Q Magazine - November 2008

March 6th, 2009 by Administrator | Posted in Articles |

There is something about standing around with an electric guitar hanging down by your groin that is attractive to boys in their mid-teens. The 14-year-old kid who lived in the terrace house next door taught me to play in the summer of 1974 and from that day on we were a gang, facing the choppy waters of adolescence together, protected by our commitment to one another and the music we loved. After recruiting a drummer from further along the street, the three of us whiled away the years waiting for punk to happen by blasting out songs by the Stones, the Who and the Faces in the back room of my parent’s house.

My father was supportive our efforts, but it was bewildering to him. Born in the mid-1920s, his own teenage years had been dominated by the war. Already into his thirties by the time Elvis appeared, rock’n’roll came too late for him. As a result, he had no interest in pop music, no understanding of how it might transport his son from the mundane routine of homework and exams into a fantasy world where me and my buddies were heroes with low-slung guitars.

I can’t help but sympathise with his predicament when I find my own 14-year-old son engrossed in another fire-fight on his Xbox360. Of course there is nothing really preventing me from picking up the spare controller and fighting alongside him as he battles the Covenant to prevent them activating Halo, but, to be honest, I just don’t get it. By the time the first Nintendo Game Boy became available in Britain, I was already well into my thirties. I see this gadget as a toy, rather than a means by which to escape into a fantasy world with your mates.

The arrival of Guitar Hero III blurred this line. Here was something Dad could understand, something he could even get the hang of, if it was explained to him slowly. In fact, for a while, my strumming action gave me the edge until the boy worked out how I did it and then took off, leaving me stuck on the easy setting, clunking my way through ‘School’s Out’.

Then something miraculous happened. While I was away on tour, a couple of his Guitar Hero-playing buddies came round with their new electric guitars, wanting to try them through one of my amplifiers. It was as if they had placed a real United Nations Space Corps rifle in his hands and sent him into battle against the Flood. He quickly got the guitar playing bug and, crucially, it was transmitted to him by his peers, not by his parents.

Over the summer holidays, his playing just got better and better. I showed him a few short cuts and introduced him to The Ramones. He soon had his mates playing ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ in the garage. They have little practice amps for their guitars and put the vocals through my old Fender Twin, which gave sterling service in its time, but was seeing out its twilight years as an obstacle to be negotiated when unloading groceries from the car.

Now his playing fills the house. What initially sounds like a big angry hornet trapped in a biscuit tin turns out to be him tearing through the chords of ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’ upstairs in his bedroom. Sometimes, as I go around switching off lights and closing windows last thing at night, I hear him scratching out a tune on his unplugged electric guitar. And, somehow, he seems to have grown six inches since he picked up the damned thing.

He seldom starts up the Xbox these days, instead taking great delight in showing me the latest riff he’s learned. After one of his accomplices taught him how to play a rudimentary Chuck Berry intro, I spent a few hours playing rhythm guitar for him while he practiced his Johnny B. Goode licks. And when the great man himself played at a nearby festival, we went along, father and son standing together in a packed crowd on a dark Friday night to pay our respects to Chuck Berry, a child of the mid-1920s, just like my dad.

Been listening to:
The Rolling Stones - 12 x 5
The Skids - Into the Valley
Chatham County Line - IV

This article was first published in Q Magazine in the UK

Billy also presents a monthly radio programme for Q Radio.
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