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 invariably back him up.
Ed was in danger of always being half a step behind his elder brother, Matthew, who played the violin and continued to progress as a young classical musician. Ed had started taking cello lessons at school and his parents initially wanted him to tread a traditional musical progression of passing exams. Ed went along with it, but even at eleven he saw a different future for himself. He explained in the book A Visual Journey that classical music didn’t inspire, excite or do anything for him whatsoever.
Instead, two days after watching Clapton, he walked into a pawnbroker’s in Ipswich with £30 in his pocket and came out with a black Stratocaster copy. From that moment, Ed spent the majority of his leisure time shut away in his bedroom playing guitar. For the first few weeks, it was just ‘Layla’. One can only imagine what the rest of the Sheeran household thought, hearing its famous riff played badly again and again … and again.
His parents decided he needed proper lessons and found a guitar teacher, Graham Littlejohn, who played with a local band and taught Ed to widen his repertoire. Under Graham’s guidance, he learned to play rock classics, including ‘A Million Miles Away’, a thrilling piece by the celebrated Irish guitarist Rory Gallagher.
Just a month after seeing Eric Clapton on TV, Ed went to his first live concert. He persuaded his dad to take him to see the enduring American punk band Green Day when they brought their Pop Disaster tour to Wembley Arena in July 2002. He was eleven, and due to start high school in a couple of months. It was the first of many occasions when John Sheeran would accompany his son – in fact, he would be with him on every step of his musical journey. Many of Ed’s friends were fans of the band, who were one of the biggest-selling acts in the world, and going along to see them in London earned him plenty of bragging rights.
Ed was pretty much a guitar geek by the time he started at Thomas Mills High School in September 2002, but not in an irritating way. He wasn’t a loner and found it easier to make friends than he had in the past, especially if they were keen on music, too. Many of the mates he already had, including James Mee, moved to Framlingham College and inevitably they lost touch. James, who went on to become head boy, was more academically minded than Ed and achieved nine A*s at GCSE.
Thomas Mills was in the town, meaning Ed could walk to school – which was a bonus. His first form teacher was Georgie Ross, a charismatic young woman who was also in charge of drama. She noticed Ed among the new boys and girls right from the start, not just because of his striking ginger hair and glasses but also because he had brought his guitar with him on the first day. She recalls, ‘It was his passion. That was the first thing I noticed about him. We had a getting-to-know-you exercise and he talked about his guitar. He was very funny and endearing, a jovial sort of cheeky chappie.’
Ed has never explained why, having been to fee-paying private schools, he moved on to attend a state secondary. He has intimated that he found Brandeston Hall sporty and competitive, adding, ‘The other kids had a lot of money. I didn’t enjoy it.’ The huge fees at Framlingham College may also have had something to do with it. His parents’ business was successful but was at the mercy of supply and demand, and there were no guarantees that they could afford the five-figure sum needed to keep two boys at public school for the next five years.
Ed has hinted that he was bullied during his school years but he has never been specific about when and where. He accepted that he was a ‘weird-looking kid’ and that everyone suffers ‘a bit of bullying at school’. A particularly unpleasant boy threw a milkshake over him from a car while he waited at the bus stop. Such treatment motivated Ed to beat them at life.
Thomas Mills had a growing reputation as a school that encouraged children to make the most of their talents, particularly in the arts. The school dates back to the eighteenth century but was established as a comprehensive in 1979 by the merger of the old Mills Grammar and Framlingham Modern schools. Matthew was already being noticed by the time his younger brother joined him. He had been praised for his crystal-clear singing of ‘Pie Jesu’ at an end-of-term prizegiving. Both boys were fortunate that they arrived at the school when it was going through a golden period under the then headmaster David Floyd. He is one of the unsung heroes of the Ed Sheeran story in that he gave Ed and others the breathing space to develop their talents.
Georgie Ross observes, ‘There was a sense of pride about being at the school. I think the majority of the children knew they were sort of lucky to be at this school. David had a real vision of what he wanted the school to be – an outstanding school. And he managed to convince us all to go on this journey with him.’ Ofsted agreed, declaring, ‘This is a good school where pupils make good progress and reach high standards in an atmosphere of civilised collaboration.’
Ed seemed equally at ease with boys and girls. His parents’ close friends, Dan Woodside and Wendy Baker, had two daughters. Lauren and Martha were of similar ages to the Sheeran boys, and the families spent many sociable Sundays together. Dan was a decorative artist and Wendy an artist and art teacher, so they shared John and Imogen’s creative tastes. Dan had worked on major restoration projects, including the ceiling at the entrance to the National Gallery, London, and the gilding of the Crimson Drawing Room at Windsor Castle.
Dan and Wendy had moved to the town a couple of years after their like-minded friends and turned their new home in Market Square into the Dancing Goat Café, which soon became a focal point for wiling away sunny afternoons. Ed and his new friends from Thomas Mills would gravitate there after school. He was always calling round on his own as well, to see if Lauren was coming out. In recognition of their families’ long-standing friendship, Ed would give Dan and Wendy a gold record of his first album +, which now hangs proudly on the café wall.
Ed had a close circle of friends but was never constrained by Framlingham. The regular trips to Ireland and London, combined with his mum and dad’s sociability, had broadened his horizons. John continued to extend his son’s musical education by taking him to concerts and he managed to get tickets for a great night in April 2003, when Ed was twelve: they saw Paul McCartney in concert at Earl’s Court. The most famous name in pop played a mammoth set of thirty-seven songs that spanned his entire career, from the heyday of The Beatles, to Wings and his solo material. David Lister, writing in the Independent, observed that Paul dished up a generous two-and-a-half-hour set of classics with ‘such panache and emotion that it made the nerves tingle’. It was a tour de force and Ed decided that he preferred it to the Green Day gig.
Friends became used to Ed taking a guitar everywhere. By this time, he had a Faith, a decent-enough learning instrument. It was like a young child’s teddy bear: he was rarely seen without it. He showed precocious bravery when he took to the stage and played ‘Layla’ at his school’s spring charity concert. Inside, he wasn’t feeling too confident but he blossomed in front of an audience of several hundred people in the school hall. By then he had mastered the song, so playing it was second nature and, to his relief, he was warmly applauded: ‘It was fun. No one could have said a bad word, because I was so young and enthusiastic.’
At the end of his first summer term, Ed’s year went to a resort in Holland, which was very exciting as they would all be away from home for a week. John and Imogen were keen for their sons to have adventures that would take them away from the narrow confines of Framlingham. Naturally, Ed took his acoustic guitar with him. On the coach he was determined to give everyone a song. His art teacher, Nicky Sholl, recalls that they asked for volunteers to go up and do a turn: ‘Of course Ed went up and sang a song and then went back to his seat. And then he came back and sang one again. And everyone was like “Get him off the microphone!” It was very funny.’
He was
