When I was 16 I looked about the same as I do now, but with spots, and considerably younger, obviously. Whereas now I groom my hair with a high-quality firm-hold gel, in those days I used Brylcreem. I wore slacks and brown or fawn lace-ups and a polyester long-sleeved shirt and a V-neck jumper and then if it was a bit parky an anorak or windcheater (if it was windy). My auntie bought me a skinny ribbed sweater in the 70s but it made my ribs look a bit skinny, so it had to go. Shame really – it was only doing its job! I did have a photo of Suzi Quatro on my bedroom wall, but only because I admired the motorbike she was sat astride.
My preoccupations were those of an average teenager – how to get a 10lb box of broken biscuits from the indoor market back home on the bus without damaging them further – problems like that. I grew up in Bamford, a Derbyshire village, before moving to Sheffield aged 12, but I was still a country boy at heart and enjoyed scouring local woods for fir cones et cetera. Once I found an injured magpie and nursed it back to full fitness. I didn’t know then it was bad luck to see a single magpie. I should really have saluted it and said “Morning, Mrs Magpie – are you looking for your husband?” This, apparently, will repel any curse that might befall the single magpie spotter.
I was quite reserved at school, preferring ‘Tiggy off ground’ to playing football with the rough boys. However, there weren’t enough areas off the ground at our school to make the game viable, so I developed a variation of the game called ‘Tiggy off green’ which required you to be touching something green, and then you couldn’t be caught. It wasn’t allowed to be the green piping round the V-neck of your school jumper, however. If you did that you’d be cheating, and were still eligible to be caught.
Like many young lads in the 1960s I dearly wanted to become an astronaut and live on the moon. I even made a large moon crater out of crepe paper, but when I tried sleeping in it it proved a bit lumpy and I didn’t get a wink of sleep, so doubts began to set in. Then, after going to a fancy dress party dressed as a rocket and coming last, my ambitions to be an astronaut withered overnight. It just wasn’t worth all the hassle and heartbreak!
I got into music quite late, purchasing an electronic organ off a retired policeman who couldn’t play for toffee. He was angry because he’d thought it would be easy, because it said on the keyboard ‘single finger play’. Yes, but you still have to know which finger to press down, don’t you? Back at home I listened to an old Winifred Atwell song called ‘Let’s Have a Ding Dong on the Stereo’, and this gave me the inspiration to write my first song called ‘Wanna Crack A Nut With Me?’ It was all about the hilarity of trying to crack a nut with a friend at Christmas, but also the frustration, because the nut often spins out of the crackers and goes under the sofa – heartbreaking!
If I met the teenage John now, firstly I’d check his hairline for unsightly deposits of Brylcreem, and if any were detected, pass him a comb and march him to the bathroom. I’d be cordial but wary; firm but fair. Obviously, I would know all about my younger self so anything he’d tell me about his life would be met with the reply “Yes, I know you did – I was there!” I would advise him to steer clear of a girl called Barbara, and keep a lookout for a sweet Sheffield lass called Mary, with a hairstyle the shape of a motorcycle helmet. Not a helmet with a full-faced visor – that would suggest a floppy fringe like that lad from A Flock of Seagulls. No, I mean the old-fashioned one like Wallace and Gromit wear. I might envy him his Brylcreem, I suppose. I used to love the smell of it, but Mary has forbidden me to use it as it goes all over my pillow and stinks the bedroom out, she alleges!
