You might not quite appreciate just how wedded to all things rock I was for many years. So much so that we were once thrown out of a flat in London because the lad who was letting us sleep on his floor, an old friend from Stockton who had moved to London, declared his new favourite band was Depeche Mode.
Outraged by this and feeling like it was a betrayal of sorts, I furiously argued that Bob Seger was not only musically superior but also morally superior, and did so so passionately that he threw us out!
We slept on Kings Cross station that night, it being 1981 when you could do such a thing. We were down there to see Neil Young on the Trans tour and were used to such deprivations being regular pavement sleepers queuing for tickets and thought nothing of it but 45 years on it strikes me as monumentally stupid. You can like whomever you like. But I seemed to think I was ‘right’ and he was ‘wrong’ and I wouldn’t be shifted from this hardline position. Quite, quite mad and I was 21 at the time, so not a kid anymore.
I think because my love of rock in its many forms had got me through so many difficult times at home since I was 14 or 15 that I’d invested so much emotionally in whatever it was that I thought was my ‘thing’ that I wasn’t able or prepared to accept not everyone agreed or thought differently. I think it seemed like a threat.
As time went by I reflected on this as something of a turning point. It was so monumentally stupid that it shook my previous ‘my way or the highway’ attitude and I relaxed. Any time I catch myself drifting towards that kind of attitude again, I think back to the stupidity of trying to argue Bob Segar was musically and morally superior to Depeche Mode.
But I have to admit, somewhere deep inside me, I still think it’s true!
