by Sharp, Janis
Gary stood up in his cot one day, looked at us and said clearly, ‘Mammy, Daddy.’ He was about ten months old and from that day on his speech came on leaps and bounds.
Charlie made a brilliant dad. He had an amazing and very natural Glasgow sense of humour, like Billy Connolly, and he made everyone laugh.
Before Gary was born I had a dream about a baby with a mischievous face, auburn hair and freckles, wearing a nappy and running through puddles. I told my family about the dream but voiced doubt that any baby of mine would have auburn hair and freckles as I had dark hair.
Sometimes I feel as though life is scripted in some unfathomable way and then occasionally, just occasionally, little snatches of this great narrative are revealed in a dream or a moment of déjà vu.
When Gary was born he had downy black hair and blue eyes, but his eye colour changed from blue to green and as time passed his hair became a beautiful shade of auburn.
So gradual was the change that it was only when he was about eighteen months old that I recognised Gary as being the baby from my dream.
• • •
From the age of two or three, Gary was obsessed by space and used to lie in bed beside me, talking about the stars as we gazed up at the night sky through the bedroom window. He wanted to know the names of the planets and how far away they were, and seemed to grasp concepts of space that eluded me. He had an unusual way of seeing but often made an odd kind of sense. When he was about five years old he said, ‘Mummy, was Noah’s Ark a spaceship?’
‘Well, I suppose it might have been, I hadn’t really thought about it.’
‘Well, do you think Noah just took seeds of all the different animals so that he could grow them later? Because there wouldn’t have been enough room for all of the animals, would there?’
My marriage to Charlie drifted into friendship and it seemed that my mum was right. Many people who marry at such a young age often change so much that their lives take them down separate paths, causing the marriage to break down.
Gary was five years old when we separated but his dad, who is now happily married to Jeanna, has remained close to Gary and is a major part of his life. Jeanna and Charlie have three sons together and Charlie also has a daughter, giving Gary four siblings. Charlie was a huge part of my life and knowing he is happy makes me happy.
I met Wilson when Gary was six years old and quickly discovered that as well as being a musician, Wilson was into space, UFOs and science fiction. He used to live near Bonnybridge, a place that’s often referred to as the UFO capital of the world. Naturally, Gary liked this idea and quizzed Wilson constantly on this subject.
We moved to London in 1972, where there were more work opportunities for musicians and artists like Wilson. There was already serious interest in Wilson’s band Aegis, and a producer of note had arranged to record them in a top London studio.
We arrived in Muswell Hill in north London; a friend from Glasgow named Dougie Thomson was renting a flat there and we stayed with him for a few nights.
Fate can be quite amazing sometimes. While in Glasgow Dougie, who was a bass player, had once told us that he intended to quit his band, The Beings, and travel to London to get a job with either of his two favourite bands – The Alan Bown Set and Supertramp.
Dougie Thomson arrived in London and had been there for only weeks when he joined The Alan Bown Set; he had the advantage of knowing all their songs inside out. As if that wasn’t amazing enough, a short time later Dougie went for an audition with his other favourite band, Supertramp, and again he knew all the songs, played brilliantly, got the job and became a key member of Supertramp.
It was coming up to Christmas and Wilson and I were searching for a place to live. We were standing outside Highgate tube station when a young guy with long hair and a cockney accent came up to Wilson and said, ‘Hi man, I’m Johnnie Allen, we were at school together. What are you doing here?’
‘We’re looking for a flat.’
‘Come back to ours, everyone is away on tour and you can stay there.’
Johnnie was working as the road manager for a band named Uriah Heep. He was just about to go off to Italy on tour, so we happily accepted and went with him back to the large Edwardian flat in Muswell Hill. Johnnie was pleased I was there as he thought I could cook Christmas dinner, including a large turkey he’d bought. He looked so disappointed when I told him I was a vegetarian and couldn’t bring myself to cook the turkey.
The flat had lots of large rooms with high ceilings and French doors that led onto a beautiful garden. Johnnie told us we could stay as long as we wanted. He then left to go on tour and every time someone from one of the bands arrived home we had to explain who we were, which we dreaded as it was so embarrassing.
Eventually James Litherland, whose flat it actually was, arrived home. Jim had played and sung with the band Colosseum, and luckily he recognised Wilson as they had played at some of the same venues. Jim was kind and friendly and said it was fine for us to stay there until we found a place of our own, which we did very shortly afterwards.
Jim has remained a lifelong and very dear friend, and is one of the kindest and most caring people we have ever met, as is his wife Helen. Their son James Blake is now making his own mark on the music world.
The Vietnam War was on everyone’s mind at that time and musicians like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young played their part in exposing its brutality and helping to end it.
Through the efforts of people such as John Pilger, the photo of a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl named Phan Thi Kim Phuc running naked down the street, her body burning with napalm, was broadcast. The worldwide protests against the war and the outrage of the American people in reaction to this image were what finally led to the end of US involvement in the Vietnam War in August 1973.
• • •
In 1974 Wilson and I got married in Wood Green to the music of Pink Floyd – an edited version of ‘Us and Them’, extending the instrumental to last throughout the ceremony before David Gilmour’s voice came in on the verse.
Wilson looked every inch the musician with his long hair and d’Artagnan-style moustache. An excited Gary looked beyond cute and my mum had travelled down from Glasgow to be with us.
I love London. I’ve loved it since the day we arrived here. I love the buildings, the history and the fact that when you stand in Westminster Abbey you are surrounded by the spirit of so many great figures you were taught about in school.
We continued to live in Muswell Hill and Gary attended Muswell Hill Primary School. One day while sitting at the kitchen table Gary asked us when the world was going to end and we reassured him that it would be around for a very long time. He was obsessed with the end of the world and kept pressing us for a date, and was agitated and upset that, instead of telling him when, we were trying to reassure him that it wouldn’t be ending until long after we were all gone.
Gary then asked if I was going to die one day and I told him yes, everyone dies sometime. He dissolved into tears. He then asked if Wilson was going to die, if his dad was going to die and if his grandma was going to die, and he cried more and more when I told him again that everyone dies sometime but that it wouldn’t happen until we were very old, which would not be for a very, very long time.
No matter how much I tried to comfort him, Gary was inconsolable. He missed his dad and wanted us all to be together; Charlie eventually moved to London to work and met his new wife Jeanna, which was great for Gary as he then had everyone he loved around him.
Although Gary was only six years old he had already been taught fractions and some French at Dunard Street School in Glasgow, and had started reading at the age of three. When he started at Muswell Hill Primary School the class was being given counters to learn how to count and Jack and Jill books to read – Gary was bored as the education seemed to be years behind his previous school. Although I was surprised at this, I quickly realised that the school excelled in English and was very good at giving children confidence in th
emselves and encouraging them to develop good communication and social skills, something Gary needed help with.
Gary became restless and would sometimes wander out of school and come home, and I’d have to take him back again. He liked being at home, as he felt he didn’t fit in at school and was becoming more and more unhappy there. Gary preferred the company of adults. His classmates bullied him for being ‘different’ and his Scottish accent also set him apart. There were basic skills and concepts that he found difficult to grasp and this was at odds with his obvious intelligence.
Gary had difficulty opening all sorts of things, but would take toys and locks apart to see how they worked – never putting them back together again. He also had difficulty following instructions and I used to think he was having us on. He would often get the wrong end of the stick because he took everything literally. His directness could also be misconstrued as rude and could sometimes make people feel awkward.
We only holidayed abroad once because of Gary’s fear of travel and resultant meltdown when he was too far from home.
His was a literal world, a world of logic; outside of that world chaos reigned.
CHAPTER 5
FIRST LOVE
I started learning to play the guitar just before I left Glasgow and was obsessed with it. Wilson bought me a Fender Telecaster which I used to play almost every day. After I moved to London I started rehearsing in a King’s Cross studio with other girls, who played bass and drums. Jackie Badger from Islington was the bass player, but we had difficulty finding a good female drummer until a young, slim, dark-haired American girl named Holly Beth Vincent walked in and played like a pro. This was our very first band and all three of us are still in regular contact with each other.
Holly eventually formed her own band, Holly and the Italians, and Mark Knopfler from Dire Straits became her boyfriend; a few of Dire Straits’ hits were songs that Mark wrote about Holly, including ‘Romeo and Juliet’.
My friend Jackie rang me one day and asked me to join a girl band she was in named Mother Superior, as they had lost their guitarist. I joined them on a tour of the UK; I had never played a gig before, but being thrown in at the deep end improved my guitar playing and, although daunting, it was an amazing experience.
I missed Gary and Wilson when I was touring and although the band was getting great reviews, when the tour ended I decided to leave.
A few months later I answered an ad in the Melody Maker for a female guitarist. Miles Copeland rang me up and arranged for me to go to his house for an audition. Unfortunately someone told me that it wasn’t a good idea and gave me lots of reasons, with regard to the music business in general, as to why I shouldn’t go, so I didn’t.
Miles Copeland rang back the next day to ask me why I hadn’t turned up, and I was embarrassed and apologetic, and annoyed with myself. Some time afterwards Miles Copeland put the girl band the Bangles together; when the band The Police were formed, it was Miles who managed them, with his brother Stewart Copeland as their drummer.
I started writing songs and, rather than playing separately, Wilson and I decided to form a band together – named Axess, then renamed Who’s George, and finally The Walk. We advertised for a vocalist but couldn’t find one that we were happy with, so I started singing the songs I wrote.
We toured universities and played all around London – at Dingwalls, the Rock Garden, Camden Palace (now KOKO) and the Venue, among others. Our songs were played on the radio and one of my songs scraped into the charts and we had the occasional TV appearance.
At one of our Camden Palace gigs it was announced that Elvis Presley was dead. Charlie, Gary’s dad, was there and was incredibly upset by this news. Everyone in the hall was in a state of shock and disbelief. A legend had died.
Gary had always loved music but wasn’t interested in playing any instruments until he was about seven years old, when one day Wilson and I were in another room working out a song I had written. We heard Gary banging discordantly on the piano, suddenly followed by grand chords being played in a classical style. Wondering who else was there, we peeked into the room and saw Gary playing the piano with both hands, utterly absorbed.
‘God, Wilson, can you hear that? That’s Gary. Where did that come from?’
There was our little Gary sitting playing these powerful, dramatic chords that left us with our mouths open as we peeked from behind the door. We were enthralled and didn’t want to leave, but we didn’t want to stay either, or he’d become aware of us and stop.
We moved home shortly after this and didn’t have a piano until a year or two later, so Gary used to go to a neighbour’s house to practise. One day she came to our door and I invited her in.
‘You really have to send Gary for piano lessons, Janis. I’ve been having lessons for years and without any guidance Gary can play much better than I can, so just think what he could do if he had lessons.’
Little did she realise that we had enough difficulty paying for our rent, let alone for piano lessons.
A year or two later we bought a grand piano from an auction for about £300. It cost us more to have it delivered than it did to buy. We spray-painted it white as I wanted it to look like John Lennon’s piano in the ‘Imagine’ video. Gary, about nine years old at the time, taught himself to play the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata in a matter of days.
The first time we heard Gary sing was another revelation. He had just come home from a local community group he attended in Crouch End called Kids & Co. They wanted the children to learn a song to perform, so Gary asked us if we’d record him singing. I said, ‘Right, what song do you want to do?’
‘“She’s Leaving Home”,’ Gary replied.
‘The Beatles song? You know it’s not the easiest song in the world to sing if you’ve never sung before.’
‘But that’s the one I want to do.’
‘OK,’ I said, thinking that this just wasn’t going to work. Gary used to wander around with headphones on and when he sang along it sounded so awful we’d decided that as far as singing was concerned he was tone deaf. So when Gary started to sing ‘She’s Leaving Home’ we were blown away by this deep, haunting voice that flowed effortlessly.
He was so modest and unassuming that no one realised what he was capable of. Unfortunately Gary was excluded from Kids & Co. shortly after that as he apparently didn’t listen to or wouldn’t follow their instructions. Becoming excluded from things was happening too often and would be difficult for anyone to take. I knew how hard Gary had been trying to fit in, to find his place in the world, but because he felt he was failing, he was becoming more and more isolated. To be so talented yet so undervalued by people seemed so damned unfair.
What is to ‘fit in’ anyway? To try to fit in is to try to become ordinary and be conditioned not to raise your head above the parapet or stand out from the crowd. If someone is ‘different’, why should they be expected to strive to become ordinary?
Encouraging people to manage their differences and to express themselves through whatever medium they can, and encouraging others to accept and value those differences, is surely what society should strive for. Whether that medium is music, art, computing, cooking, gardening or being good with animals, all are equally valid. We are all links in a chain that make our society what it is.
Not all who are different are talented, but many are. Michelangelo was by choice a solitary figure who slept in his clothes, shunned the company of his fellow man and had no interest in food other than as a necessity.
Great thinkers such as Isaac Newton did not fit in; the suffragettes were extraordinary women who rebelled in a way that shocked society.
If someone feels that they have never achieved anything, remind them that each and every one of us swam in the race for life and won that race, when competing with millions of other sperm, so each one of us is pretty amazing.
• • •
That Christmas we bought Gary his first computer, an Atari with a memory of 8K. There were no such thi
ngs as hard drives then – well, no affordable ones anyway. Gary was fascinated by the computer and could quite happily have sat in front of it day after day. I was worried about him being cooped up indoors, but he would say, ‘Mum, please don’t tell me I should go out to play.’
When, in the spring, a neighbour told me about a school summer camp in Wales, I persuaded Gary to try it for a week as I thought it would be good for him to be out in the fresh air with other children. I watched his little face at the window of the train as it sped into the distance. Gary looked so small and alone, even though the train was full of children headed for the camp. I worried that I had made a mistake but, despite the trauma of the journey, the camp was a success. He loved the woods and the campfire, and met a young girl named Rachel Glastonbury. A few summer camps later I received a letter telling me that Gary was now excluded as they didn’t have the time to deal with him. However, he and Rachel remained close and continued seeing each other – she became Gary’s first love.
Rachel’s brother Dan played various instruments and was gentle and vulnerable; a few years later he took his own life at a time when he felt unable to cope. Rachel was very close to her brother and his death took a huge emotional toll on her.
Wilson and I were still pursuing our own musical careers; I was working on combining melodies with the power of rock. Peter Vince, one of the senior figures at Abbey Road Studios, liked some of my songs and arranged for us to record them there. In the Abbey Road canteen we met Paul and Linda McCartney with their baby boy, James, and their occasional babysitter, our friend Josie Betan, who also worked in Abbey Road. Paul and Linda invited Wilson and me over to their table to see the baby but we declined as we had a man from EMI with us, who was tipsy and star-struck and we felt, likely to impose on them. In retrospect I regret this, as we were all vegetarians and I’d love to have discussed animal protection with Linda. Ray Cameron McIntyre heard the songs we had recorded at Abbey Road and invited us to his home in Hampstead. He worked hard to help us as he loved the songs, but there were other people involved and we went in a different direction. However, we remained on good terms and worked on other projects together. Ray used to write material for the Kenny Everett TV show and he had a real feel for music and production. Sadly, he died of a heart attack some years later when he was just fifty-five years old.