You see, I’ve always been obsessive about pop music, it’s just one of those things I was born with and it has stayed with me all my life. In fact you could say it has dogged me since birth – even Rod Stewart sat at the next restaurant table on my wedding day.
Of course I always assumed, as everybody did in my youth, that when I grew up to be a man, I would put away childish things like pop music. But the trouble was, I didn’t and although I got a job and tried to be a grown up in the approved manner, that didn’t work either. So, here I am, still listening to an inordinate amount of it, from The Beatles to Marina and the Diamonds as well as playing the guitar badly, well into middle age *ahem*.
Of course I always assumed, as everybody did in my youth, that when I grew up to be a man, I would put away childish things like pop music. But the trouble was, I didn’t and although I got a job and tried to be a grown up in the approved manner, that didn’t work either. So, here I am, still listening to an inordinate amount of it, from The Beatles to Marina and the Diamonds as well as playing the guitar badly, well into middle age *ahem*.
For the record (haha!), I was born in Epsom and schooled in St Albans. I am a qualified Chartered Surveyor and have worked in London as a commercial valuer, an IT consultant and Business Analyst but none of that has deflected me from amassing a huge music collection, attending over 100 gigs (that I can still remember), teaching myself the guitar and writing/recording my own songs on a battered Tascam Portastudio (analogue, natch). Worst of all, I’ve always been wilfully opinionated about it all- much to the irritation of my remaining friends.
Luckily my wife and 2 children understand this so when I was forced to take a year off work with a back problem, they allowed me to write a book in order to keep me out of their hair. It's called 'Memoirs of a Music Obsessive' (the book, not their hair...) and it contains an analysis of 50 years of madness in the thrall of pop music. You can buy it here if you dare.
