but getting by in time. I know all this now but it was a revelation at fourteen. This sounded exactly like the sort of stuff that adults would be doing, although not the adults I knew. My parents were not ones for letting time heal their wounds. If anything, they were getting angrier. Even if I had somehow managed to persuade a girl to go out with me, I don’t think I’d have introduced her to my mum and dad. And even if I had, I wouldn’t have asked for their approval. They were hardly people to look up to in the matter of relationship advice. It didn’t matter anyway; it would be another couple of years before I would get anywhere near a girl. As I discovered, desperation is not an attractive trait in a potential partner.
‘What do you want in a man?’
‘I want a cripplingly lonely man child who looks like he’s never had sex before.’
‘I’ve got just the boy for you.’
As for friendships, Paul’s observations were just as acute. The idea of running into a guy that he used to know and how it seemed to hurt him to say hello, I absolutely adored that. I still do. To me, and I imagine the other young boys and girls hanging on Paul’s words, this sounded like wisdom way beyond his tender years. I know people develop at different speeds and at different times in their lives. Paul seemed a very old twenty. I was a very young fourteen year old.
I always felt I had so much to learn. Just over a year before this song came out, I’d had my Bar Mitzvah, the Jewish coming of age ceremony. These coming of age rituals are very common across the world, but they vary from place to place. In some countries, they happen when the boy is a bit older and involve more physical tests. There may be some courage required, some display of fortitude. Luckily, rather than wrestle a wolf, I just had to read some Hebrew in front of the congregation in the synagogue. It’s harder than you think, particularly if you don’t speak a word of Hebrew.
Ostensibly, once I’d done that, I’d made the leap into manhood. But I only had to take a look at myself in the mirror, a slightly podgy boy with bum fluff, squished into a brown velvet suit, to realise that this was not in fact the case. In truth, I was still light years away from manhood. Sometimes, I think I still am. Boys struggle with this stuff more than girls. It may be a gross generalisation but girls seem to manage growing up better than boys, mainly it seems because they communicate with each other about how they feel. From primary school onwards, they’re chatting away. The process may be drawn out but it’s ongoing.
Whereas with boys, we might talk about football or sex or music or football, but we never talk about the sort of things that Paul Weller sang about. Simon and I may have listened to a song like ‘I Got By in Time’ on a loop, but we never talked about what it meant. It’s only now I see that Paul’s writing helped me and a lot of other young men grow up. It helped us understand ourselves better. For boys particularly, having a strong male role model who isn’t the same age as your dad can make all the difference. Showing us how we might fit in, how we might be useful. I think that was a big part of the appeal for me. It felt like having a cooler, older brother to look up to.
When Paul sang that he supposed that none of it means anything, I loved that ‘I suppose’. So conversational and so grown up. Young people rarely suppose anything. They (think they) know stuff. Even back then, I knew that the friendships I made as a child may not last. It had already happened to me. As a kid, you’re still growing up, still developing and finding your way. You move from primary to secondary school, make new friends. Sex becomes a factor (although not in my case). Any number of things can get in the way.
But as an adult, I always imagine that the friendships I make will be for life and I still find it disappointing when I realise that I no longer have the need to see certain people. Although not as disappointing as when I realise that people no longer seem to have the need to see me. I don’t deal well with situations like that. I didn’t then and I’m still not much better at it now, age fifty-seven. I’m getting there but it’s a slow process. I’m hoping that just before I die, I’ll have a fleeting moment when I think ‘I can live with this’.
I know that things change. Even though I didn’t fully understand the implications, I knew when I first heard this song. Through my life, I’ve gradually lost touch with so many people that I thought I’d know until either they died or I did. People that I got monumentally stoned with. People I spent Christmas and New Year with. People I shared flats with. People who helped celebrate my thirtieth birthday and who were no longer around for my fortieth. People whose weddings I went to. But as the man said, that’s the way that it goes.
Things We Didn’t Have in the 1970s
Part Four
Fashion Sense
The 1970s has been described as the decade that fashion forgot. But who could possibly forget multi-coloured tank tops? Or gold lamé hot pants. Or flares. Flares had high waists with loads of buttons and enormous bell bottoms that quite often dragged along the floor. Colours were loud and garish. Yellows and oranges and pinks and purples. The patterns were psychedelic. I’m amazed that people left the house, although there were often power cuts, so at least they could still be seen in the dark. Aside from the Milk Tray Man in the advert, no one wore black (The Milk Tray Man was a man dressed all in black who used to break in to women’s bedrooms late at night and leave a box of chocolates on the bedside table; not creepy at all). If you see pictures of Elton John in the 1970s, the reason he looked so outlandish is because he was trying to outdo what everyone else was wearing on a daily basis.
Chapter Five
Reality’s so hard
The campaign to go and see a Jam gig live continued throughout 1977 without success. I bitched and moaned to my mother but she wasn’t having it. To punish her for not letting me get my way, I behaved so badly and had so many tantrums that I almost certainly proved her point about being too young. I wasn’t rebellious enough to disobey her and just go anyway. I preferred to stay in and be moody. I was feeling very sorry for myself and I must have been horrible to be with. When I wasn’t glowering at her or monosyllabically grunting in her general direction I retreated to my room, turned up the first album to maximum volume and played the songs over and over again just to annoy her. She must have known them almost as well as I did. I figured I might wear her down. I suppose I did in the end.
Music for me back then was about getting a quick fix of energy, a three-minute hit of adrenalin that would temporarily distract me from the humdrum reality of life. There were songs on In The City about love and dancing and being young; they always hit the spot. I loved the finality of ‘I’ve Changed my Address’ and Rick’s drumming on the Batman theme. I bopped about to ‘Art School’. The whole thing felt so alive.
But the title track was a new experience for me. Later on in life I heard Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan and Billy Bragg singing political songs, but at fourteen hearing a song which talked about social change turned on a light in my head. I knew that Paul was political and I’m sure a lot of working-class kids got their first insight into politics listening to this album.
The lyrics on ‘Away from the Numbers’ explored the idea of breaking away and taking control and freeing your mind and soul. I was well up for that but how I was going to make that happen, I had not the first clue. I had a terrible haircut, a big nose, no independent financial means and very little in the way of social skills. Who was going to let me break away and have control of anything?
Paul seemed to have such fierce individualism; I had nowhere near that level of conviction in anything. I wouldn’t go as
