The Rocky Road - Autobiography By Mr Boogie Woogie

It’s ironic that, with my long revulsion of the police, and all the various altercations that I would have with them throughout my life, I was brought into this world on Tuesday, 5th March 1957, in a women’s hospital on Peel Street, named after Robert Peel (he first introduced the Peelers, or Bobbies, as they would later be known), in the bicycle capital of England and, indeed, the world, otherwise known as Nottingham. It was Pancake Tuesday, or Shrove Tuesday, depending on your bent. A day of celebration as well as penitence, because it is the last day before Lent. In France, for some bizarre reason only known to the French, they call it Mardi Gras, when people disguise themselves and put on crazy masks. Strangely enough, the doctors in the hospital where I was born must have all been French, as they were also wearing masks. Shrove Tuesday is also known as Fat Tuesday, which comes from the ancient custom of parading a fat ox through Paris on this day. The ox was to remind the people that they were not allowed to eat meat during Lent. However, as I was not partial to pancakes, and there was no meat on offer, I decided that it was as good a time as any to make my grand entrance into what is euphemistically called the ‘rat race’. It’s not that I minded the rat race, but I could have done with just a little more cheese. Back in the hospital room, I emerged into a shower of light, surrounded by other rats and pancakes. A French hand firmly slapped me on the arse as a welcoming gesture to this rocky road of life. I was so surprised that I didn’t talk for a year and half.

The first thing which I can record concerning myself was that I was born. There was, apparently, a sign in the ward emblazoned with the moral: “The first three minutes of life can be the most dangerous”. I don’t know about that as I was too young and couldn’t read, but I would say that the last three minutes are pretty dodgy, too.

My mum was talking with the other mums in the surrounding beds about what to call her new offspring. One of the women said “Well, my son was born on St George’s Day, so I decided to call him George.” “That’s a real coincidence,” remarked a woman on the opposite side of the ward. “My son was born on St Andrew’s Day, so we called him Andrew.” My mum laid there pondering about the fact that I was born on Pancake Day. I said nothing, mainly due to the fact that I was only one hour old.

She eventually decided to call me David Jeremy, and I was the seventh to be born into a working class family. I later found out that the sole purpose of a child’s middle name is so he can tell when he’s really in trouble. I don’t know why she decided to call me David, after all, every Tom, Dick & Harry is called Dave. My father, Frank, was born in 1914, in Liverpool, and worked as a presser for a dry cleaning company. His only connection with music was that he played the mouth organ relatively well, and he regularly dry-cleaned Big Band leader Joe Loss’ suits. I would often go to his place of work with him and, although initially frightened by the noise of the massive compressors and machines in the mysterious basement, I would come to love the noise that they made. Even now, I sleep much better if I can hear a steady noise in the background, like an air conditioner or the engine of a van driving down the motorway. Also, I loved the smell of tetrachloroethylene, the dry cleaning fluid that he used in the massive cleaner. I guess it takes all sorts!

During the war, my dad was a fireman, and he would entertain me for hours about his exploits during the blitz. One thing I never understood, though, was that he used to say ‘always fight fire with fire’, which is strange coming from a man in the fire brigade. My mother, Monica, was born in 1919 in Knottingly, Leeds, and she played the piano very adequately. Sadly, my brother, Paul, and sister, Barbara, both died shortly after their birth, which left me with two sisters, Hazel and Sylvia, and two brothers, John and Philip. Hazel is the eldest, she was born in 1937 and now resides in Vancouver, after moving there in the mid-1960s. She married David, who was an ardent hi-fi enthusiast and had an array of wonderful 1950s reel to reel tape recorders and valve amplifiers, and a radio which was the size of a washing machine, with a large rotary dial and place names like Lahti and Hilversum, which I always thought were obscure types of music. I would later perform in both of those places. They were, in fact, obscure types of towns dotted around the world. Valve amplifiers sounded so much better than their transistorised counterparts. The only problem was that, by the time they had warmed up, the programme you wanted to listen to had already finished.

Although our musical tastes varied considerably, David had an original copy of the EP Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley, on the Brunswick label. I was fascinated with that song, and used to pester him incessantly to play it for me, even though I was only a couple of years old. I didn’t know it was rock & roll at the time, as even back then it was considered old music, being from the preceding decade. In fact, David made my own first ever recording in 1960, when I was just 3 years old. I was in bed with bronchitis (that’s an illness, not a girlfriend) when Hazel and David came to visit me. I was reading some books of nursery rhymes at the time, (or “nurnery” rhymes, as my illness persuaded me to pronounce it). David, always equipped with his reel to reel and trusty microphone, captured the moment for posterity, complete with coughing, spluttering and wheezing, as I began narrating from the pages in my hand. “Mary had a little lamb, simple Simon met a pie man, and humpty dumpty was pushed.”

As a child, I suffered from quite severe asthma, and I remember having to use various inhalers on a regular basis. I also had to take many drugs, including steroids, which, although they helped with my asthma, resulted in stunted growth. This afflicted me throughout my childhood. I even had to carry a card in case I was in an accident, informing whoever found me that I was on steroids. These were not the same anabolic steroids we hear so much about nowadays in connection with body-builders, but a different kind, used for various medical conditions. I remember one other drug in particular, Ephedrine, which was once widely used as a topical decongestant and bronchodilator in the treatment of asthma. It was dispensed in a large, old-fashioned type of inhaler that you had to pour the drug into, and then squeeze a large bulb to eject the mist into your mouth. My mother would purchase the drug from our local chemist who, on his door, displayed the immortal words: “We dispense with accuracy”. Many were the times I would end up drinking the stuff instead of breathing it in, necessitating, on at least one occasion, a visit to the hospital to have my stomach pumped. As I lay in bed in the hospital, I was examining the various drawings and diagrams on the wall, depicting various regions of the body. I studied one entitled the Arterial System and wondered if artery was the study of paintings. That prompted me to think that Beethoven was probably so deaf that he most likely thought that he was a painter. I digress…

Because Hazel was my elder by 20 years, when I was young I used to think of her as some kind of auntie, which was very confusing for me. My brother Philip was born in 1944 and spent much of his youth in and around Nottingham. He also now lives in Vancouver, having emigrated there soon after Hazel. He was an original Ted, although much older than me, so I didn’t get to hang around with him much until he was already in his late teens, and we never really got to know each other. John was six years older than me and lived in Nottingham all of his life, hardly venturing anywhere, except for a brief trip to New Zealand for reasons which were never fully clear to me. He never married, and lived life as somewhat of a recluse. He died in 2003 from a chest infection and I attended his funeral in Nottingham with Stella and Rosy, my first and last wives respectively. Sylvia was born in1953 and has spent most of her adult life in Scotland with her husband Ian, and their two children, Michael and Gary. I recall well when my mother told me that Sylvia had had her first baby, at the time my mother didn’t know if it was a boy or girl. Consequently, I didn’t know if I was an auntie or an uncle. Sylvia now lives in a small village on the outskirts of Inverness. As a kid, I spent most of my time with Sylvia and John. The first few years of my life would appear unremarkable, as I have, unfortunately, no memory of what I was doing at that time. Suffice it to say I did what other babies did, and must have managed adequately enough.

One of my earliest memories, at around the age of 4, is going down to our local shopping centre with my mum. We became separated, I got lost and ended up wandering around aimlessly in and out of establishments such as Woolworth’s, British Home Stores and Marks & Spencer’s. It was then that I had my first encounter with the boys in blue. I was picked up by the police and taken to a room where they tried to ascertain what I was doing and if I was alone, or not. It must have been some kind of self-preservation, even back then, as I refused to give them my real name - I told them I was David Fuller! To this day I have no idea why I chose that name. Bizarrely enough, there was an American rock & roll singer by the name of Bobby Fuller around at that...