THE THIRDS RECORDING STUDIO IN THE WORLD:

 

It was 1969, I’d written a song & played it to the Guru. 

He’d sat there in the front room of his Kidderminster Semi & 

listened, beaming, 

“Did ‘you’ write that?”

“Yes”

“What, ‘all’ of it?”

“Yes”

“Lyrics as well?”

“Yes”, waiting for a disapproving remark that I’d been listening 

to too much Kinks & not enough Joni.

“That’s a really good song”

I was shocked. It felt like I’d just been handed the keys to 

the executive toilet, a door to a secret society opened, the sweet 

perfumed air was escaping from the other side. 

“Have you recorded it?” he asked.

“No, I don’t have a tape recorder?”

“You need to get one if you’re going to be a song writer Karl”

“We can’t afford one”

“Wait a minute”

The guru left the room, the weight of a red Hofner electric 

already too heavy on my 12 year legs. I was keen to play him the 

song but also show off. From the hallway under the stairs I heard him 

in conversation with someone on the phone (he had a phone!),

“Could we come now? Great! see you in ten minutes”

We rode in his pastel Ford, a rare privilege for one so newly inducted 

to the songwriters circle. Across town, past carpet factories that had 

provided my dad with enough money to buy me the guitar that was lying 

on the back seat. Past the hospital where I visited dad after his throat 

operation, waved to him watching us leave I cried. The hospital we’d 

visited weekly for me to exercise my legs to rectify their bowing.

Past the police station that I always thought unusually grand for a 

backwater town like Kidderminster & into a suburban cul-de-sac lined 

with smart middle class semis with bow-fronted windows & garages to 

park cars with names like Rover, & Vanden plas whose interiors smelled 

of valeted leather.

A man, of similar age to the guru answered the door,

“Is this our song writer?”

“It’s his first song, it’s really good & we need to get it recorded” 

 

(K)