The Stage in the Middle of the Road
Back in the 1960′s, when I was a young teenager, I used to spend a lot of my time, with my friends, in the local coffee bars listening to the various records that were available in the juke box.
It used to be the unspoken word that everybody drinking coffee in the shop would take their turn to feed the juke box, and by doing this you were announcing to the world (or at least those in the coffee shop) what type of music you enjoyed listening to.
I am not sure how much coffee I drank, we really only went there because of the juke box. When the evening ended I would make my way home and then spend the next hour or so listening to Radio Luxemburg.
Do any of you remember Radio Luxemburg? It was quite a special radio station.
We were lucky in so far as having quite a number of radio stations beaming their programs to us night and day, and many of these radio stations being found on ships which lay somewhere offshore. I just can’t remember any of their names so if anyone can help me with this it would be appreciated.
Although I loved listening to Radio Luxemburg I cannot remember whether this was a radio station which was based on land, or at sea. Can anyone help me here?
It was during these nightly vigils by the radio that I first acquired a taste for the guitar. That became the one instrument that I wanted to hear and hear again.
It was only after a rather curious event took place that I thought about the possibility of playing the guitar myself.
If you are at all familiar with driving in the UK you will have noticed that we have an abundance of roundabouts, literally a large circle in the middle of the road, sometimes with grass on it. The road experts tell us that they aid the flow of traffic, but I am not so sure.
Well one day I was out on my bicycle ( I was too young for a car then) and about a mile from my home I came across a roundabout, and there, sitting in the middle of this roundabout was a friend of mine who was happily strumming away on his guitar.
All the cars that went past could not help but notice him, it was such an unusual sight right there in the middle of a roundabout. It was a bit like being on stage, in the middle of the road!
I went over and joined him on his ‘stage’, and quietly wished that I had a guitar to play.
But I decided there and then that listening just was not good enough, and I determined to do all I could to get my own guitar.
Although my guitar playing has taken me to all sort of places all around the world, I have never forgotten how it all started – on the roundabout.
And I am showing other people now how to kick start their guitar career by having a roundabout experience.
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