Richard was hoping to persuade Ed to follow his brother and join the school orchestra, but soon discovered he was persevering with the cello on sufferance. Ed was relieved to give it up and concentrate on the guitar. He could often be found in one of the small practice rooms in the music department working on a new song. Richard explains, ‘I think the school gave him the chance to be creative, to have the time and space to play and compose and perform.’ His passion for his music was all-consuming.
Ed was never going to match Matthew’s academic dedication. Even Imogen acknowledged that her younger son was not an exam person and struggled to apply himself to read music properly. In many ways, though, Matthew was the more eccentric of the two talented brothers. Richard acknowledges that Matthew was very creative as well as academic: ‘He had some quite avant-garde ideas.’ One Easter he composed ‘Broken Pavements’ for the school concert at St Michael’s: ‘It was a very atmospheric piece. I can still remember the sunlight pouring through the great east window at the church illuminating the players. It was a magical moment.’
As teenagers, the two Sheeran boys were totally different. They had their own groups of friends and just did their own thing. For a time, Keith Krykant taught Matthew as well: ‘He particularly wanted to know about jazz improvisations. He was very mathematical in his music and was very interested in theory. He wanted to know how the notes added up mathematically to give a certain chord.
‘He wanted to consolidate some of the things he was doing on the piano and understand how they related to the guitar. He used to compose on a computer and had a much more mechanical approach to that than Ed, who was more interested in getting a song out with a rhythm and a melody.’ In his own way, Matthew was just as ambitious as Ed: he wanted to establish himself as a classical composer. The two boys never fell out but, as Keith remembers with a smile, ‘They never used to speak to each other in the house.’
Keith was still trying to teach Ed some music theory but he was fighting a losing battle. Every week he would arrive at the house with a careful plan for the lesson with ‘Edward’ – as he always called him, just as his parents did. He explains, ‘I would decide that we would take a piece of music – pure music notation – and I would explain to him how we would get that on to a guitar. It is quite tedious. And we maybe would get five minutes into the theory and he wasn’t really interested in it. He would suddenly say, “Oh, Keith, do you want to hear a song that I wrote last night at one o’clock in the morning?” And I would say, “OK.” So he would start playing this song. And ask me, you know, “What do you think of this?” And I might suggest that he put something extra in just to bridge the chords – harmony, if you like. And if he liked it, he would light up and go, “Wow, that really works now. Keith, you’re a genius!”’
Ed was showing great maturity for his age in what he was listening to and what he wanted to play. His father’s taste had rubbed off on him. He still wanted to enjoy his favourite hip-hop artists but, post Damien Rice, he was developing more interest in singer–songwriters such as Ray LaMontagne, whose debut album, Trouble, in 2004, had showcased his distinctive vocal style, as well as all-time greats, including Paul Simon. He spent an entire lesson with Keith learning how to play the famous Simon and Garfunkel hit ‘Sound of Silence’.
‘You could see that he liked songs with strong melodies,’ observes Keith. ‘Most of the kids at the time were listening to The X Factor, which had just started, and following that, but he was appreciating other things.’
Another of Ed’s characteristics that served him well as a teenager was his lack of fear. He was appreciative but not overawed by the occasion. He took meeting Preston Reed in his stride. On another memorable occasion John and Imogen had arranged a dinner party where the guests included the local vicar. Keith and his wife were there: ‘Edward sang a ballad in the front room in front of the vicar and everybody else in a very, very confident and emotional way. It was very mature because he was only fourteen. It was extraordinary. Most of the children I teach won’t ever sing or play in front of their mum and dad. In fact they will play in front of anyone else but their mum and dad. But his mum and dad were there and he sang this song and completely held the audience – except the vicar, who can’t stand guitar music.’
The priest might not have appreciated being in the audience for a concert at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in January 2006. The modest Sunday-night gig would change the course of Ed’s life as a performer. He and his dad had driven to London to see Nizlopi, an unconventional duo who had just had a number-one hit with their ‘JCB Song’. He was transfixed, though, by the opening act, an Irish singer–songwriter called Gary Dunne.
Gary used a Boss Loop Station and it was the first time Ed had witnessed how exciting that could be live. Gary built a song that filled the popular venue even though he was alone. He performed five numbers finishing with his ‘Amerikan Folk Song’, which Ed singled out as the track that had made him realise looping was the way forward for him to create his own individual sound. The musician plays a few bars, then has the loop station play it back while he lays another set of chords over the top. This can be done multiple times building layers of sound. In other words, you become your own band.
Gary did his best at performing the often thankless task of being a supporting act when the audience were standing around chatting and having a pint. He made a point of plugging his album, Twenty Twenty Fiction, which was on sale at the merchandise desk in the foyer. He also announced that he did house concerts, if anyone was interested.
Ed couldn’t stop talking to his dad about the loop pedal so John wrote to Gary saying, ‘My son absolutely loved what you did,’ and inviting him to Framlingham for Ed’s fifteenth-birthday party in a few weeks’ time.
‘House concerts’ were part of Gary’s musical world. They enabled him to earn extra pennies when he was between tours, further spread the word about his music and hopefully sell some CDs. He quoted John his standard deal at the time: ‘It was accommodation, a few hundred quid and a six-pack of Guinness. They were simple times.’
The week before his birthday, there was a tragic turn of events. One of his school friends, Stuart Dines, was killed in an horrific coach crash in Germany. Stuart, who was three months younger than Ed, was one of a group of pupils from Thomas Mills on a half-term trip to the Austrian ski resort of Fugen. On the autobahn near Cologne, the double-decker coach got a puncture and had to pull over onto the hard shoulder. A lorry carrying metal rods careered into the stationary vehicle.
Stuart was killed when a piece of metal from the lorry smashed through one of the coach windows.
Ed was not on the trip, but he knew Stuart well and they had been round to each other’s houses. Stuart lived in the nearby town of Woodbridge and his elder brother and sister went to school there. His parents, however, chose Thomas Mills for Stuart because he had ADHD and they felt it would better suit their son. That proved to be the case and, just like Ed, he was a happy and popular classmate and not at all an outsider. His proud father Robert recalls, ‘Stuart was very outgoing and if anyone was a bit shy, they could latch on to Stuart. He would talk to anybody. He had so much energy.’ He also shared Ed’s gift of being able to memorise complicated lyrics, which would leave his father wondering why he couldn’t do the same with his schoolwork.
The school flag was at half mast when everyone returned after half-term. The headmaster at the time, Colin Hirst, who had faced the difficult task of telling Stuart’s parents what had happened, said that the children were ‘devastated and shocked’.
Stuart’s father Robert remembers, ‘Ed was very, very upset, like a lot of the children.’
Ed had to come to terms with the death of someone he saw practically every day. He resolved to write a song about his feelings. He composed, he said, ‘whilst I got round to actually accepting it.’
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