between Van and The Chieftains.
Van, who was born in Belfast, had been an Irish icon for more than thirty years since he first came to prominence in the group Them, with whom he recorded classics such as ‘Here Comes the Night’ and, more significantly, ‘Gloria’. His most famous song, ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ was his first solo single in 1967. He became a master of soulful blues, releasing a string of acclaimed albums.
While he had never deserted his Irish background in his songs, Irish Heartbeat was a return to more traditional music – albeit overlaid with Van’s inimitable vocal style. Three tracks in particular resonated with young Ed, who was seven when the album was released in 1998. He loved the folk songs ‘Carrickfergus’, ‘On Raglan Road’ and, most of all, the elegiac title track. Ed has yet to release these songs himself but acknowledged, ‘Van Morrison is a key influence in the music that I make.’ He paid homage to Carrickfergus by including a reference to it in ‘Galway Girl’ as well as mentioning ‘Van the Man’ in his hit, ‘Shape of You’.
And if you had been lucky enough to be drinking in the back room of the Cobden Arms in Mornington Crescent in 2010, you might have heard nineteen-year-old Ed enjoying a pint with musician friends and singing these favourites at the top of his voice. That, though, was many years in the future and the last thing on the mind of a quiet schoolboy still trying to conquer his stammer. It was time to do something about that.
3
Ed was trying all sorts of things to help with his stutter. He had coaching sessions with a speech therapist and took a variety of different homeopathic remedies but nothing seemed to make much difference. He didn’t have the worst stammer in the world but it did become more pronounced when he was excited and rushing to search for the right word. Interestingly, it didn’t affect him when he was singing in the choir or in his dad’s car. But conversation remained difficult.
When Ed was nine, Eminem was one of the biggest acts in the charts. Rap music was selling millions of records and Eminem was at the forefront of its popularity. When he released The Marshall Mathers LP – his real name – in May 2010, it became the fastest-selling album of all time in the US. More importantly, perhaps, his work was well received by the critics, who compared his autobiographical songs to those of Bob Dylan.
In Framlingham, this had passed John Sheeran by as he continued to play his old favourites. His brother, Ed’s uncle Jim, was more enlightened about contemporary music and told him that Eminem was the next Dylan. John was always receptive to new ideas across the artistic spectrum so he went ahead and bought the album for his younger son even though he had never listened to it and had no idea that it contained controversial and sexually explicit lyrics. Ed would later describe rap music as storytelling.
Ed had a great capacity to absorb things – he had the musical equivalent of a photographic memory. He set about learning the songs on the album, including all the bad language: ‘I learned every word of it, back to front, by the age of ten.’ That would invariably be the case with music he liked. He had an enviable talent for working out how to play songs just by listening to them.
He discovered that rap was the best therapy for his speech. In 2015, while receiving an award at the New York benefit gala for the American Institute for Stuttering, Ed spoke about being indebted to Eminem: ‘He raps very fast and very melodically, and very percussively, and it helped me get rid of the stutter.’
Ed’s remedy was not unique: many young people used singing as the best form of therapy – although not all of them chose The Marshall Mathers LP. Ed’s favourite track from it, and the one that had most influence on him, was the UK number one ‘Stan’. The song combined two elements that are very important in Ed’s music: a catchy melody line, which was sung by Dido, and a poetic, rhythmic rap by a master of the craft. Ed included the song in his Desert Island Discs and a separate list of his all-time favourites, which he gave to Rolling Stone magazine.
The song, which told of an obsessive fan’s suicide, gradually builds into a rage, then takes it back a step for the Dido chorus, which was basically a sample from her hit ‘Thank You’. Ed enjoyed its contrast of different emotions.
Even when so young, Ed seemed able to appreciate different musical genres. He still loved Van Morrison but now he was discovering new artists for himself. He noticed that Dr Dre, the producer of The Marshall Mathers LP, had a new album coming out entitled 2001, much of which featured Eminem. Ed, who earned pocket money from odd jobs, including washing cars, made sure he bought it, then widened his collection to include Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Tupac, who had been killed in a drive-by shooting in 1996, and the Notorious B.I.G., who had been shot dead in a similar fashion a year later. Hip-hop music seemed wild and exciting to a boy soon to start high school in a small Suffolk town.
Ed was fortunate in that his older cousin Jethro had similar tastes, which meant there was someone to appreciate his new music on family holidays. Jethro, who was brought up in Bristol, had been inspired to become a rap artist when he heard Tupac’s hit ‘Dear Mama’, a tribute to his mother whom he loved dearly despite her addiction to crack cocaine. Jethro was already fifteen when Ed first discovered hip hop but over the years the two worked closely together on each other’s songs, particularly when Ed was still learning his craft in Framlingham.
Tupac’s stories were grittier than those of Hollywood A-lister and rapper Will Smith, but Ed had become a big fan of the latter, too, when he discovered that The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was on TV after The Simpsons on a Sunday night. He lost little time in learning Will’s theme-tune rap. He loved it and is liable to drop a verse randomly into a song at one of his concerts.
Curing his stutter undoubtedly enhanced Ed’s confidence but he still had his problem eardrum. That was finally operated on when he was eleven, which was obviously a relief, although he would continue to have problems with it in the coming years.
While Eminem undoubtedly influenced Ed’s choice of more contemporary music, his love affair with the guitar was triggered by an old master on TV. He watched Eric Clapton performing ‘Layla’ at Party at the Palace, the June 2002 concert to celebrate the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in the gardens of Buckingham Palace.
The concert became famous for Brian May playing ‘God Save the Queen’ on the palace roof, but Eric was the highlight for Ed. He had slipped unassumingly onstage after an unlikely collection of Emma Bunton, Atomic Kitten and Cliff Richard had joined Brian Wilson to perform ‘Good Vibrations’. He commanded the space, dressed immaculately in an expensive dark suit and playing a guitar that was itself a work of art. The renowned New York graffiti artist John ‘Crash’ Matos had painted one of Eric’s signature Stratocasters and presented it to him as a gift. Eric was delighted and commissioned others from the artist, who had made his name spray-painting trains across the city. The guitars became known as ‘Crashocasters’ and Eric played the original on a world tour. The big video screens to the side of the stage zoomed in on his hands as they moved nimbly around the musical work of art.
‘Layla’ is an iconic rock anthem that Eric has played thousands of times since 1970, when the track first featured on an album by his band Derek and the Dominos. An intensely passionate composition about love, the song changes halfway through into a much more melodic number that features a long, melancholic guitar solo.
Ed was spellbound by the whole magnificent performance – the majestic riff, the guitar and the sheer presence of Eric. ‘I was like “Wow. That was so cool. I want to play that.”’ Even at eleven, once Ed had decided to do something, he did it. Fortunately his parents would
