Hi Sreyashi
Good topic.
For me it has always been there. Making music was and is, as essential as breathing. Just like breathing it happens automatically, my default setting.
As a kid my mum sang opera with the Scottish National Opera and the BBC, and she taught piano. So at 4 I started learning the piano. Singing was always there, so I am not sure when that started! After seeing Yehudi Menuhin on TV I was determined to learn to play like that, so at 7 I started learning how to play he violin. My mother rolled my sisters and I out to perform at social events, and I picked up the performance bug there, although even at 7 I was already performing through clubs etc.
Although I kept playing both piano and violin, over the years my interest became focused on how music was composed and arranged. I started to learn other instruments so that I could understand them, and How they all worked together. Not only that, it was a challenge and it was fun. I sang with a choir and took part in the odd competition, I started to learn how to play drums and played in a competition pipe band. In our grade we won national and world titles. I learned how to play the bagpipes and played in another pipe band. All along I tried every instrument I could get my hands on, bugle, trumpet, clarinet, viola, cello... I tortured them all lol
I am not sure exactly when I started writing. I know I wrote lyrics, and I know I wrote music from a very young age, but writing full songs, I am not sure? 12? 13? When I was maybe 14 or 15 I took up the guitar. My world transformed. Until that point, unless writing my own melodies, I had worked almost exclusively with the notes written by someone else, represented on a manuscript, with me interpreting and performing those notes. When I started playing the guitar I stepped away into improvisation, and playing purely by ear. I remember working on mainly rock music with some folk thrown in for good measure. Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple was many a guitarist's first notes. I remember working out Stairway To Heaven, note by note, and playing it on a terrible acoustic with a ridiculously high action. My guitar became my main instrument, saving for an electric guitar, exploring blues, heavy rock and heavy metal, funk, jazz, folk... just music every day. Soon I was learning bass guitar, mandolin, even didgeridoo! lol learning circular breathing for that wax a challenge believe me! I started playing in bands, people I knew through school, playing school gigs etc. Good fun at the time, but also good experience.
My sisters both played and sang. My eldest sister sang in choirs, was a concert pianist who took part in pretty prestigious competitions. My other sister was always more interested in pop culture, Elton John being on of her favourites. Both sisters would duet on piano and singing. They were certainly an influence and through them I experienced pop and Rick music much earlier than I would have as a single child.
Similarly, I had an aunt and uncle who loved music. In the 60s my uncle had become a huge Dylan fan. He used to go to gigs in and around London and record them on his 4 track recorder. The earliest Hendrix gigs, The Who, Yardbirds etc. He even had a recording of a jam between Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison lol He has so many rare recordings, in many cases the only recordings of events and gigs in the late 60s and 70s Freak scene, mainly in London and the South of England, but elsewhere too. I am not sure exactly when they started going to festivals and gigs in the USA. Nowadays they still travel to gigs all over the UK and the odd Dylan gig in the USA. (Years later the BBC made a documentary about one of his recordings, a "lost" recording of Bob Dylan in London). Both he and my aunt were friends of Sandy Denny (Fairport Convention) and Roy Harper, and they were involved in the vibrant folk rock scene in Britain in the late 60s and 70s. My uncle ran a Bob Dylan fanzine for many years and he still travels all over the world to see them.
I mention my mother, sisters, aunt and uncle, because my family were a huge influence, helping to fuel and nurture my passion and interest in music. Fair to say that my interest in music was quite diverse, and that I was far more interested in how music was created than anything else. I got jobs working in recording studios, live events, played in bands sometimes professional, some times semi professionally. I rode motorcycles, had long hair, partied like there was no tomorrow, but music was always front and centre. One band had quite a large following, got loads of press coverage, played festivals and large gigs was on the brink of being signed, for it to fall away as the band imploded after a few years of playing together. A common enough story. I did session work too, that was fun.
It should be said that, what little regard I had for wanting to be a celebrity died away at this time. It had never been a huge motivational factor, but for a variety of reasons, mainly being hugely uncomfortable with press intrusion on my life (even at that minuscule level of celebrity) and being recognised going down the street, became something I didn't want. So here I was, a musician and writer, who loved performing, wanted to play bigger gigs and record my music... but I hated celebrity, what it stood for. I wanted attention for my music, but no attention for me lol. A conundrum!
Then I injured my spine. I went from playing gigs several times a week to lying on a floor for 18 months and what was to become decades of pain and extended periods of incapacity, operations, stacks of pain killers, injections, hundreds of hours of physiotherapy. I could no longer reliably perform. I couldn't work as a roadie, or sound crew, or even as a recording engineer. So I went to night school, got the qualifications I needed to get to University, studied and achieved an honours degree in Electronics with Music, which was mainly about designing music tech, but also using it, composition etc. I played in bands all through University, and I honed my music making skills and applying my creativity to technology and the business of music. It was a mind expanding period for me, literally. I played on TV, live gigs on radio, did my share of TV and magazine interviews, Fun years.
By now I had built a lot of experience of music marketing and promotion, learned a lot about the making of an artist, managing bands, recording and producing, even the kinds of music deals around, and the ways that the music business worked, how it ticked over, common strategies etc. I had seen bands that worked inrehearsal studios beside us, go from nothing to the top of the charts in the UK and the USA, and had spent a lot of time talking with people behind the scenes, including band managers and entertainments lawyers, publishers and Record Label staff.
I started work with Motorola while my musical focus turned towards what I could do at home, recording using computers, electronica, and towards the fledgling internet as a great way to meet and work with other musicians. I was producing local bands and started working with a female singer. We made chill out tracks, were getting featured on Radio One in the UK by Pete Tong and others, we were meant to be tour support for Groove Armada, things were happening again.... and then my back went again. The old injury came back hard, another few operations... and while lying on my back, still full of creativity, frustrated as hell that I should have spent so much time learning all these skills, and they were just going to evaporate away, as if they never happened, when I came up with the idea for Songstuff. If I couldn't do things myself, I wanted to help others, pass on what I had learned. The internet was still pretty new. Google didn't exist! I still made music in my home studio, I still worked with other musicians, but gradually Songstuff took over. I really enjoyed helping other musicians, connecting with people, learning about the internet, how it was used and how it could benefit bands. I transferred over a lot of skills developed in the real world for the old music business, and tried to bypass issues that the internet was throwing up, investigated what worked and what didn't and how successful bands used different strategies on and off the internet, and how they combined the two. Another mind expanding period! I added a community onto Songstuff, and the rest they say is history.
I have met a load of famous people over the years, even at a very young age, and was aware just how ordinary they are (out with their sometimes exceptional, sometimes little better than average talent) We put them on a pedestal. Some remain good, untainted, others believe their own hype and really are not that nice. I've learned many lessons along the way, but amongst the most important lessons related to success, I would say are these:
Always give attention to detail
Be creative in all that you do (music, image, business, everything)
Work to as high as standard as you can at all times
Work hard
Work harder
Work harder still
That is the essence of the work ethic that is required to make original, engaging music you can feel proud of... no matter if it is as a professional, semi-professional or enthusiastic amateur. Happy accidents occur rarely.
Everything else is just noise.
A long post (as if I am not known for them lol) but on a bright note, I didn't write an entire book)
Hopefully it adds to your picture of who I am, and maybe even what Songstuff is. Why Songstuff is.
Cheers
John
