Like almost every other trainee genius at art school, I played in a band. Or bands. “It’s like some Northern England punks have rediscovered Motown,” I said. In hindsight, it was a poor description, but it sounded right at the time.
The singer, a veneer of too cool for school thinly painted over a pulsebeat of backstreet menace; one misplaced word, one broken bottle, one brick through the plate glass window of Woolworths removed from Reform School, the Firm and a life in and out of Wormwood Scrubs
As I leaned against the rail, trying to keep my skates under me and wishing I could do what my older cousins Greg and Gary could do, I became vaguely aware for the first time of the importance of music as a soundtrack to your life.
For about nine months we worked and played as a double act. Steve helped me cover Oxford United Football Club’s first home match in First Division (and was threatened with a knife by a nervous scalper he stopped in the street outside), while I tagged along to concerts he was covering (remember Squeeze or Level 42?).