We couldn’t afford to purchase our own instruments because we were poor. And poor people cannot afford expensive musical instruments. You will note that whilst you may see many a drunken down-and-out jigging from one foot to another and engaging in a bit of the old unaccompanied singing, you will rarely, if ever, see a drunken down-and-out sitting in the gutter playing either the harp or a Bechstein concert grand. It’s a monetary thing. A fiscal thing.
The Kynges began as a ukulele band.
There were five ukuleles in the school’s ‘band room’. The band room was a large cupboard with a skylight. As far as I can recall, the sole purpose of the skylight was to admit the midnight entry of disgruntled scholars hell-bent on destruction.
Have you noticed that whenever schoolboys break into their schools at night they always destroy the musical instruments?
They always do. I wonder why that is.
My therapist says it is due to frustration caused by a lack of wish-fulfilment. I tell her that it is more likely a tradition, or an old charter, or something.
Mr Jenner, the music teacher, was evidently a student of human nature who well understood the schoolboy psyche. He kept the surviving ukuleles (once there had been a full brass section and two bass drums) under lock and key. Which is to say that they were locked in the ‘band room’ (the one with the skylight). But they were also locked inside a Cameo Mason Celebrated Percussion Safe. You don’t see many of those any more, but then they were all but impregnable.
As far as I know, only one boy in the long history of the school ever penetrated the band-room safe without Mr Jenner opening it up for him.
That schoolboy’s name was Otto. And there will be no more about him later.
So, five ukuleles and the dawn of The Sumerian Kynges.
If I recall correctly, and I do, it took a great deal of persuading on my part to convince the other members of The Sumerian Kynges that playing the ukulele could be cool.
Being cool was essential. It was almost a matter of life and death back then. And in my opinion it still is, even today.
It’s a given thing, really. An instinctive thing. If you are cool enough simply to know, then you simply know whether something is cool or whether it is not. And come on now, don’t we all, deep, deep down in our very souls, want to be cool?
Of course we do.
So, as to those ukuleles.
I knew that being up on stage and playing in a rock ’n’ roll band was cool. But then pretty much everyone knows that. And I did want to be cool. And I did want to play in a rock ’n’ roll band. But I was poor and the other guys in the band (notice that I use the word ‘guys’ here rather than, say, ‘schoolboys’, and also the word ‘band’ rather than the words ‘teenage combo’, which might not necessarily be cool) were also poor and we had no way of raising sufficient money to purchase guitars and a drum kit. Nor indeed a Marshall amp and stack system. But as Jim Marshall was only perfecting these things in the garage behind his shop in Hanwell at the time, that is neither here nor there.
So, regarding those ukuleles.
There were four Sumerian Kynges back then. The original Fad Four. [1] There was Rob, who would later become an advertising copywriter. Neil, who would later movie-produce. Myself, who would go on to find fame and misfortune in oh so many fields.
And then there was Toby.
And Toby was the odd one.
It was many years later that the rest of The Sumerian Kynges came to realise just how odd Toby really was. But by then the original line-up was no more. And it was all too late.
But more of that anon.
So back to those ukuleles.
‘Ukes are not cool,’ said Rob. ‘Harps are cool, but not ukes.’
‘Harps?’ This raised voice belonged to Neil. ‘We cannot afford a jews harp, let alone a real harp.’
‘Harp as in harmonica,’ said Rob. ‘Do try to be cool, Neil, really.’
Neil did grindings of his teeth. I came to recognise these grindings as ‘the grindings of discontent’.
‘We can afford nothing,’ said Neil. ‘We are poor.’
‘Tea chests and broom handles,’ said Toby. ‘They cost next to nothing. We could be a skiffle band.’
‘There is a steel band called The Skiffle Bunch,’ said Neil, who knew about all kinds of what was then called ‘ethnic’ music. ‘Steel pan maestros. Genius.’
‘Get some cheese!’ said Rob, as it was what he used to say when he had nothing to say. So to speak.
This conversation was being held in Toby’s dad’s shed, at the bottom of Toby’s dad’s and mum’s and Toby’s too back garden.
It was where we went for band practice.
For lack of instrumentation, it was presently where we went for a cappella vocal practice.
I entered this shed at this very moment.
A veritable Duke of Cool.
My hair was all ‘gassed back’ with Brylcreem. My school shirt was untucked from my school trousers (well, shorts) and its shirt tail protruded from the lower rear of my grey school jumper. This jumper’s breast being adorned with many beer-bottle-top badges. [2]
My socks were rolled down. My shoes were unpolished.
And my armpits really smelled.
‘Hi, guys,’ I said, raising an arm in a parody of the Nazi salute. The guys fell to cringing and covering their noses.
Cool.
‘We need instruments,’ said Toby, as I lowered my arm and then lowered myself onto the half-bag of solid cement that in those days was to be found in every garden shed.
Not the same half-bag, obviously, although it was hard at first glance to tell.
‘Ukuleles,’ said I.
‘Uncool,’ quoth one and all. ‘We have discussed ukuleles. Ukuleles are not cool.’
‘On the contrary,’ said I. (In fact I said, ‘Ooh contraire,’ which was French and pretty cool in its way.)
‘Ukuleles are cool?’ said Rob. ‘How so, cheesy boy?’
‘Robert Johnson,’ I said. And I enjoyed the desired effect that the enunciation of this name produced.
There was an awed silence.
And then Toby spoke.
‘Robert Johnson did not play a ukulele,’ said Toby. ‘Robert Johnson played a Gibson L- 1.’
‘Of course,’ said I. ‘But we also know what Robert Johnson did down at the crossroads at midnight.’
‘Sold his soul to the Devil,’ said Neil, a-crossing at himself, ‘in exchange for musical immortality. And his day is coming soon, believe you me. All will know the name of Robert Johnson.’ [3]
‘Yes,’ said I, comfying myself upon the half-bag of solid cement, which was no easy thing, but yet I achieved it. ‘Well, one week after Robert Johnson went down to the crossroads at midnight, there was a fella over here who went down there too. Well, not the same crossroads actually. Johnson went down to where Highway Forty-Two crossed Highway Sixty-One. This fella didn’t go there.
‘He went down South (like Johnson), but down just south of Birmingham. He went to the Crossroads Motel. And there he met the Devil and he sold his soul to the Devil.
‘Right there and then.’
‘Who he?’ asked Toby.
‘George Formby,’ I said.
And then they beat me up.
