The Day The Music Died

Remember the first song you fell in love with.

For me it was I Heard It Through the Grapevine, and it must have been 1969 or 1970 when I was four or five. At the time nursery rhymes and Play School were my cultural landscape but, without understanding anything about adult relationships, something in me was mesmerised by the song: the opening snap of the snare drum, the ominous, sultry intro, the murmured background vocals like women muttering in disapproval, Marvin’s Gaye’s anguished lead. I look back on that as the day I suddenly sensed a magic implicit in music. Maybe you remember something similar about your own particular song.

Fast forward and you’re in your pre-teens and teens. Music grows and grows on you till it’s not untrue to say it’s the most important thing in your life. A friend once said, ‘I think next to sex and Scotland, music is one of God’s greatest gifts.’ (She was a broad-minded Evangelical from Glasgow.)

You live your day-to-day mundane life — at school, at home, walking down to the shops — in an endless mental pop video which is the backdrop to the story of your life. The songs’ words and emotions are either ones you can already relate to, or tantalising glimpses of future adventures awaiting you in life, love, loss, or Lamborghinis.

Now that vinyl’s come back a new generation can enjoy the pleasure I knew as a 14-year-old: the visual and tactile and anticipatory joy of flipping through shop racks of albums , with glossy decent-sized album art instead of plasticky and titchy CDs, or a thumbnail icon on a screen.

Getting your new purchase home, retreating to your bedroom with the door shut, opening the gatefold cover, withdrawing the shining black disc from its sleeve, and putting it on the turntable. Sitting on the bed, reading the printed lyrics and credits, and letting the music pour out, diving into it, till it is all around you and you are swimming in it, part of it. And that was 'just' ABBA.

Then every day for a week, the minute you got home from school the album would go on for a fresh hearing. You would limit yourself to how often you would play it to keep it sounding fresh for as long as possible. Records became part of relationships: I remember writing out the entire lyrics of Supper’s Ready in my best handwriting for a boyfriend of the time.

The years took you from ABBA through to the Stone Roses via Blondie, prog rock, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, New Order, Sparks, The Police, Two Tone, ABC, Michael Jackson, The Smiths, Talking Heads, China Crisis, Runrig, Prefab Sprout, Happy Mondays.

Along the way, if you had older siblings or cousins you could ruthlessly mine their musical tastes too. Having a sister who was twelve years older than I was and who went off to work overseas meant I got custody of her LP collection. This was a revelation giving me access to no longer currently fashionable but still brilliant bands: T Rex, Black Sabbath, Moody Blues, Simon and Garfunkel, Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds.

I thought I’d never lose my obsession with music like you think you’ll never fall out of love with someone. But now I rarely listen to it and I read a book on the bus instead of slipping on the headphones.

What happened in between to cause this? I don’t buy that bullshit that it’s because music since then is crap. I think most of us are hardwired to relate to the music that’s current between the years we’re aged between say ten and twenty-five: the years you are growing up, having your first life experiences, first flings, first knocks, emotions all newly discovered. So the songs you hear then become unique and precious links to all these freshly minted sensations.

I seemed to go off music in my late twenties which was also when I got married for the first time and this makes me wonder if a lot of what music meant to me was emotional satisfaction that was now fulfilled in other ways. I can remember having Radio 1 on one day and suddenly finding it unbearable, and switching it off never to return. My musical knowledge ends at about 1989 or possibly 1990, and I feel I’ve got enough good music to last me a lifetime and have no need to experiment further.

Perhaps it wasn't so much a case of the day the music died, as the day I died to music? Yet my book addiction, which precedes my falling in love with music, remains in three-books-on-the-go mode and no signs of faltering. It's a mystery, as Toyah sang.