THE MINSTREL

When I was 18, I met a girl who changed my life. She introduced me to folk music, and even though the romance was over after a few months I remained smitten and I listened almost exclusively to folk music for the following 3 years.

I grew a beard, started wearing clogs and woolly sweaters. I bought a rocking chair. I didn't smoke then otherwise I would have bought a pipe.I embraced my very distant Irish roots and lamented the fact that of the 4 countries that make up Great Britain, England alone had no real living musical culture.

I didn't play an instrument back then. I didn't write songs, but I lived in the music and the stories. It was easy to imagine myself as a travelling minstrel and that would have been my choice of occupation had I lived in the middle-ages. I remember saying if I get old without having made any money, I could always grow my beard long and be a folksinger. That was my reserve plan - I knew I'd never have a pension worth talking about.

So while I was immersing myself in folky custom and song, I missed out on the youth-music movements of the time... I was an 18 year old middle-aged man who frequented the folk clubs on sunday evenings.

That all changed when I joined a rock-band.

At 22 I'd taken up the guitar - practicing loudly at home with the windows open. A friend of a friend, who was a bass-player, heard my noise and told his other friend, who was a lead-guitarist - and they invited me to a rehearsal. They were looking for a singer, so I sang. They were so impressed that I had the balls to just get up and sing that they asked me to join their blues-rock band That was the start of my wild days of sex, drugs, rock 'n roll and an unusually late bout of pubescent rebellion. I stopped listening to folk music, it didn't fit my new image. I can always go back to it when I'm over 50, I thought.

I wasn't a great rock-singer. I wasn't a good  front-man. And I admit that blues wasn't really my music -  if anything I preferred jazz, which motivated me to introduce sax into the band. I could only play in one key, but that didn't matter because you could impress people just by posing with it. I lived the band lifestyle for a couple of years - lots of parties - I learned to smoke. I heard a lot of music artists I'd missed out on: Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Talking Heads; but also Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Lou Reed, Crosby, Stills and Nash... songwriters that would inspire me to this day.

At 24 I became a songwriter myself. The band dispersed when the bass-player headed off to university. I headed off to the Greek Islands. I'd spent a few months learning Fleetwood Mac songs so I'd have something to play, but I really wanted to write songs. Living as a hippy on an exotic beach would inspire me I thought. And it did. I was popular because I had a guitar, but when I started writing songs for people I'd met, I became a star. My first songs were simple, but they were personal and my new friends sang along. Everyone wanted their own song. I wrote every day. Those songs became became the element that defined that whole 3 month island experience, for me and everyone who were part of our intimate group. But they also defined me. I was tanned, my hair bleached white by the sun and spiked with salt and sand. My jeans were torn. I wore a scarf around my head. I carried my guitar slung loosely over my shoulder. I was a traveler, a minstrel, a hippy, a punk - lazing on the beach by day, singing around camp-fires by night. I drank lots and ate little - I was thinned to the bone. I lived my music and my role.

On the journey back home, hitching the 3 thousand miles with a half-English half-German girl 10 years younger than me, we stopped off in a German town where she had friends. they were school-kids still, and I was a fascinating aging hippy. I visited their school, they learned my songs, I got groupies.

On a side note: I went back to the island a year later - but then I took my sax. But that's another story - another me.

Back in England I lived the glory a little longer, squatting in London with a few island friends. But once I headed back to my own home town, it was over. The inspiration, the people, the lifestyle all changed. The songs I wrote had no place here. I tried writing new ones - songs I hoped would lead me to a career as a recording artist. But it was not to be. There was no soul in what I wrote. I stopped trying, focused on my sax-playing. I was a musician, but not a songwriter.

Fast-forward to 1990. I moved to Amsterdam. I was in love again. I started writing love-songs and I was getting good at it. I discovered structure and sequence. I crafted lyrics as a poet.

Later I started working at a school, joined the "teacher's band", played sax and harmonica - sang sometimes. A colleague turned 40, had a party, bring a guitar we're making music. I used the opportunity to sing  a couple of my latest songs and made an impact - a new period was began. The band dumped most of the covers,  and we started playing my numbers. I donned the guitar again - I became the singer - they became my band.

It was a prolific period. I wrote deep, meaningful, multi-interpretable  lyrics and catchy, memorable tunes based around jazz-chord progressions. We played some gigs. I wasn't rich and famous, but I'd reached a maturity in my songwriting. And I wouldn't become rich and famous because we were all too old to aim for stardom, and we all had kids and steady jobs. And if truth be known, I was too self-conscious to really enjoy performing.

This period eventually came to an end. I changed jobs - different school, different people. I joined the schoolband there too but as sax player. They never knew me as a songwriter, and I didn't feel like singing the songs they wanted to play. I pretty much stopped writing too - felt I was repeating myself.

I started learning piano and didn't touch the guitar for years. The piano was for playing, not writing. My old songs lived on though, thanks to the enthusiasm of Geert, bass-playing teacher from the first school. He adopted them and cared for them, and put them to good use in a variety of musical projects involving other novice musicians.

Now and again I'd visit and put in a guest appearance - the master playing his own songs... but Geert would have to remind me how to play them, which chords I'd used. Telling me how to play my own songs because I'd forgotten. 

The years have flown. I've passed 50. The idea of being an old bearded folk-singer is not too unrealistic any more, though my beard is grey so I'm not quite ready for that. My son is grown, his beard is dark. He plays piano much better than I, and his guitar playing is getting that way too. Through him I'm rediscovering all the great songwriters of former years, and not without a little regret I wonder were I'd be now if I'd let the minstrel I was at 24 continue. Other paths - other lives.

I've not written a song in nearly 10 years. I do my writing now on blogs and in my diary. Lately I've taken to writing children's picture-book stories as an independent publisher. Now and again I see something that inspires me to sing... but it passes before I do anything about it.

And now, just when I was thinking that the minstrel had laid down his lute for good, I stumble upon the phenomenon of storytelling. An enthusiastic group of international aficionados of this forgotten craft, come together in cultural cafe The Mezrab and tell stories to each other. An event I haven't been aware of in my 20 years in Amsterdam. Ancient tradition comes alive in modern city - storytelling is the new rage. I felt like I was back on my Greek island - campfires and mixed cultures. I feel inspired as never before - not since Greece. Inspired to get involved, to tell stories, to write stories... and it occurs to me that here is an audience that my songs were written for. My songs are stories after all - I should sing them.