Liverpool Stories
The stories on this site are not included in my book.
The tales are snapshots of my life in Liverpool, the home of the Beatles, and the echo chamber of the Mersey Sound that in the sixties resonated around the planet like an acoustic Tsunami. The stories cover a period of 50 odd years and so they touch on every aspect of my life from the rites of passage to the passing of youth. I hope you enjoy them.
Pop's music - Momma said there'd be days like this
By
John Williams
Noam Chomsky asserted that all human beings are programmed for speech. In effect, we are hard wired for language use long before we actually learn to speak. This has been demonstrated to be true by so many people since that I will take it as a given fact.
So, while our ability to utter intelligible sounds is genetically determined, our capabilities for reading and writing are learned, which is to say they are unnatural activities. I mention this because most of modern society treats dyslexia and other related conditions as if they were signs of an inferior form of intelligence.
The truth is that there were builders and artists and musicians creating wonderful structures on our planet to whom the concept of reading and writing was as alien as breathing under water.
It took clowns like Erich Von Daineken to abuse a written system of language to give false meanings to say, the statues on Easter island, which were built by people with no such language system of their own.
That is a bit like my idiotic attempts in the past to put a meaning or label to my children's infant drawings when I have been so far off the mark I might as well have kept my ill-informed remarks to myself.
Thankfully, one does not have to be literate or even be in possession of the gift of vision to be able to enjoy music. The rhythms of music are like the rays of the sun, which penetrate our bodies and minds, invisibly and irresistibly delivering healing properties to both flesh and spirit.
So what you might ask. Well, as a fifty something I am conscious that the only reality I seem to share with my children on anything like a regular basis is that created by musicians, artists and singers.
In almost every other sphere of everyday life their thoughts, beliefs and aspirations are black holes of mystery, as inaccessible to me as Nicole Kidman's boudoir.
My politics, interests and general world view are as pertinent to them to them as hair brushes were to Shakespeare, who was, in the opinion of most modern shaped youngsters, just a renaissance slap-head. However, our conversations can suddenly become animated by a casual remark I may have made about the music of Craig David or The Stereophonics.
In an instant I am no longer a B.O.F, but a cognoscenti, a player, a doyen of pop. In short, I am briefly accepted as an equal by my children. At that moment part of me sings along with Chuck Berry as he proclaims,
"Hail Hail Rock and Roll!"
and suddenly I am, in the immortal words of Steely Dan, reeling in the years and stowing away the time.
Time, like a politician, is all things to all men. Depending on your mood or point of view it is a healer, an enemy, or a thief. It pervades our every waking thought. Time for work, time to kill, time to relax and unwind our inner clock and so forget time before it's time to sleep.
Sleep, allegedly, knits the ravelled sleeve of care. Oh I can't sleep at nights, I call your name. What an absurd situation to be in, lying there whispering to yourself,'sleep, sleep, sleep'.
The only R.E.M I get is courtesy of an American band of that name. Like Macbeth I murder sleep, but I don't know why. Perhaps when the angels were handing out the gift of easy slumber I was still at the back of a very long queue for hair and noses.
The only real growth I can count on in this life now is the type which guarantees that my nose, ears and bank deficit will all increase.
"...and you're nose is gonna grow oh oh oh oh oh..."
Give me money that's what I want, a lot of money. I know money can't buy me love but it could be my Faustian currency, paying for a surgically achieved youthfulness.
Then again, what must it feel like to be with a young woman and have the physical appearance of an Adonis, with only the physical strength of a seven stone weakling?
Young girl get out of my life, your love for me is way out of line. Better run girl, you're much too young girl..."
Stay forever young I've been advised, but by running or line dancing? Given my luck I would get run over before I'd paid for my jogging suit and trainers. Line dancing and westerner outfits just aren't my bag even though at heart I'm still a midnight cowboy.
But nowadays not everybody is talking at me, or even to me, just around me.
"Cry me a river!"
"Who said that?"
Old man river...that old man river...
"Oh turn it in John and stop feeling sorry for yourself!"
Sweet mother of God! I hear voices and there's no one there. I smell blossoms but the trees are bare. I wonder why? Oh to hell with this morbid rambling. I'm off to a doubles bar!
Hey, hey, you, you, get off of my cloud!