know what I was doing.  I'd had the guitar for a few months to a year as Christmas 1996 approached.

I should say, I left school in August 1996, a few weeks after returning from summer holidays.  I was 16 years old and supposed to begin my 6th and final year at high school.  All my friends were set on going to uni and it looked like I was heading in that direction too.  Fate took a different turn for me.  There was a disagreement about what subjects I should take in 6th year.  I only needed to take three but they had to be from separate columns and two of the subjects I wanted to take happened to be in the same column.  I tried to ask if they could allow me to do the ones I wanted but I was basically being forced to take a subject I had no interest in just to fit their boxes.  During this period a strong thought form came into my head saying "I've had enough of education... just leave".

Soon after this I quit school, they sent me to the Careers Advice centre who got me a job as a trainee in a private bank by October.  I spent alternate weeks in the mailroom and office.  I quite enjoyed the mailroom part because it was more active and varied and working from a small room with these two older ex-army guys who were now doormen at the bank.  I hated being in the office where I had to do filing and call bankers up at the other branches and so on.  It was an open plan office which I also strongly disliked.

So I started this job in October 1996 and that Christmas I received a cheap electric guitar/amp combo from Argos.  In the run-up to Christmas I seemed to be losing my temper sometimes in the morning when putting my tie on or something.  My mum noticed a change in me before I did.  It built up towards the office Christmas party, which was to be held at the Caledonian Hotel at the foot of Lothian Road in Edinburgh.  As it was approaching I really didn't want to go but I was being pressured by my colleagues and some of my family members.  I had to go out and buy a suit for it and so the whole period was quite stressful but I reluctantly went along.  I ended up meeting the footballer Paul Gascoigne that night.  He played for Glasgow Rangers during that period and they'd been playing Hearts in Edinburgh that Saturday and he was staying at the Caledonian Hotel that night.  He was sat in the lounge with his wife and another Rangers player.  Someone from my work came rushing through to tell us he was there and a bunch of us went off to get photos and autographs with him.  Apart from that, I didn't enjoy the Christmas party, felt like an outsider, but at least I'd went along.

The next day I felt weird in a way I had never done before.  Since I wasn't an experienced drinker at this point, I wondered if it was just part of the hangover.  I felt kind of dizzy, disorientated and slightly sick with a sore head.  It was still there the following night as I was at my friends house.  A day or two later, 23rd or 24th of December, we went Christmas shopping together but I still felt very weird.  I remember on the way home I stumbled across the road on Princes Street, almost getting knocked over.  I just felt so out of it.

On Christmas Day I was very happy to get a guitar but still felt totally out of it and so although I tried to carry on as if I was fine, I must have seemed really low-key and unenthusiastic outwardly.

This marked the start of a very strange period in my life where Music seemed to be completely consuming me as I was being pushed out of my first job since leaving school.