My FITD involvement was… and is formed the band / singer – songwriter

I’m …. 45 …. years old and I live in… Brighton UK

Subsequently, my musical involvement has been… First Of May Group / Seventh Wave were post-FITD bands, downloads available on this site. Also lots of busking round UK / Ireland which turned into playing Celtic folk in pubs when we realised it was warmer and paid better! And then of course, FITD again.

My wife / children / pets situation is... living with Joanna my partner & Muttley & Ollie, our two border collies. No kids.

For a living, I… run a web design / internet marketing company and occasionally write books. I’m proud to say I’m still avoiding ‘real’ jobs, though I do get a bit stir crazy sometimes at home.

Since being in FITD, I’ve changed in the following ways… since the 80s, I’ve ditched a lot of mumbo-jumbo new age stuff. I can still see the beauty in the symbolism, but I can’t swallow the literal end.

The home I grew up in … was a happy family home in a stultifyingly straight suburb of London (Bromley).

When I was a child I wanted to be … a footballer, centre-forward (as they called them back in the 3-5-2 days) for Liverpool, winning trophies single-handedly and being adored and deified.

As puberty hit, I realised that female adoration, however, lay elsewhere and so started miming in the front room with a tennis racket for a guitar. In this mode, I am proud to have fronted most of the great bands in history, and some pretty embarrassing ones too! I even ‘sang’ on Marillion’s live album, though my time with Stiff Little Fingers on ‘Hanx’ is a more fond memory. I’m not sure any of this ever outweighed my football fantasy though.

The moment that changed me for ever … was leaving school and meeting other punks who taught me that life didn’t have to be lived as a macho charade. That life wasn’t all about ‘front’. Particularly a chat in the bar of Walnuts sports centre in Orpington with Steve Steroid, to whom I am forever indebted in this respect. Because I was late learning all that stuff and could have ended up on a much darker path were it not for the benign influences back then.

My greatest inspiration … I’ve had a few: a woman called Pamela Russell who’s story was told in a book called Always Another Door / numerous athletes whose dedication and discipline I find astonishing / John Lydon / musically: Kevin Rowland, Burt Bacharach & Pete Wylie / literature-wise: Bill Drummond, Richard Bach, Oscar Wilde and, though we are friends and therefore it feels a bit weird to say so, Penny Rimbaud. And artists everywhere, all those with the courage to tie their own shoelaces and follow their noses. That just scratches the surface and ignores the far greater influences and inspirations in my everyday life.

My real-life villain … Thatcher. Obvious but true and deeply heartfelt.

If I could change one thing about myself … I’d not be diabetic

At night I dream of … hippie utopias, being able to fly, love in all it’s forms, sometimes fear in some of its forms, unsorted stuff to be sorted, people I’d forgotten about in the conscious world for years

What I see when I look in the mirror … a mirror…. a survivor

I wish I’d never worn … a short back and sides in the 70s when long hair was cool but my mum was boss. Ironically it’s exactly what i ask for in the barbers now I go on my own (after 30 years of cutting my own hair, I fancied a change)

It’s not fashionable but I like … romantic songs, nostalgia, sentimentality

The shop I can’t walk past … I genuinely don’t think there is one. I never go into music shops for instance, much less shops of supposedly lesser interest. I live for the day when everyone walks past Macdonalds (instead of going in)

The best invention ever … having spent time living on a horse-drawn wagon, the fridge is an oft-overlooked wonder. As is the fact we can get water from taps – it’s fucking heavy to carry in any quantity, believe me.

A book that changed me … reading How To Stop worrying And Start Living by Dale Carnegie was very helpful in my teens. Writing the Levellers biog made me think of myself as a writer, which also changed me.

My favourite work of art … the hardest of all these questions for me…. hmmmm…. probably a 3D maze installation in the ICA London that we sneaked into (literally) before an Altered Images / Manufactured Romance gig in the early eighties. It made me realise that art was for us as well as them…. on that note, a lot of Andy Warhol stuff too and Banksy makes me smile

You wouldn’t know it but I’m very good at … chess (beaten quite a few decent players whilst blindfolded), vegan raw food recipes

You may not know it but I’m no good at … tuning a guitar – in over 1000 gigs, I’ve always got someone else to do it. Also, dealing with heights, which I’m increasingly convinced is to do with bad internal balance

All my money goes on … books and travel and rent

If I have time to myself … I play guitar and sing every day: other peoples’ songs via internet chords. Having got older, I now lead Liverpool to glory on Football Manager on a regular basis. I go to the cinema every time I can find a half-decent looking film, and often even when I can’t. I also play badminton, go to the gym and love photo-shopping pics in a juvenile manner.

I drive/ride … a Vauxhall Vectra, but mostly I walk

My house is … a very small flat in a nice place. But it’s not mine, it belongs to someone else and I pay their mortgage for them.

My most valuable possession is … my guitar – played every day without a single broken string now for 7 years. Strange but true.

My favourite building … Lodz Kaliska bar in Lodz, Poland.

Movie heaven … Italian Job / Flashback / Robin Hood (Errol Flynn version)

The person who really makes me laugh … Bill Hicks / Frank Skinner / Ken Dodd

The last album I bought/downloaded … bought: Hair soundtrack, second hand, 1988, Rounder Records, Brighton / downloaded: TV Personalities 2nd album

In 10 years’ time, I hope to be … alive, healthy, devoid of money worries

My greatest regret … that a third person can sometimes come between the friendship of two other people and unilaterally force it apart.

My life in six words … family, Liverpool (FC), vegan, unconvention, diabetes, punk

A life in brief… exploring – sometimes without choice – the boundaries between normal and abnormal and the way it affects people (especially me!). Trying to help people and animals due to an undefined spiritual belief that life is sacred. Noticing what happens when people run off to the straight world and the look on their face when they look back over their shoulder at you. But more than all this, much more, a deep well of desire to live life to the full and not be constrained by the fear of others and the social conditions they attempt to impose as normal because of that fear.

Justice for the 96.

When you walk through a storm,
Hold your head up high
And don’t be afraid of the dark
At the end of the storm is a golden sky
And the sweet, silver song of a lark

Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Tho’ your dreams be
Tossed and blown

Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart, and
You’ll Never Walk Alone
You’ll Never Walk Alone

Today, at 3:06 pm BST (10:06 pm SST), please pause for a moment’s silence to mark 20 years since the tragedy.

http://www.contrast.org/hillsborough/home.shtm

Chas & Billy Loft

My FITD involvement was…bass guitarist

I’m ….44 …. years old and I live in…South London

Subsequently, my musical involvement has been…my own band The Cuckoo Club then a prolonged silence; now occasional gigs and hopefully a few recordings online soon.

My wife / children / pets situation is...married with a six month old son who is lovely

For a living, I work in a job of no interest to anyone, although I find it intermittently entertaining, I commute to work, all that sort of crap. I never thought I’d turn to that, but having been out of work for 9 months and after years of temporary contracts I realised that I wanted a bit more security. Unemployment is great when you chose it – which I did for years – but once you start thinking you’re stuck with it, it’s shit. Money doesn’t make you happy but being skint can really piss you off.

Since being in FITD, I’ve changed in the following ways…beard and shit eyesight. I was trying to work out what to write when I remembered that 9 years ago changing after bathing in the gymnasium where Winston Churchill coined the term Iron Curtain, I wrote a poem about it, prompted by the fact that I was worrying about trying to get a job

Erosion
I’ve become a man of more restrained ambition,
As the globe’s bright bullseye paint has peeled away.
In pursuit of everything, I caught a little;
Now, pursuing very little, snatch it all.
My dreams, once technicolour, are still vivid;
But now I don’t confuse them with a map.
Less potent, they still drowse me in my office
(When I’m tired of emailed jokes and popbitch gossip)
But, awake again, I turn to lesser labour
And brush them off, like grey hairs from a shoulder.
Realism. No cause for pride, no wise awakening;
Simply, time has wound my watch down to the wire.
As Missouri carves out limestone’s haggard bluffs,
So life has, rather sooner, worn down mine.

The home I grew up in … is still lived in by my dad I like visiting – it’s in Herne Hill in south London. From the top bedroom you can see right across the city.

When I was a child I wanted to be … I remember wanting to be a palaeontologist, when I was about 8, footballer at 10, an actor at 12 and a rock star at 14 and a poet at 17

The moment that changed me for ever … realising I could be bad if I wanted

My greatest inspiration Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist James Joyce –maybe;
probably the description of Paul McCartney working on magical mystery tour in his attic that can be found in hunter davies’ authorised biography of the Beatles

My real-life villain … Tony Blair – Iraq. Rupert Murdoch – general fucker

If I could change one thing about myself it would be nice to be able to make decisions and stick to them without question.

At night I dream of – I hardly ever dream – occasionally I have nighmares.

What I see when I look in the mirror usually see my son who has just realised it’s him in the mirror, so I like to hold him up and get him to look at himself, it makes him laugh

I wish I’d never worn – no regrets – people used to stare when I walked down the street and I reckon I toned it down pretty much at the right speed as I got older – let the kids dress up, it suits them better. It’s a shame that young people look so boring now.

It’s not fashionable but I like … books about railway history

The shop I can’t walk past There aren’t any, but I can’t walk past a skip without having a quick glance inside and I do like to examine the windows of those tourist shops that sell incredible tat – china pigs with happy slogans embossed beneath etc – just to see how bad they are. Shanklin in the Isle of Wight is particularly good for this, but Branson Missouri is the tat capital of the world.

The best invention ever – electro-magnetic recordable tape. Without the aural mirror no one knew what they sounded like – obviously the tape recorder wasnt the first, but it was the first small enough to be covert and/or portable and to allow multi track (ie mixable) recording.

A book that changed me…
Harold Macmillan’s diaries

My favourite work of art I’ve tried but I can’t think of anything – I always get a bad back shuffling round galleries and It’s hard to see good paintings without being surrounded by loads of other people. I tried thinking what bit of art would I travel to see again if I could only see one and decided I would rather just drive round Arizona/Nevada or spend a (hot) day on the beach at Bossiney If my life depended on it I would like to see the wall Dave, Hazel and I painted in the style of Jackson Pollock in 50 Beatty road in 1984 – none of us had heard of Jackson Pollock, we were just pissed.

You wouldn’t know it but I’m very good at one of my bosses told me I had a natural flair for accountancy but I have never developed it.

You may not know it but I’m no good at going on any kind of fairground ride. The thought of it makes my palms sweat. The one time I went on the water splash thing at Margate my then wife said I didn’t have to go on any more because she didn’t want to hear me scream like that or look that scared again.

All my money goes on fry ups, decorating and weekends away

If I have time to myself .I daydream

I drive/ride my father in laws old car because it was free. people who care what car they drive should be draqgged through the streets tied to the back of a skoda.

My house is .a typical 30s suburban semi in south norwood it has a tiny garden but a huge scary basement with a strange bed in it (was there when I moved in)

My most valuable possession is There’s nothing I can’t do without, but this computer has all my songs and poems on and I’ve just realised I don’t have copies of a lot of it, so I wouldn’t want to lose them.

My favourite building Senate House, which contains the university of London library –it housed the ministry of Information in WW2 – Orwell worked there and it was used as the ministry of Truth in the film of 1984 but what I really like is the Library inside which is one of the best libraries in the world and very very very quiet. If you ever need to disappear completely, buy a readers ticket and go to the periodicals room …

Movie heaven … I’d like to go there, it sounds great – where David Lynch films make sense. Blue Velvet is pretty hard to beat but Taxi Driver,  Apocolypse Now and Twelve Monkeys and 3 or 4 Coen briothers films would do it. Then again Annie Hall and Life of Brian.. it’s no good, I’m really bad at – picking one favourite thing.

The person who really makes me laugh … the people who make me laugh most are all friends of mine you wouldn’t know. Of those you would: Father Ted and recently, Frankie Boyle on Mock the Week – but I wish England had a satirist of John Stewart’s quality. I was in the US for the hanging chad election and the Daily Show was the only sane voice I heard.

The last album I bought/downloaded … The reissue of Piper at The Gates of Dawn -still one of my favourites – I don’t keep up with whats going on now and the last new albums that I enjoyed were the debuts by Kaiser Chiefs and the 747s 3 or 4 years ago. I heard the KCs latest and it bored me.

In 10 years’ time, I hope to be … I have never been able to answer this but I would quite like to build my son the model railway I dreamed of when I was a kid – hopefully the idea will appeal to him.

My greatest regret … In general not being more selfish unreasonable outrageous and determined and less lazy when I was younger. Specifically – swerving to avoid running over a woman who walked out into the road in 1991 only to realise it was Virginia Bottomely – too late.

My life in six words ... dirty squatter, scruffy lecturer, late tackler

A life in brief…

I stopped playing in bands in 1991 because I got fed up with having to deal with musicians, promoters, record company types and music journalists. People who take music seriously as a career/business are generally not my kind of people. I was also more interested by then in political work – in particular for Hackney Community Defence Association where I was a volunteer for 4 years. I got into that as a result of the campaign against the poll tax which I was quite involved in at a local level. By that time I had gone to college to do a degree because it was getting too hard to stay on the dole and I’d done the enterprise allowance scheme. I did history and found I really liked it. Just before my finals an arsehole I lived with decided to rip off some minor gangsters he had got mixed up with and I ended up getting kidnapped by them. After that I “kinda developed a speech impediment” and if I ever see him again I will skin him alive. I spent a couple of years mainly sitting at home, then I went to college to do a PhD and got into football I used to write songs for the end of season social, but apart from that I hardly even played music. I ended up working as a lecturer which was fantastic but I couldn’t get a permanent job so I was unemployed for a bit, as a result of which I finally got to a point where I could play the guitar and sing alright. Thanks to my old friend Si Leadbeater who first got me into the guitar, I started playing for fun with a few friends and that’s how I met Rob who played with me at a couple of gigs recently, it was the first time I’d played live for 15 years and it was more intense than I’d expected, but great. Now Rob’s pretty ill and I’m back to not having the time for music, but I’m hoping we’ll finish recording our stuff soon and put it on the web, just for fun. Like Bill I’m not interested in fame or money. I’ve just got a piano and maybe I’ll learn to play with more than the three fingers that feature on True Courage. I make up songs to sing to my boy and he laughs, if he can keep that up I may never need another audience again.