I’d like to take you back to your youth. A long time ago now, I know, but we all must have experienced the school disco at least once and the ritual humiliations it offered. So it was that when I was 15, I attended such a disco.
Now, you’ll remember, wherever you are in the world, in 1975, it was probably hard to hear rock music at a disco. You might get a Slade record or a Status Quo, but that was about it. Culturally narrow assumptions meant we could not allow ourselves to like the standard disco fare, even though I actually did. No. Get away with your beautifully arranged Love Unlimited Orchestra’s strings. I’m a rock kid and thou shall not pass, disco.
Well you know how daft we were as kids, desperate to cut yourself a place in the world. So in a three hour disco, we rock kids would mooch around, wondering why no girls were interested in us, until Status Quo came on. This is largely why we would go to pubs which served 15 or 16 year-olds with awful Skol lager. It might seem shocking now, perhaps particularly if you’re in America where you have to be 21 to drink, but most of us, or a fair proportion, were drinking underage regularly and a few would turn up to these events, absolutely blootered and throw up in a waste paper bin.
I must say, looking back, I didn’t think I went to a rough school, but these disco’s were extraordinarily debauched affairs in all the ways you might think, with actual sexual congress happening underneath the stage stairs. What can I say? It was the 70s. Of course, us rock kids were drunk and didn’t get up to much, except smoking dried banana skins and pretending we were stoned.
Anyway, there we were, hoping in vain for some rock when the exciting sounds of Deep Purple rumbled through the speakers. Some forward thinker had brought in the Speed King single. Now as much as then, you know what I’m like, I tend to get a bit over excited when I hear music I love. I’m the sort of person that cries at guitar solos. This has got worse since I had my stroke. Anything that excites or inspires sets me off.
So I leaped up onto a deserted dancefloor, along with one other boy and proceeded to freak out. Head shaking, air guitar and its rarer cousin air keyboards, the whole nine yards. I mean, then as now, when I let go, I really let go. So we were a furious mass of hair and flares, and the other kids looked on and wondered what chemicals were in our veins.
It had just finished the keyboard solo when I was picked up by the hair - a traditional form of abusive control at our school - and carried like a bag of washing to the deputy headmasters office, screaming and kicking. When there, we actually got a lecture about not being silly. I could hardly say I was consumed by the spirit of rock n roll, could I? We didn’t get caned but were left with the clear impression we would be if we freaked out again.
The next day, it was all around the school that we’d been told off for freaking out. It was one of the few times I could claim rebel status and I furiously milked it. You could’ve been forgiven for thinking I was Abbie Hoffman by the end of it. Needless to say, I didn’t dare do it again at future discos for fear of retribution from ‘the man.’ Little did I know what this was doing to my psyche in instilling a wide anti-authoritarian streak in me.
Don’t mess with my rock!!!
