The Sound of Music

A 5 to 8 minute read

In the story titled ‘Beautiful Bikers’ I mentioned a new friend at school, his older brother the biker, and how a motley bunch of greasy hairy blokes made me feel welcome and safe for the first time in my fifteen year life. Well, we are back in that very same house, after I’ve finished my cup of tea with the gang of bikers in the kitchen, and my new friend has brought me upstairs to his big brother’s bedroom.

My own bedroom is neat and tidy, with chests of drawers painted in magnolia gloss, and a Liverpool FC poster taped to the wall above my bed, which has sheets and an eiderdown all tucked in at the sides. This is not my bedroom. The floor is covered in shirts, jeans, underpants, and jackets. The air smells smoky and sweet, oily and perfumed. But not like my mum’s perfume, this smells like petrol and roses. There are two and a half pairs of motorbike boots on the bed, which appears to be a bare mattress with a sleeping bag thrown on top of it. The wall is absolutely covered in posters of motorbikes, bands, and scary looking girls with bare breasts and tiny little denim shorts. Some of the posters feature a motorbike and a girl with bare breasts and tiny denim shorts. It is both utterly terrifying and the most wonderful room I have ever seen.

My friend flicks through a stack of records, and pulls out an album with a black sleeve. He slides the inner paper sleeve out, removes the vinyl disc, and holds it by the edge between his fingertips with something approaching reverance. He lowers it onto a turntable I hadn’t noticed among the bottles and beer cans, and there’s an indistinct hum when he flicks a switch on the side. Won’t your brother mind you playing his records I ask. “Nah, he’s fine with it” my friend replies.

This is a lie.

He has placed the album so the A side is facing down, which is weird to me. Why wouldn’t you play it from the beginning? I always play my Abba Arrival and my Night Flight to Venus albums from the beginning. Well, I used to, but I’m getting a bit sick of them if I’m honest. Then, even weirder, he doesn’t place the needle into the lead-in groove, he drops it about two thirds of the way in. “Listen to this” he says as he turns a large silver knob on the front of the turntable all the way to the right.

And then … well, nothing much actually. Just someone strumming a guitar. It’s a nice enough tune, a bit quiet, but it’s just a guitar on its own, plinky plinky plinky. And it goes on for ages, so I open my mouth to say how lovely it is, or something similarly embarrassing, but my friend just raises one finger into the air in the internationally recognised sign of “Uh uh, nope, don’t say it!”.

Ooh, and now another guitar has joined in. Things are getting a bit louder and more interesting. There’s a tsh-tsh-tsh-tsh thing going on too, which I have absolutely no idea is the drummer keeping the beat gently on his cymbal. Oh, but the guitar has suddenly gone a bit jiggly wiggly, like an Irish jig. But it doesn’t last too long before someone starts singing in a thin, reedy, high voice about somebody who is missing. I tap my foot along now, as he sings something something something and then rhymes missing with wishing. And then beeeee myyyyyy fre-e-end. Plinky plinky plinky plink, beeeee myyyyyy fre-e-end.

DA-DA-DUM DA-DUM and oh … my … good … god!

Now there is a deep deep bass that’s making my ribs vibrate and the twangy plinky guitar has switched to a heavy blues riff and it sounds like there are five guitars all trying to make my ears bleed and the rhythm is just so fucking catchy like you’ve heard it a million times before the very first time you hear it and I am sitting on the floor smiling like I’ve just escaped from the nearest asylum and I can hear someone laughing like that same lunatic and I realise the person laughing is me.

Ten minutes later, after several time signature changes and, if I’m honest, quite a longwinded instrumental bit at the end, Status Quo finish performing ‘Forty-Five Hundred Times’ and the stereo makes its chrr-pop, chrr-pop, chrr-pop noise as the needle has nowhere left to go. I am overwhelmed and speechless. I had absolutely no idea music like this existed. You’ve already heard about my musical education thus far and I’m not about to repeat it. My friend looks at me, but I still can’t speak. He smiles, understanding completely, and then introduces me to Roll Over Lay Down, Caroline, Wild Side of Life, and Down Down.

And then his big brother comes charging into the room like a smelly leather Nazgul, throws my friend across the floor, and starts beating him around the arms and face with a motorbike boot he’s grabbed off the bed, completely out of sync with John Coghlan’s thunderous drum beat. I did mention earlier that “He’s fine with it” was a lie.

But I left that house a changed boy. I felt, I don’t know, more grown up now. I’d drunk tea with a gang of bikers, and discovered loud guitar driven rock music.

There was no going back from this.