0:00

pretty much everybody in my peer group as a kid

0:02

drifted into crime, largely

0:04

drugs and

0:06

robbery and stuff like that.

0:09

And I could feel like the

0:11

desperation and the probability

0:15

And so the music thing became

0:18

a tether. In this episode,

0:20

I speak with David Field,

0:23

a somatic experiencing practitioner

0:26

who was my own therapist

0:28

and mentor as I got

0:30

into this work myself, and

0:33

is just an incredibly important relationship

0:35

to me personally. But

0:38

I also have a sense of his impact on other

0:40

people and that he is

0:42

something of a authenticity

0:45

anchor for a lot of people. And

0:47

is really marching to the beat of his

0:49

own drum and

0:52

has his own creative spark,

0:54

which he's kept alive over many years.

0:57

And in this episode, we

0:59

really trace the arc of his life.

1:02

Starting in the black country where

1:04

there was no work and he had a

1:07

job on a factory floor

1:09

on a building site and he

1:11

followed a dream to London and

1:13

became, basically a busking

1:16

street musician and

1:18

was picked up remarkably

1:21

by a music executive who brought

1:24

him into Warner Brothers and

1:26

started an illustrious career

1:28

working with musicians as an A& R

1:30

man in London and New York

1:33

and worked for Sony,

1:36

EMI, BMG, with

1:38

artists like The Pixies,

1:41

Bjork, Radiohead, Crowded

1:43

House, Annie Lennox, Eagle Eye Cherry,

1:45

Carly Simon, Natalie Imbruglia,

1:48

and Kasabian. And

1:50

he would not volunteer

1:53

such a list easily, and

1:55

I, uh, don't

1:58

bring it up on the podcast, uh, because

2:00

He's an incredibly humble person and

2:03

he's really interested in

2:06

impact over status and

2:08

creativity over

2:10

competitiveness. But he

2:12

has had a remarkable career

2:14

three decades in the music industry

2:17

that I think informs a lot of his work as a therapist.

2:20

I think something that's really unique about David

2:23

is how much creativity he brings into

2:25

the process. And when you hear him

2:27

speak, you're going to hear the melodies and the rhythms,

2:29

and there's a real musical quality

2:31

about the way he thinks and the way he is

2:33

in the world. And I think that's really

2:35

enabling for other creative people to be

2:38

in the same space with him

2:40

is to feel a certain vibe

2:42

and transmission that comes through

2:45

and is very freeing and very

2:47

enabling of creativity in yourself.

2:50

So I hope that you enjoy meeting David,

2:52

someone who is very important to me, and

2:54

that you can get something from this.

2:58

I'm Stephen Bradshaw, and this

3:01

is Snowball Psychology.

3:05

David Field. Hello, mate.

3:08

We're at the start of this project, which is

3:11

about snowball psychology.

3:14

And I wanted to have you on very early

3:16

because of your influence

3:18

in starting my own Snowball.

3:22

And just to give a little

3:24

context, a Snowball is,

3:26

a life project that starts with

3:28

something sincere and a felt sense

3:30

of meaning and builds

3:33

out into the world without losing

3:35

that sense of connection and meaning. So

3:39

I've gone through different phases in my life

3:41

and we happened to both meet

3:44

up at a place of transition

3:47

and you took me on as a guinea

3:49

pig about eight and a half years

3:51

ago, as you were going through the somatic

3:53

experiencing training. And

3:56

I got to experience

3:58

your beginner's mind, your

4:01

fresh encounter with

4:03

some of that material. I

4:05

don't know how early I was in your work.

4:08

I'm guessing in the first handful of people.

4:11

Is that the case? Yeah.

4:14

It was a very rich experience and I

4:16

was an artist at that time and

4:18

pretty lost in many ways. And

4:22

your gentle guidance

4:24

and feedback and encouragement

4:27

to get a little more out into the world. I think

4:29

I was very isolated in my art process.

4:32

And then seeing your example of,

4:34

working with people and developing

4:37

me became a model for

4:39

my own career in this field.

4:42

I followed the training after you and

4:44

you told me, okay,

4:46

now we'll flip it. I'll be the recipient. And

4:50

that was pretty early for me. I did

4:52

not know what I was doing at that time, but

4:54

you were very generous. And so I feel like you've

4:56

really helped to shepherd my

4:59

own snowball of my life

5:01

project. Bless you. Yeah, I

5:03

really mean that. I don't think I would be

5:06

a therapist if it wasn't for you. Thinking

5:09

about this idea of the snowball when

5:11

I've taken in many of your creative works

5:13

and we'll get into your background. And I want

5:15

to talk through a lot of it because it's so rich.

5:18

You have a lot of lived experience before

5:20

being a therapist or a practitioner.

5:24

So when I went through your

5:26

book that you wrote visible from space, is that available

5:29

by the way? No, It's not. I'm

5:31

not really sure what to do with it. It was really

5:33

for my own edification and

5:35

clarity but I will extract from

5:37

it. I am going to use it quite

5:39

soon, I think. Great.

5:42

Yeah. So a very rich and storied

5:44

tale of your life that I appreciated

5:47

reading, and I appreciate your integrity

5:50

and purity of process in terms

5:52

of how you share things and that

5:54

you do work on things for yourself.

5:56

And I think that is a lot of the ethos of this

5:59

project, the integrity

6:01

and staying in good connection with your

6:03

muse, with your vulnerable

6:06

parts, not exploiting yourself.

6:09

So anyways, reading through the book, I

6:12

identified three main phases

6:15

to your life. And

6:17

the first one was dropping out

6:19

of school and. Heading into

6:21

London and busking as a street

6:24

musician which is remarkable

6:26

to me to start out that way.

6:28

And you really followed the muse there,

6:32

then becoming a music executives

6:34

and A& R man and

6:36

working at major labels and,

6:38

being suited up and in the business

6:41

world. And then in this last

6:43

phase, meeting, you as a practitioner,

6:46

in the mental health space. And

6:48

so these three phases

6:50

have each been their own, we could think of them

6:52

as snowballs, their own journey

6:54

or arc. And I

6:56

was curious, as a starting point for

6:59

you to reflect on each of these three, and

7:02

think about what was

7:04

the intention, and how

7:06

did that manifest, and what were the issues?

7:09

And then maybe finishing on what's

7:12

different about this snowball and if it's sustainable

7:14

in a different kind of way or something is

7:17

happening now, it wasn't in those

7:19

two prior phases. They

7:21

are distinctly different. The core of

7:23

the snowball in each one is distinctly

7:26

different. The first one,

7:28

I mean, I was born into the working

7:30

class of Midlands of England.

7:33

But near Birmingham City, an

7:35

area called the Black Country, so

7:37

named because everything was covered in

7:39

soot from coal

7:42

mines and foundries. It's

7:44

believed to the Tolkien based Mordor.

7:48

on the black country, just to put it

7:50

into context. I take some sort of strange

7:52

pride in saying that I grew

7:54

up in Mordor. I don't know why. And

7:56

so it was an intense and

7:58

somewhat bleak and harsh landscape

8:02

made more so by the industrial

8:04

collapse that

8:06

Britain went through starting in

8:08

the late seventies as I was leaving school.

8:11

Through into the eighties, during the Thatcher

8:13

era, where the motor industry,

8:15

the steel industry, the coal industry,

8:18

the whole manufacturing base of the country

8:21

was gone. And with it, the

8:24

the working class franchise, if you like,

8:27

the working class was disenfranchised

8:29

and the working class went

8:31

from being the salt of the earth, the backbone

8:34

of the country to being

8:36

scroungers within a very short

8:38

period of time. Because

8:41

pretty much everybody from the working class base

8:44

had nowhere to go and

8:46

lived on benefits. And

8:49

the education system in the working

8:51

class was really very much

8:53

shaped towards you staying

8:56

in the working class. Like the options for me

8:58

really were like woodwork and

9:01

engineering. There were other things

9:03

available, but you were pushed towards

9:06

manufacturing base every

9:08

parent on the street pretty much worked

9:10

on it. Every father and some of the mothers

9:12

too worked at one of the big car

9:14

plants or some sort of

9:16

ancillary factory. There

9:18

was no real opportunity in my home to do

9:21

homework. So I fell behind in school.

9:23

I was bright, but I just

9:25

didn't have the opportunity to keep up. And

9:27

I think, and some sort of core

9:30

anxiety set in them because I felt really

9:32

clearly I was getting left behind. and

9:36

relied on humor and wit and

9:39

a fair amount of mischief to carry me

9:41

through. And I got as far

9:43

as the final high school exams

9:46

but didn't take very many of them. I just didn't

9:48

show up because I just knew, you had to

9:50

take them by law. But I showed

9:52

up for just a couple of them and

9:54

was a no show for the rest and

9:57

just drifted out of school somewhat

9:59

unceremoniously. into

10:03

a short period of unemployment, and then

10:05

when, like so many other people into

10:07

the factories, one of

10:09

the few remaining. Yeah. So that's

10:11

the phase that I guess I was not counting.

10:14

But yeah, and from age 11,

10:16

you worked in a petrol station as well. That's

10:18

right. Yeah. So I got into

10:21

adulting pretty early.

10:23

I worked in a petrol

10:25

station, a gas station pumping gas

10:28

on my own. There was no there were

10:30

no adults there. I used to work on a milk

10:32

float, which was in England,

10:35

these electric vans

10:37

that would drive around and deliver

10:39

milk to people's doorsteps. And so

10:41

I used to do that on a weekend as well, and

10:44

then a paper round, like most of the kids

10:46

and was buying my own clothes at the age of 11

10:49

or 12, just so I could buy the things

10:51

that the other kids were wearing. But I think I

10:53

missed out on a, quite an important part

10:55

of childhood. Because I was working

10:57

on a lot of the weekends. I don't

10:59

know if that was really snowboarding, or more just surviving,

11:02

I don't think there was any real momentum, it just was fits

11:05

and starts, and it

11:07

didn't seem to have any fixed point of ambition,

11:10

it was more just trying to keep up.

11:13

And so I left school, worked in a factory.

11:15

It was desperate. It was windowless,

11:18

extraordinarily noisy. You

11:20

could barely hold a thought in your head because

11:22

of the sound of the presses and

11:26

other machinery just pounding.

11:28

There were people in there that had

11:30

been there their whole lives, 20, 30, 40

11:32

years. There's

11:34

some of the women that were in their 70s that

11:36

had been there since they were 14

11:41

and working on the same machines.

11:44

their whole lives, and not much

11:46

daylight. And I would, especially

11:49

during the winter months, it would be dark when

11:51

I walked to the factory and dark when

11:53

I left. And I would just

11:55

very quietly weep to myself as

11:57

I was walking to work and when I left.

12:00

Just the desperation, the nothingness

12:03

of it, sitting at a machine all day.

12:05

doing piecework, which is where, you're just

12:07

doing it's numerical and you're supposed to do 1,

12:10

000 or 2, 000 repetitions of the same

12:12

movement to make your numbers,

12:14

which are counted sort of

12:16

analog, but it was a digital reader. And

12:19

And that's what you did. And it was mind

12:21

numbing. And

12:23

I'd always been interested in music and

12:25

wanted to be a musician. And I think it was

12:27

fairly disassociative as a kid. I

12:29

always felt like I was on the

12:31

outside looking in. It

12:33

was quite a lot of emotional and physical violence

12:36

in my home. And I

12:38

think, now knowing what I know, I'm, I was

12:40

pretty disassociative, and I had real problems

12:42

sleeping, so there was fatigue as well

12:44

sleep deprivation and I, when I used

12:46

to watch the music show in England, Top of

12:49

the Pops, it was like a religious experience

12:51

for kids to watch Top of the Pops and

12:53

it was where the bands of the day would play the

12:55

song that was in the chart, I

12:58

would see these artists performing, Bowie

13:00

was probably one of the principal artists

13:02

of the day, Brian Ferry

13:04

and Roxy Music, and other

13:07

bands, but I would see these artists and

13:09

I thought, oh, that's, I'm

13:11

supposed to be there, because they had this other,

13:15

otherworldly ascendant quality

13:17

and that seemed to resonate with the disassociative.

13:20

Obviously, I didn't know all of this at the time.

13:23

And so I just assumed, Oh, that's what I'm

13:25

supposed to be. Cause

13:27

clearly they didn't go to school. They're

13:29

clearly like the rules of school. did

13:31

not apply to these people. You could tell by the way

13:33

they dressed, and so I thought obviously

13:36

I'm supposed to be in that strata.

13:39

I want you to tell your story about

13:41

the belt that you fashioned since you're

13:44

closing even. That was that was

13:46

I was trying to emulate Tom Jones,

13:49

who's still around as an entertainer,

13:51

Welsh singer, been around since the sixties.

13:55

And had a bunch of hits about, as recently

13:57

as about 15 years ago. He's

13:59

a legend. And I was, blimey,

14:02

I was not even 10 yet. And

14:05

there was a girl who

14:07

lived a street away from ours.

14:09

And she was 16. Really

14:12

beautiful. And I knew she was into Tom

14:14

Jones. And I just wanted

14:16

to get her attention, basically. I was, I

14:18

think, 9 years.

14:21

And so I had this idea Tom Jones used to wear

14:23

like flares and ruffled

14:25

shirts and very

14:29

it was a sex symbol, like a blatant

14:31

sex symbol and and used to wear these

14:33

belts with these huge buckles. So I fashioned

14:35

the belt out of a custard tin lid. The

14:38

brand was Bird's Custard and

14:41

it was just powdered custard in a tin

14:44

and the lid was gold and round

14:47

and about this big. And

14:49

I managed to stick some

14:51

string to the back and I tied this custard

14:53

tin lid around my shorts.

14:57

And just waited, because she'd

14:59

always, she'd have to walk past our house to

15:01

go down to the town. And

15:04

she walked by and I just stood there nonchalantly

15:06

and was

15:08

convinced she was gonna see

15:12

the Tom Jones ness in me. Yeah.

15:15

So you had this, you had already a

15:17

lot of this impetuosity or rascality

15:20

and you went for it and your creativity

15:22

was showing big time. The

15:25

first, I

15:27

remember asking my elementary

15:30

school teacher to come to

15:32

her house on a date.

15:34

I was seven years old and

15:36

I was like, and I asked her if I could have a word with her

15:38

in private. And I took her outside the classroom

15:42

and I said, would you like to come to our house for tea?

15:45

And she was so touched by it. She did.

15:49

neglected to tell my mom, but she knocked

15:51

on the door and showed

15:53

up and had tea which was felt pretty

15:55

like a big deal at the time. Anyway,

15:58

yes. Yeah, early feels like your

16:00

personality that I've come in touch

16:03

with was already coming through

16:05

the ability to do

16:09

things others don't. Yeah, I

16:11

feel this from you. You've led

16:13

the way. into the space

16:16

of mental health that enabled

16:18

people like me and others to follow behind.

16:21

I think it was born of definitely

16:24

a fairly healthy sense of adventure, but

16:27

also I knew,

16:29

like I knew really early on, once

16:32

school started getting more serious.

16:34

That I wasn't going to be able to keep up. And

16:39

and that I needed to, obviously this

16:41

wasn't conscious, but there was some mechanism

16:43

where I knew I needed to compensate

16:47

for that somehow. And

16:49

so it was really, I think, wit. Relying

16:52

on my wits and

16:54

absorbing information and

16:57

trying things and being daring and having

16:59

to be daring to create any kind

17:01

of movement. And, not to

17:03

say that it was in the absence of nervousness.

17:06

There was plenty of nervousness. There

17:08

was a great deal of nervousness moving to

17:10

London. I'd been in, just

17:13

to go back to your introduction, when

17:15

I was in the factories and pursuing

17:18

my idea of I, I need to be

17:20

on the music TV shows. There

17:23

were a lot of other kids in my hometown

17:26

that were in a similar position

17:28

to me. And

17:30

we just put a band together, as a lot

17:32

of kids in the working class, including the

17:34

Beatles, of course put a band together

17:37

in order to find a

17:39

way out. Not everybody's. mentor

17:42

made to work in a factory or in construction.

17:45

I've worked in construction as well, and

17:48

not everybody's cut out for that. And

17:51

it was really the only other option, that or sports,

17:53

which is why so many of the great fighters

17:56

have come from really desperate

17:58

backgrounds, because you're literally trying to

18:00

fight your way out. I was in various

18:03

bands and the industrial

18:05

collapse deepened and

18:07

the rising criminal behavior

18:10

was correlative. And

18:12

pretty much everybody in my peer group as a kid

18:15

drifted into crime, largely

18:17

drugs and

18:19

robbery and stuff like that.

18:21

And I could feel like the

18:24

desperation and the probability

18:28

And so the music thing became

18:31

a tether. And it also took

18:33

me out of circulation because we were rehearsing

18:35

as a band in my friend's garage. And I was singing

18:38

at the time in the band.

18:41

And it kept me out of the

18:43

way, the other trajectory of

18:46

the nighttime where everybody else was going the

18:49

criminal route. And of

18:51

my peer group, I was amongst

18:53

a very small minority that didn't have

18:55

a criminal record. By the time

18:58

17, 18, 19.

19:01

And a lot of my very close friends went

19:04

to jail, because young offenders,

19:06

and then there's adult offenders various

19:08

bands came and went, and then I ended up being

19:12

able to afford to buy a saxophone. I got

19:14

injured in a road accident when I was 17

19:17

by a careless driver, which

19:20

took me out and I was in hospital

19:22

for some time with significant

19:24

leg injuries. And It took me out for

19:26

really more than a year, and

19:30

there was a compensation payout from

19:32

that. And with that money, I brought

19:34

a saxophone and learned to play it really quickly

19:37

because I so badly wanted to. And the

19:39

saxophone was the instrument

19:42

du jour at the time. There were a lot

19:44

of bands with sax players in going into

19:46

the 80s now. And

19:48

I learned to play it remarkably quickly.

19:51

And this perhaps the slower part

19:53

of the process was getting the musculature

19:55

in my face to cooperate with what

19:57

I wanted to do, because it takes a

19:59

while for that to build, obviously, like

20:01

any. any muscle group that's

20:03

not been used for a purpose. And

20:06

that band started to do well. Like we had

20:08

started to attract some attention and

20:10

we got serious management and we

20:12

were playing in a really good club

20:14

in Birmingham regularly. And

20:16

then record company started to see us play

20:18

and then a lot of drugs came into

20:21

the band. And it just started to get

20:23

very paranoid, and very cliquey, and very

20:25

infighty. And then we got some got some

20:27

support slots with Culture Club,

20:30

by George's band, and they were huge band

20:32

at the time. So we were the opening act,

20:36

and we were playing in front of thousands of

20:38

screaming kids. Who were

20:40

amped to see Culture Club

20:42

that they would have screamed at anything. And so we

20:44

were going on stage to this

20:47

adulation that it's

20:49

arguable whether or not we deserved it but

20:51

anyway, we got it. And it

20:53

was just too much too soon. And

20:56

the band imploded. And

20:59

some of the members of the band, were

21:02

family men and

21:05

for all of the success

21:09

that we were having, there was no money coming in. And

21:11

so they started to make money the best

21:13

they could largely by illegal means

21:15

and ended up getting sent to jail.

21:18

It just wasn't at that juncture. I

21:20

w it was just exhausting and

21:23

fraught. And my

21:26

situation at home was untenable.

21:30

And I, the same week that

21:32

my band members had been scrutinized

21:35

by the law I was refused.

21:38

Signing on to the doll.

21:40

There's a piece of paper that you have to sign

21:43

to apply for the doll for a welfare

21:45

check, called a UB40, which is where the

21:47

band get the name, it's named from, and

21:51

yeah, so their first album, the first UB40

21:54

album is called signing off. Cause when they

21:56

got the record deal, they were able to sign

21:58

off the doll. So I

22:01

had no way of making any money.

22:03

My band just fragmented.

22:07

And I felt the tension.

22:09

I felt the tension of the gravitational

22:12

pull towards criminality through

22:14

desperation. And I,

22:16

the, so the snowboard moving to

22:18

London definitely

22:22

was a romantic idea. I'd

22:24

never been, and

22:28

it was this, I, I just knew it was where

22:30

musicians were, I was a pretty good saxophone

22:32

player, and I had this naive

22:35

idea that I'd be there about a week.

22:38

before somebody heard about this saxophone

22:40

player playing on the street and might get

22:42

invited into a band and then probably

22:45

invited to stay on somebody's couch

22:48

and, and etc. And

22:50

how much money did you have in your pocket? Oh,

22:53

equivalent to about 30 bucks. And

22:59

a friend of mine was managing

23:02

a German rock band, and

23:04

he had a flat

23:08

in North London, Finchley Road.

23:11

It's a tube stop heading north. And

23:15

he said crash on the couch. And so I did that

23:17

for a little while and then that fragmented

23:21

and the bang got dropped and it was really chaotic.

23:23

They were signed to EMI and

23:27

and then I was just busking. And I was able

23:29

to sign on to the Dole in London using that

23:31

address. And

23:33

so I was signing on the Dole, trying to help

23:35

that him and that German rock band and playing

23:37

my saxophone on the street. And

23:40

it was an incredible time. I

23:42

didn't have enough money to really buy. I lost

23:44

a lot of weight, didn't really

23:46

couldn't really afford to buy food. And you

23:51

were sometimes sleeping in by

23:53

breaking into cars. Was that? Yeah. Did that come

23:55

a little later when you were there? It

23:57

was within that time frame Tell

23:59

that, yeah, tell that story, I feel it's a

24:01

good one. Cards weren't as sophisticated then

24:04

and I had a small Swiss army knife

24:07

that had this little, I still have it, I

24:10

saw it the other day, and

24:12

it had a little nail file blade

24:16

with a blunt end that you could use as

24:18

a flathead screwdriver, and

24:20

you could stick it in the door of a mini. And

24:23

it would just open or a Ford Transit,

24:25

which is a cargo van and it would just

24:27

open, and there weren't alarms back

24:29

then. It wasn't sophisticated enough

24:31

to start the ignition, but

24:33

it would get you in the vehicle and it was pretty

24:36

decent shelter compared to no shelter. And

24:40

one time I gained

24:43

access to the cargo bay of a Ford

24:45

Transit like a delivery van. And

24:47

you go into this deep rest,

24:50

but not sleep state or no sleep

24:52

deep rest, where you're it's like

24:54

sleeping with one eye open. You're just aware

24:56

and I was in the back of this van and I heard the door,

24:59

the driver's door. There was a partition between

25:01

the cargo bay and the cab.

25:03

And I heard the door open and slam and the engine

25:05

starts. And we were in North, Northwest

25:08

London, West Hampstead near Abbey Road, near

25:11

the famous Beatles studio. And

25:14

this van just drove and drove and I was

25:16

okay, I'm in it now, and watch

25:18

the, watch London go by through the back

25:20

windows without moving, just watching.

25:24

We ended up in diagonally the exact

25:26

opposite corner of London and East

25:28

Ham. Which is a working class

25:31

part of London, where, very close to

25:33

where West Ham Football Club comes from.

25:35

And thankfully, he just got out, went

25:37

to wherever he was going, and I got out and walked

25:40

all the way back into London, over

25:42

the Tower Bridge, past the Tower of

25:44

London. It was the first time I'd seen that

25:46

side of London. And was

25:48

walking through the City of London,

25:50

the Financial District. And

25:53

where all the civil servants are

25:55

during morning rush hour. And

25:58

at that time, civil servants would wear a uniform.

26:00

It was a bowler hat, a black

26:03

blazer, a shirt and tie,

26:05

and really broad pinstripe

26:07

trousers. And there was just this sea

26:10

of thousands of men, different

26:14

age groups, all wearing this exact same

26:16

uniform who either worked in the

26:18

bank or in civil

26:21

service. And

26:23

I was walking the opposite direction. to

26:25

them. It was very, and

26:27

I was like zigzagging and just look

26:29

and looking at all these people. And it was, I,

26:33

I didn't, I wasn't widely

26:35

read enough at the time to think of it

26:37

as some sort of Orwellian scene,

26:40

but now I do. But

26:43

that's a remarkable image. Yeah,

26:45

that uniformity is gone now. And

26:49

you also describe the

26:52

glow of light within pubs and feeling

26:54

outside of all of that. I've had my own experiences

26:57

in both London and New York, without

26:59

much money as a traveler, feeling

27:02

outside of the contained

27:05

spaces where good things were happening.

27:08

There's a there's a real difference being

27:10

on each side of those walls. Being

27:13

in the cold is quite something. Yeah,

27:15

it's probably a throwback to like some genetic

27:18

memory of not having access to the

27:20

campfire. But there's

27:22

something, there aren't

27:25

that many pubs left and I don't drink anymore

27:27

anyway but back then it

27:29

was exactly what the name suggests,

27:31

a public house. And

27:34

people would congregate. And

27:36

it was a leveler, a pub. There

27:38

were levelers in the UK where you

27:41

would go into a pub.

27:43

And some of them were really very old. There are pubs

27:46

still in London that Charles Dickens drank

27:48

in, and you would go to a pub and there'd

27:50

be like barristers, and lawyers, and

27:52

judges, and criminals, and

27:55

milkmen and foundry

27:57

workers, and they'd all be just

27:59

like in this mingle of

28:01

this sort of strange, momentary

28:05

equality and I'm

28:08

tempted to say brotherhood, but there were really rough

28:10

places as well quite often. There

28:13

was a sense of belonging if you were in,

28:15

if you were in, but you were on the outside at

28:17

that point. Yeah, flat broke, yeah. And

28:19

then of course, the reality of my situation,

28:23

I wouldn't say it was a homesickness, but

28:25

it was definitely a sense of displacement.

28:28

And my accent, my, my

28:30

black country accent marked

28:33

me instantly as

28:35

somebody from the working class. And

28:38

so there was condescension and

28:40

stigma. Really big stigma,

28:43

and which even by the time I started

28:45

to move into the music industry, executive

28:47

was still there, it was still there, where

28:49

people would be like, Oh, somebody from

28:52

somebody doesn't really belong here. It

28:55

was definitely a

28:57

stigma attached. So

29:00

in terms of the metaphor of the snowballs,

29:02

what would you say the snowflake

29:05

of intention or the driving

29:08

force was of that phase? I

29:11

would say definitely a flight

29:13

response. There was definitely

29:15

a flight response and a need to escape.

29:18

And a sense of nothingness,

29:21

of blankness, if I stayed in my hometown.

29:26

I qualified for manual labor and there

29:28

wasn't any. And

29:30

so there really wasn't any

29:33

other option but to to create some

29:35

literal physical movement. So

29:38

there was that. And then definitely

29:40

romance. And this

29:42

absolute faith in

29:44

my own ability as a musician. I

29:47

had this romantic idea of I'm

29:49

going to be discovered. It

29:52

might take a minute, but it's going

29:54

to be one of those rags to riches stories,

29:57

where the musician was in the gutter, so to

29:59

speak, and then found his way to, success

30:01

and those romantic rags

30:04

to riches stories. Is

30:07

there any way that could have played out? It

30:09

did play out. It

30:12

did play out. As a musician, as

30:14

I know, we'll

30:16

get to the transition in a sec. But was

30:19

that dream set up to succeed? Or

30:21

do you think I,

30:24

I think if I'd known a bit more, I

30:26

think if I'd known enough

30:29

about like where the rehearsal studios

30:31

were in London, where

30:33

I could just rock up with my saxophone

30:35

and listen to bands that were rehearsing

30:37

and knock on doors and say,

30:39

do you need a saxophone player? Can I jam with

30:42

you? If I'd have had that awareness

30:44

and sense of, Oh, I need

30:46

to network. I

30:48

think it could have played out differently. I

30:51

just didn't have a clue. You have to remember I was

30:54

22 years old from a fairly

30:56

Or industrial,

30:58

but somewhat provincial city. From

31:02

the outside it feels like a

31:04

higher authenticity, but maybe

31:07

naive stuff. Oh, yeah.

31:09

Naivete, yeah. Yeah,

31:13

for sure. And had the naivete not

31:15

been there, I don't think I would have ever gone. I

31:20

would have just, slugged it out in the Midlands

31:22

and figured out a way of doing

31:25

some job somewhere, naivete

31:27

in that regard served me because it was,

31:30

following a dream that, that wasn't,

31:33

I call it the hope goggles. I had the hope

31:35

goggles on and you're willing to

31:37

overlook the most desperate of circumstances,

31:40

like sleeping in the back of vans

31:44

when you've got the hope goggles on. The reality

31:46

is there to be seen. I just

31:49

didn't allow myself to see it. Yeah,

31:53

a reality distortion

31:55

field. Yeah. It

31:57

seems to have served you. And maybe

32:00

it's a good transition into what happened

32:02

there in London. But it seems to have worked

32:05

out as you put yourself into

32:07

these situations. I think

32:09

so. All of these things are

32:13

mixed blessings, i, I felt

32:15

deeply in love with London during

32:17

that time, deeply. The names

32:20

were, some of the names were familiar to

32:22

me because of the Monopoly board and

32:25

of course the night time news.

32:28

I had no, no

32:30

real understanding of what it meant

32:32

to be somewhere that, A, was a world

32:34

capital, B, that

32:36

had that kind of evidential

32:39

vibrational history. Thank you And

32:42

in importance, like

32:45

the permeated, it felt like every brick

32:48

and every street and

32:50

I could feel it, I could

32:52

feel the energy and potential,

32:55

even though, it was a hard time in

32:57

England, in the United Kingdom, it

32:59

was a tough time, but

33:01

there was potential there. And

33:04

I felt it and that was unique.

33:06

That was unique for me to feel to

33:08

be somewhere I could feel that energetic

33:11

potential. Yes,

33:13

putting yourself in that geographic place

33:15

is probably a big part of your story. It

33:18

increased the amount of Your

33:21

perspective, your ability to

33:24

imagine more. Yeah,

33:27

and I think to feel more, just to feel

33:29

that potential, to feel the possibility.

33:31

It was so exciting and

33:34

I was not going to let it go. There was no

33:36

way I was going back. No

33:38

way. And and so

33:41

it was a genuine, passionate

33:44

enthusiasm to find a way of staying

33:46

there. Which I think was another

33:48

big factor in that particular snowball.

33:51

It was like love. And

33:53

I didn't want to lose that

33:55

love. I didn't want to lose being

33:58

in a place that brought me alive in that

34:00

way. Even though my position was somewhat

34:02

precarious. I'd felt,

34:04

I felt alive in a way that I hadn't known

34:06

before. And I was not gonna go back

34:09

to something that was, two

34:11

dimensional by comparison. Not

34:15

to deride my hometown

34:17

or Birmingham as a city, just

34:20

that was my experience, and I think

34:22

there were a lot of things that played into that,

34:24

including my willingness

34:27

to risk myself. And

34:30

somehow that's, somehow that was

34:32

met energetically in London. I

34:35

think it's something similar in New York

34:37

as well. So should

34:39

we get to the discovery that

34:41

happened? Yeah

34:44

I was playing on the street busking,

34:47

which is a street musician, and

34:49

I was playing a piece of music from the, I think

34:52

the 1930s called the Harlem Nocturne.

34:55

It's a famous sleazy kind of jazz

34:57

piece and much favoured by

35:00

strippers. And

35:02

somebody stopped, a gentleman, a besuited

35:05

gentleman stopped and we talked about music

35:07

for a while, put some

35:09

money in my case and left. And

35:13

some weeks later, long

35:17

story short, tracked me down. We

35:19

met again. We met at a cafe and

35:21

he explained to me that he'd been in England

35:24

looking meeting with, music

35:27

executives with a view to opening a Warner

35:29

Brothers office, an

35:31

American Warner Brothers office in

35:33

London. It was one of the Warner

35:36

Brothers labels called Elektra Records

35:39

and that he'd met several people and basically

35:42

nobody had made as big an impression on him

35:44

as I did and

35:46

so would I be interested. And

35:51

the first question I asked was does that

35:53

mean I would need to work in an office?

35:56

Because in the working class

36:00

if you leave the factory floor Or

36:02

you leave the actual construction site

36:05

and go and work in the office, you've

36:08

crossed a line. And

36:10

somehow that was ingrained in me and

36:12

it was like, yeah. And

36:15

I was hesitant. And I was also hesitant

36:17

because I think intuitively I knew

36:20

I had this strong sense that my musician

36:24

path would probably come to

36:26

an end. And

36:29

he said, look, come to New York, meet

36:31

everybody. We're

36:34

just getting the label started again. Come

36:37

to an A& R meeting, et cetera, and see,

36:39

and I'd never been abroad. I

36:43

had to scramble to get a passport. And

36:46

at the time I had a silver

36:49

photographer's case, a steel one. Those

36:51

heavy steel

36:54

cases to keep cameras in.

36:57

I had a cheap walkman, pseudo

37:01

walkman, a bunch of cassettes,

37:04

and very little else. I didn't

37:06

have a bank account.

37:08

I didn't have a passport. I didn't have an

37:10

address. How

37:12

many pairs of clothes? One.

37:15

I was still wearing the same jacket that

37:17

I wore in the factory and it was still soaked

37:20

in machine oil. It

37:23

was like an off green Harrington

37:26

cut jacket and it looked really

37:28

tortured and interesting. It

37:31

reeked of factories. And

37:34

it was just saturated in machine oil

37:37

and something that we used to call suds,

37:39

and suds is, it's a, both a lubricant

37:41

and a cooling agent when you're doing high speed

37:43

drilling through metal, or die cutting.

37:47

And it would just splash everywhere. And

37:50

so this jacket was just saturated with

37:52

dried in suds that would dried

37:55

a kind of a grimy color, and

37:58

that's, and I was still wearing that same jacket. And

38:02

and so I scrambled and

38:04

about two, three weeks later, I was in Manhattan.

38:08

What do you think that besuited gentleman

38:11

saw in you? We talked about

38:13

it after some time later. And

38:16

it was that I had committed.

38:19

There's a quote by a jazz musician, Don

38:21

Cherry, Eagle Eye Cherry and Nanny Cherry's

38:24

father, late father. And

38:26

there's a quote from him and he said I realized

38:28

early on I would either live or die by the trumpet.

38:31

And I think it was that, that

38:34

he sensed that I had, it

38:36

was, this was it for me. It was all

38:38

in. Yeah, it was all in. It was either going to

38:41

be musical, or death. And

38:43

And he sensed that, and he sensed

38:46

that I understood really early on,

38:49

having grown up in a fairly bleak environment,

38:52

the transformative power of music.

38:55

And I would see it was

38:57

like a metamorphosis, or like some alchemy was

38:59

taking place where people would be grumpy

39:02

and in pain and weary

39:05

and short tempered and

39:08

unavailable. And then a song would come on

39:10

the radio and

39:12

it would be like, people would all of a sudden,

39:14

the switch had been flipped and they'd

39:17

be singing along to that song, the

39:19

Kinks or the Stones or the Beatles

39:21

or Shirley Bassey or whatever

39:24

it might have been Dusty Springfield. It

39:26

was just this power, this

39:29

transformative power where

39:31

a world suddenly became eye

39:34

deaf and rich with color. Where

39:36

prior to that moment, it felt. Like

39:39

a negative space. And

39:42

then there'd be this, you know, Simon

39:44

and Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water,

39:46

and there'd just be this. And everybody was

39:48

like, compelled to sing

39:50

along with the tragic,

39:54

poetic chorus, the

39:56

heroic, I'll be there for

39:58

you type rallying.

40:01

You must have been very

40:04

energetically interesting to him. Very,

40:06

there must have been a lot of passion at that

40:08

age. For sure. Yeah, There

40:11

was an animation, I'm sure, but for

40:13

sure I wouldn't have been trying, I

40:16

wouldn't have been efforting, I

40:19

would have just been speaking about

40:21

something that meant a lot to me, so

40:23

I wouldn't have seen, oh, here's an opportunity,

40:25

or any, it would have just been, this

40:28

person seems interested in something that

40:30

is essentially me,

40:33

that I am alive. I wonder if he was jaded

40:36

by business types, and there

40:38

was something fresh and someone not of

40:40

that world. It was probably

40:42

one of the sexiest jobs in the world at the time,

40:44

there was the CD boom, the MTV

40:47

boom, and everybody wanted to be an

40:49

A& R man. And so

40:51

there were a lot of chances.

40:54

and a lot of poses and a lot of very

40:56

pretentious and

40:59

overly ambitious people drawn

41:01

to it, draw that they didn't really

41:03

understand creativity or

41:05

the creative process. They just wanted to be near

41:07

it. And I was later to find out

41:09

that was the

41:11

dominant actually. Yeah.

41:15

I've heard the term shadow creatives. And,

41:18

I think that's where some of the exploitative aspect

41:20

comes in. So you were

41:23

you're in this jacket that your

41:25

one jacket, how did you

41:27

even get started? The first, you

41:29

need a little bit of money just to show up on the first

41:31

day in a certain way. Yeah, no, I didn't.

41:34

I didn't. They put me on a salary that was

41:36

less than the young lady

41:38

that was on the reception to the building, considerably

41:41

less. I think she was on I

41:43

don't think, I know, she was on 12, 000

41:46

a year and

41:49

I was on seven. And

41:51

that wasn't in a much, so I managed to

41:53

get a studio apartment way

41:56

on the outskirts of London. The

41:59

other side of Kilburn, Cricklewood which

42:01

was very much a working class part of London,

42:03

but still at the time. And

42:05

I had this little bedsit. Tiny

42:08

apartment, not

42:11

much bigger, quite honestly,

42:13

probably the same size of a, as a transit

42:15

van. And it didn't

42:17

have a bathtub in it, it had a tiny shower stall

42:20

and it was, like a 1970s

42:22

or 1980s New York hotel

42:24

room, but not a fancy one, and it

42:26

was a mile and a half from the nearest tube

42:28

station, which had you told anybody

42:31

that in the music industry would have been a course

42:34

for derision and mockery. The

42:36

postcode was a course for derision and

42:38

mockery. My accent was a course for

42:40

derision and mockery. And

42:43

in amongst that, I

42:45

was suddenly immersed into American

42:48

corporate culture, which I was not prepared

42:50

for in any shape or form. And

42:52

yet I could

42:54

get into gigs free and

42:57

I could say legitimately that I

42:59

was an A& R person for Elektra Records,

43:02

the Warner Brothers Corporation.

43:05

And and the other bizarre quirk

43:08

was there was some weird tax thing

43:10

whereby, They couldn't

43:12

buy a company car

43:14

for me. And so

43:17

instead they gave me a car with a

43:19

driver. And

43:22

so anytime I went to a gig, I

43:24

had a car with a driver waiting somewhere

43:26

nearby to take me to the next gig. Cause

43:29

you could go to four, five, six gigs a night

43:31

in London, but there

43:33

were that many venues and that many bands

43:35

playing and Obviously,

43:38

that was quite something, but

43:40

I'm sure the driver was making three times

43:42

more a year than I was. But

43:44

we became friends, actually. I remember him to

43:46

this day. His name was Morris. And

43:50

he was my regular driver and we had

43:52

some adventures. But so

43:54

that was a thing, and as a single

43:56

man, being able to chat

43:59

to people, chat to young

44:01

ladies, and what do you do and what

44:03

do you do? And, of course. I

44:05

could say I worked at a record label or I'm

44:08

going to know the gig. Do you want to come on? And this

44:10

is my driver, Morris, it made a huge

44:12

impression. Probably not the

44:14

right one on reflection but,

44:16

to go from being

44:18

on the outside of a pub, looking

44:21

in to being on very

44:23

much on the inside and at the center

44:25

of a music venue was a Big transition,

44:27

huge transition. Yeah.

44:30

And I recall you talking about this

44:32

phase of the excitement of

44:35

going and seeing acts and finding

44:37

special performers and then,

44:39

bring them in and just

44:41

a period of that glowed

44:43

with aliveness and life.

44:47

Yeah. And seven days a week, probably

44:51

from nine in the So

44:55

hard work was your competitive

44:58

advantage, it seems. You threw

45:00

yourself at it. Yeah, and

45:02

it was easy to do it because I loved it

45:04

and it was vibrant. It was just alive,

45:07

and I didn't want to miss a minute. And

45:10

then and then I was able to experience London

45:12

somewhat. I was living on my expense

45:14

account. I couldn't afford to pay rent

45:16

and buy food. I had

45:18

a small expense account which was supposed to be used

45:21

for getting

45:23

trains and buying tickets

45:26

wherever I needed to if guest lists

45:28

weren't available, just basic

45:31

buying music magazines and I lived

45:33

on cheap takeaway food

45:36

for a couple of years. And beer,

45:38

cause going solo into a club,

45:42

there's a little bit of social awkwardness in that.

45:44

And given I had, I was somewhat self conscious

45:46

about my dress, my accent,

45:49

et cetera. First thing you do is go to the

45:51

bar. And I calculated,

45:53

I was drinking something like 22 gallons

45:55

of beer a month. It was ridiculous.

45:58

Like five or six pints a night. I forget what

46:00

that converted into, but I remember doing

46:02

the math and it was multiple gallons

46:05

per month. And I started to get

46:07

quite ill, and lack of sleep as well. And

46:09

my flat was very damp and full of mold.

46:11

And so I just stopped drinking in my late twenties.

46:14

I was like this, I need to take myself in this

46:16

more seriously. And I just stopped drinking

46:18

and got into running and distance

46:21

running. There's a way of

46:24

being able to. Stabilize

46:27

and prepare my body for the rigors

46:30

that I was putting myself through. It

46:32

was stressful as well. It was the first

46:35

time in my life I'd ever had anything

46:37

I was afraid to lose. And

46:39

I think that was another factor in that initial

46:41

snowball. Is the movement

46:44

is somewhat relatively easy when you

46:46

have nothing to lose. Anything

46:49

at that point is a

46:51

plus. If

46:54

you're nowhere with nothing, any

46:56

movement. is going

46:58

to be met with enthusiasm, not trepidation.

47:01

And then, so this was the first time, and

47:04

I'd, and I remember I'd found a way into

47:06

this through extraordinary good

47:08

fortune just pure luck.

47:11

Okay. My life at that point, it

47:13

shaped my language to be

47:15

able to speak about music in a way that made

47:17

an impression. But nevertheless,

47:20

the encounter was pure luck and

47:23

I became really superstitious. and

47:26

courteous to a point of pathology,

47:29

because I just didn't want to upset the gods of good

47:31

fortune. And

47:34

I was very vigilant not to as best

47:36

I could. Yeah.

47:38

So this early part of the, your

47:40

music industry line

47:42

of work and A& R for those that don't know, is Artist

47:45

in Repertoire. Is that right? Yeah. So

47:47

you're responsible for finding the artist. And

47:50

then back in the day, pre the Beatles, pre

47:52

Dylan, you would also be responsible

47:54

for finding their repertoire, the songs that

47:56

they were going to sing. So there'd be professional

47:59

songwriters and professional

48:01

entertainers, not necessarily

48:03

would you find one in the other. Okay,

48:06

so those were two categories of people, artists

48:08

and repertoire. The writers

48:11

and the artists, yeah. Interesting. A lot

48:13

of the, like Elvis, didn't write hardly any

48:15

of his own songs. I think he wrote one, one

48:18

or two songs in his entire career. It

48:20

was only in the 60s that singer songwriters

48:23

and self supporting artists

48:26

emerged as the norm. So

48:29

the job changed somewhat and it really became

48:31

about finding bands and artists

48:34

and giving them a record deal and

48:36

then navigating the process

48:38

of being a small

48:40

band in Sheffield or Leicester

48:42

or Birmingham or London, that

48:46

was playing in a pub with no money, to

48:48

suddenly getting a record deal, which

48:50

is, a massive transition, to

48:53

then working in a recording studio with a producer,

48:56

a record producer, That

49:00

they've admired the records of working

49:03

in a studio that was extremely expensive.

49:06

Remember, this was analog, so it was

49:08

tape, not digital, really

49:10

expensive, and

49:12

all of a sudden the red light

49:14

would go on, the recording light would go on, and

49:17

the realization that what

49:19

I am about, the sounds

49:21

I'm about to be make will

49:23

not only be captured forever. But

49:26

this'll be it'll go out on a record and

49:28

a CD and a cassette, and

49:30

it will not be able to be changed.

49:33

It's a moment of absolute

49:35

definition, a

49:37

defining moment. And it's amazing

49:40

to see the self consciousness,

49:43

that kicks in that moment. Because

49:46

everything is in there. Yes,

49:48

that's Hello, Graham, such new recording

49:50

studios back then, there's so much excitement

49:53

about recording. And

49:55

so you, so at this early phase of

49:58

this project, Part of your, say

50:00

your music career, music executive

50:03

career. It was still

50:06

on your authentic core. Still, it

50:09

hadn't yet been, later we'll probably

50:11

get into some shadow elements or

50:13

difficulties in that space, but

50:15

at the start of it, it was just, you

50:18

were in the, the gods had favored you,

50:21

you were where you were meant to be.

50:23

There was nothing you'd rather be doing

50:26

and you just. Yeah.

50:30

Yeah. So that, so in

50:32

a way that yours, that was

50:35

a good start, if that was

50:37

a good thing to be building on, right at that time,

50:39

although, as you said, there were maybe some

50:41

structural elements like relying on alcohol

50:44

or, the probably you

50:46

needed to grow up in certain ways still.

50:49

Yeah. Very much oh yeah. Yeah.

50:51

Yeah. And then the challenges of.

50:54

It had to be a hit, it's it's one

50:56

thing to go and find a band and then you navigate

50:59

through that recording process and the transition

51:01

and the extraordinary

51:04

shift in consciousness that's required.

51:07

Then there's the transition into where

51:09

art meets commerce and

51:11

navigating that and success

51:14

being fraught.

51:18

Because then there's that, and success

51:20

never looks like people imagine it's going to,

51:22

and the work, the incredible amount

51:24

of work that's required,

51:27

especially if your record started to happen internationally.

51:31

It's just unbelievable

51:33

amounts of work for press, for radio,

51:35

for gigs, interviews,

51:39

needing to write the next album

51:41

whilst you're on a tour bus responding

51:44

to fans. It's being

51:46

away from loved ones, et cetera, et cetera.

51:48

It was extraordinary

51:50

amounts of work and a lot of bands didn't

51:52

survive it. A lot of bands broke up

51:54

halfway through the American tour, first

51:56

American tour. So you

51:59

were there for a

52:01

bridge between the artists and the labels

52:03

and someone shepherding

52:06

the process and helping

52:08

these artists level up. During

52:11

the ascendant period, assuming

52:13

it was ascendant, obviously not all bands went

52:15

on to be successful, there

52:17

was definitely a need to

52:20

have you interpret and to

52:22

act as a liaison and a, and

52:24

as an emissary. between

52:26

the artist and the label in, in cooperation

52:29

with the band's management. But when

52:31

the success came, there was

52:33

this strange egoic

52:35

transition in the artist. I saw this

52:37

consistently. It went from,

52:40

thank God you're here to help us,

52:42

to, isn't it amazing

52:44

that you got to witness our

52:47

destiny. It was always

52:49

going to happen. We were always going to be stars.

52:51

Wasn't it great for you to be in proximity

52:54

to that? It must really help your career.

52:57

And that, and so some version of

52:59

that shift, that egoic shift,

53:02

and it's a necessary one. It's

53:04

a necessary egoic shift to, to

53:06

believe in that destiny and

53:09

the, the supremacy of their creative

53:12

vision. I think it's a necessary

53:15

enlarging. To

53:17

be able to cope with the extraordinary

53:20

demands of success.

53:23

There's a term adaptive grandiosity.

53:26

I've never heard it but it's perfect. Yeah,

53:29

so you think that your ego

53:31

does need to be able

53:33

to occupy more territory, be

53:35

able to hold the

53:38

front up and to have certain

53:40

expectations. I don't

53:42

know if that's true now with social

53:44

media and the access that people

53:47

have to artists across the arts

53:50

where there is more room for humility and

53:54

candor, but

53:56

back then, to get the front page

53:58

of the music magazines, etc.

54:01

The needed to be that sense of that

54:03

person's a star, and it's different

54:05

now. It's completely different now because

54:08

of the amount of exposure. We

54:10

know more about choose any artist

54:12

in the top 10 and we know more

54:14

about them than we do probably about

54:16

Aretha Franklin and Bob Dylan and Otis

54:18

Redding and, because you can't, your

54:21

act wears out. Now there's

54:23

forced authenticity. You have to be a little

54:26

closer to who you are. I think

54:28

it's more that there's a expectation,

54:30

there's a pressure to overexpose.

54:34

There's, you've got to keep, what did, like artists

54:38

putting photographs on Instagram

54:40

of what they ate for breakfast or whatever,

54:43

it's it's it's deconstructed. The

54:45

mystical and the mythological,

54:47

it's the mystery, in

54:51

that regard, I think the magic's gone out of it,

54:55

where you would have these, as I was saying to you about

54:57

when I was a kid watching the music shows,

54:59

there were these otherworldly characters.

55:03

I don't think that's true anymore. I think what

55:05

makes them ascenders now,

55:07

what makes them otherworldly now is

55:10

the accumulated wealth

55:13

or the creating an impression

55:16

of accumulated wealth. So there's a separateness.

55:19

through material gain, through

55:22

wearing the brands and having access

55:25

to the, and that of course is actually a point

55:27

of artistic expression as well.

55:31

I've got this, I wear this, I have

55:33

that, I do this, swagger. Is

55:37

that too cynical though? Isn't creativity

55:39

always being reborn? far away from

55:42

the capital emerged the new sources

55:44

of creative expression. And then maybe

55:46

they'll get tainted later, but that there's

55:49

a refreshing quality. I'm

55:51

thinking of Jung's story of the

55:53

spring that gives

55:55

eternal life. And each time it

55:57

gets found, humans

56:00

build up structures around it and fences,

56:02

and they start to charge admission. And

56:04

over time, the spring dries out and

56:07

no one realizes it. So people are still paying

56:09

to visit a spring, which has no more juice

56:11

to it. And then

56:13

water finds a way out somewhere else.

56:16

Yes, a new spring appears somewhere else

56:18

and then the whole process repeats. It's

56:20

a tricky one. It's a really tricky one

56:22

because And

56:24

this is probably a much longer conversation

56:27

than we have time for, but and I don't mean

56:29

to sound cynical but the

56:32

depth and the quality of art reflects

56:36

culture, right? And

56:39

yes, there are pioneers. Yes, there are people

56:41

that push it. But I,

56:43

I don't think there was the tendency

56:46

toward art for art's sake or

56:49

celebrity for celebrity's sake then.

56:51

Of course there were, and there were pop artists

56:53

and they were thought of as somewhat disposable.

56:57

But I think there's a cynicism

56:59

in the process now. There's

57:01

a story about Man Down,

57:04

the Rihanna song, which is actually a really catchy

57:06

tune. It's a good tune. It's an interesting

57:08

song. It was a big hit, but

57:11

I think it has something like 20 writers

57:15

and it went around the world and cost over a million

57:17

dollars to, to because it's

57:19

become this. Almost like

57:22

an algorithm, what people want to hear, and

57:24

so it's, and so there's that piece

57:26

to it, whereas when

57:28

I look back at previous decades,

57:32

You think about the diversity that

57:34

existed in music, even

57:37

within a single genre you know, there's a considerable

57:39

difference between the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin,

57:42

they're both rock bands. To

57:44

go way back but I don't know,

57:46

but look, the other thing is,

57:48

I'm in my 60s now, what's happening

57:50

now isn't meant to appeal to me, and

57:52

I acknowledge and accept that. When

57:54

I was a kid growing up with The Clash,

57:57

and Elvis Costello, and X Ray Spex,

58:00

and then what came after punk with

58:02

the electronica. The

58:04

grown ups of the day were like, What is this?

58:06

This isn't music, and it's not supposed

58:08

to be for me. I'm not supposed to relate

58:10

to it. And I acknowledge and applaud

58:13

that. I think each generation

58:15

should have its own sense of itself.

58:18

And its own access to its own language

58:21

and its own sense of belonging to its

58:23

own culture. So that

58:25

its own unique identity

58:27

can form and grow and hopefully

58:29

contribute something. I

58:32

think there's, a great sadness in the fact

58:34

that there's not much disbursement of

58:36

profit to the middle and the lower echelons.

58:39

And so the artistic development

58:41

isn't being stimulated. The

58:44

streaming services don't distribute wealth

58:47

in the way. I

58:50

hear a lot of people complain that mainstream movies

58:53

aren't very interesting, particularly the superhero

58:55

variety and creative

58:58

risks aren't being taken in the same way.

59:01

Maybe the conditions for creativity

59:03

are less important. supportive, the

59:05

whole idea of a shadowification of

59:07

attention and people

59:10

not taking as deep a dive in the creative

59:12

process. Maybe there's a structural

59:14

shift that has happened that doesn't produce the same

59:17

kind of old growth that used to.

59:19

For sure. You look at the big movie houses and

59:21

they used to make films and it would be

59:23

a Paramount Pictures film. Look at the beginning

59:26

of any film now and you'll see

59:28

10 production companies listed.

59:31

It takes that many partners now. And

59:34

there used to be a thriving, Alternative

59:38

industry of arthouse films

59:41

that just, that, that money's just not there now.

59:44

Technology's there for people to be able to make

59:46

films more cheaply. There's just very little

59:48

outlet for them and they get lost in the noise

59:51

of the streaming services and occasionally

59:53

a film comes through. Nomadland

59:56

springs to mind, which is quite linear

59:58

in its story. It's a profound

1:00:00

observation. Really powerful

1:00:02

it's a mold busting

1:00:05

in that sense that it doesn't tick any of the usual

1:00:07

boxes that been other

1:00:09

films since, but they're still out there

1:00:12

and the response to them, the

1:00:14

response to anything that has integrity

1:00:16

or depth you can see there's still a hunger

1:00:18

for it, but I'm also,

1:00:20

acutely aware that some people just

1:00:22

need to escape, like I,

1:00:25

I was never into pop

1:00:27

music in the, as a kid, as

1:00:29

a music lover, or as a professional.

1:00:32

I always worked with artists that had some

1:00:35

sort of left of center quirk

1:00:38

and uniqueness. But

1:00:40

I was also aware that a lot of people

1:00:42

just needed, like a Spice Girls

1:00:44

or something as pure escapism

1:00:48

from the rigors and

1:00:50

quite often the The sort of

1:00:53

bleakness of

1:00:55

just getting by, I don't mean to sound

1:00:57

condescending, I'm just pointing

1:00:59

out that there are some things I can't fully

1:01:01

appreciate. the

1:01:03

value of. That doesn't mean to say they don't have

1:01:06

value and they have value for different reasons

1:01:08

for people with different value systems to mine.

1:01:12

It's a fascinating discussion.

1:01:14

I think you can, I can see it both

1:01:16

ways. Circling back to

1:01:19

so you were talking about the, pressures

1:01:22

of making a hit. And

1:01:25

so it sounds like the job just became

1:01:27

more and more intense

1:01:29

for you in terms of the actual

1:01:32

experience of taking artists into

1:01:34

the limelight. The industry

1:01:36

started to compress,

1:01:38

it was like ever decreasing circles. MTV

1:01:42

started to decline. College

1:01:44

radio, where most bands would get a foot

1:01:46

in the door, started to

1:01:49

decline. When

1:01:51

I first started A& R, the pressure was,

1:01:53

if your band wasn't a success

1:01:55

by the third album, they were going to get

1:01:57

dropped. And it felt like real pressure.

1:02:00

Now it's one single. Maybe

1:02:02

two. When Napster

1:02:05

appears, it was the beginning

1:02:07

of the end, but it wasn't just Napster. It

1:02:09

was also that a lot of the creatives

1:02:12

had been driven out of the

1:02:14

senior positions because

1:02:17

they just started to get too mad,

1:02:19

with success and started making

1:02:21

really foolish decisions. And

1:02:24

so they were replaced by. Radio

1:02:26

promo people and lawyers in

1:02:28

the senior position who had

1:02:30

a much more cynical, packaged

1:02:33

sausage factory kind of view

1:02:36

of art and artists and just

1:02:38

whack it out there and see and test

1:02:40

records at major stations.

1:02:43

And if the major station was like when they were

1:02:45

not likely to play this, the record would

1:02:47

never come out. So you

1:02:49

would be through that whole creative process

1:02:52

with the band, and the band has been told

1:02:54

on signing, especially if it was competitive,

1:02:56

and other labels wanted to sign them. We're

1:02:59

going to put everything behind you. We think you're the

1:03:01

best band. You're going to be the new U2

1:03:03

or whatever it is. And

1:03:06

then if the record didn't test well

1:03:08

at some of the key stations, the radio guys

1:03:10

would take them into key programmers. What

1:03:12

do you think of this? And they'd be like, don't really

1:03:14

see it for us. The record wouldn't come out. And

1:03:17

you would be the one. That I had that

1:03:21

public facing relationship with

1:03:23

the band and would be the one that

1:03:25

they would be like, what's happening. And in that regard,

1:03:27

you were the record label because

1:03:30

you were the only person they had access to.

1:03:32

That was a brutal position to be in.

1:03:34

And MTV was in

1:03:37

decline. CD sales were in decline.

1:03:39

People were buying less records because you could get them for

1:03:42

free through illegal downloading

1:03:44

services. Less interesting

1:03:46

records were being released. There was a

1:03:48

general sense of panic. So

1:03:51

even more terrible decisions were being made.

1:03:53

Labels were throwing money at bands

1:03:56

that they thought was going to be, Oh, that's our one hit

1:03:58

for the year. So they would make like

1:04:00

multi million dollar videos. And

1:04:03

they weren't. And

1:04:05

that created more panic and

1:04:07

job losses and mergers and mergers.

1:04:10

And it just became a smaller and smaller entity.

1:04:13

And then, over time, the streaming services

1:04:16

started to appear and radio stations disappeared.

1:04:19

And so it became quite hard. If

1:04:21

you had a successful record at college

1:04:23

radio, the college radio format, if

1:04:26

you had a college hit and number one or a top 10

1:04:28

record at college, you could sell

1:04:30

two, 3000 tickets in the market based

1:04:32

on a big college hit. So for

1:04:34

a band to come and have an experience in America,

1:04:37

like the Sugar Cubes, Bjork's first

1:04:39

band, on

1:04:42

a 3000, 2000 or 3000 ticket

1:04:44

tour, They wouldn't need tour support.

1:04:46

It's phenomenally expensive to tour

1:04:48

America, but on those kinds of ticket

1:04:50

sales and merch sales, it would be self sufficient.

1:04:53

That's a big deal. And

1:04:55

then you could do it again. All of the, like Simple Minds,

1:04:58

Sisters of Mercy, The

1:05:00

Cure U2,

1:05:03

all of those bands that came through to be big,

1:05:06

came through in that sort of way, college radio

1:05:08

first build, first album,

1:05:10

foot in the door, second album, ideally

1:05:13

build, although. A lot of

1:05:15

them slumped. Then there was the third album

1:05:17

and it had to cross over, meaning crossover

1:05:20

out of the college format into a more

1:05:22

mainstream radio format. But

1:05:24

by then the bands had learned, they'd

1:05:27

learned the craft they'd learned,

1:05:29

and you had those amazing third albums

1:05:31

like U2's third album.

1:05:35

Yes. If you get one shot, then

1:05:37

you're not going to take the same kind of risks.

1:05:39

You're going to mimic more. You're

1:05:41

going to play it safer. Precisely.

1:05:44

Yeah. Yeah. You're going to make a record

1:05:46

based on what's happening now, rather than

1:05:48

authenticity. Yes. And

1:05:52

your story there about

1:05:54

yeah, the tolerance for failure

1:05:57

going down. is reminding

1:05:59

me of something I heard about Esalen, that

1:06:02

people, staff who worked at Esalen

1:06:05

used to occasionally go

1:06:07

off the deep end, have, basically they

1:06:09

were in a very safe environment. And so

1:06:12

often their childhood trauma would come up and

1:06:14

they would have psychotic breaks or

1:06:17

be basically incoherent

1:06:19

for some period of time. And

1:06:23

it was a fairly common thing

1:06:25

for one or two staff members to be,

1:06:27

like not completely with it. And

1:06:30

that, yeah, and that was tolerated.

1:06:33

until the person found their way back and

1:06:35

they were healed. And then they, then they

1:06:37

became functioning staff members again. And

1:06:39

they, there was a major life moment

1:06:42

for them. It was very helpful. And

1:06:45

I heard that when Esslin was taken over

1:06:47

by, the tech manager

1:06:49

was brought in and a lot more focus on

1:06:52

kind of operations and

1:06:54

revenue and all of that, they

1:06:57

shortened that if someone, if someone started

1:06:59

to act strange, they were pretty much

1:07:01

asked to leave the property almost immediately.

1:07:04

So there's that shortening

1:07:06

and reduction in capacity.

1:07:09

that I feel is almost everywhere you look. And

1:07:13

I suppose there's a consideration of liability.

1:07:17

Is it a liability to have that

1:07:19

person? And there's a parallel with

1:07:21

that in music as well, or that person made

1:07:23

a bad decision, they're a liability. And

1:07:26

so yeah. And it just became like the

1:07:28

industry then I feel became populated

1:07:30

by people who knew how to survive rather

1:07:33

than people that knew how to make creative contribution.

1:07:36

That's a fairly damning and broad brush stroke

1:07:38

statement but sharks Yeah.

1:07:42

Sharks and bottom feeders. yeah.

1:07:46

Oops. Yeah. But but I think so, of course

1:07:48

there's, there are exceptions. And there

1:07:51

are some people that I admire that are still

1:07:53

in the biz from when I was in it,

1:07:55

but not many. So let's

1:07:57

transition to the last stage

1:08:00

and maybe we should start

1:08:02

with, the major life event that

1:08:04

led to that. And this was

1:08:07

happened, I think maybe

1:08:09

about six months to a year before I

1:08:11

met you. Is that correct? about

1:08:13

a year or so. Yeah.

1:08:17

I think I met you during your recovery.

1:08:19

I was, it was something that you would frequently

1:08:22

bring up and you were aware of a lot

1:08:24

of symptoms in your perceptual,

1:08:27

field. Yeah. And

1:08:30

So maybe you could just describe what happened

1:08:33

and how that changed things for you.

1:08:35

I'd been in ever decreasing circles in

1:08:37

the music industry and probably

1:08:42

from 2000 onwards,

1:08:44

there was a calling in my own, from my own

1:08:46

soul to, to find something else.

1:08:48

And I had no clue what that

1:08:51

might be, but I knew I needed

1:08:53

to find something and

1:08:57

was not able to respond to that call.

1:08:59

And then., There was no

1:09:02

jobs available for somebody at my executive

1:09:04

level in the USA anymore. I

1:09:06

ended up very reluctantly going back to England

1:09:08

in 2001, having

1:09:11

lived in California for many years and New York

1:09:13

before that. Took

1:09:15

a job at a major label in England

1:09:17

against my, all of the intuitive

1:09:20

alarm bells. And

1:09:23

I had an appalling four years

1:09:25

of life experience personally

1:09:27

and professionally. Came

1:09:30

out of that in a state of disarray, started

1:09:33

my own label with friends. That

1:09:36

ended terribly badly.

1:09:39

And to untangle

1:09:41

myself and to deal

1:09:43

with the extraordinary levels

1:09:45

of grief, again from

1:09:47

personal mishap and professional

1:09:50

mishap, relationship. Issues

1:09:53

and whatnot. I decided to

1:09:55

throw myself headlong into physical

1:09:57

fitness. I'd always been interested in distance

1:09:59

running and I got into endurance cycling

1:10:01

and joined a team at the suggestion of

1:10:03

a friend called the Fireflies and

1:10:05

their fundraising cycling team for

1:10:08

the city of Hope hospital for leukemia research.

1:10:12

And so I joined this team. I didn't even

1:10:14

have a bike at the time. I was a runner and

1:10:16

borrowed a mountain bike. And of course they all had road

1:10:19

bikes. I had no kit or anything. And

1:10:21

joined the cycling team, and they'd go on these extraordinary

1:10:24

training rides. And really got

1:10:26

into that, and I thought, okay, I'm going to do this for a year

1:10:29

and work out why I keep finding

1:10:33

myself in really desperate emotional

1:10:36

depletion and turmoil and anguish.

1:10:38

And that, that one year out turned

1:10:41

into two

1:10:41

years out, and I'd gone from being moderately

1:10:43

fit to extremely fit. and

1:10:47

was fitter than some of the riders

1:10:49

on the team that were 10, 15,

1:10:51

20 years my junior. I

1:10:54

was approaching 50 at the time and

1:10:56

it turned into something quite egoic

1:10:59

and I was really identifying with this sort

1:11:01

of fittest 50 year old

1:11:03

kind of image. We were cycling

1:11:06

across the Alps in six days type

1:11:08

rides. And

1:11:10

as I was approaching my 50th birthday, I was

1:11:12

with Chloe, my beloved partner

1:11:14

of now 14 years at

1:11:16

the time. And I said to

1:11:19

her, I need to stop doing this. It's

1:11:21

turned into something that doesn't

1:11:23

feel altogether healthy

1:11:25

anymore. And I

1:11:27

was living again in Los Angeles at the

1:11:29

time. And the aggression towards cyclists

1:11:32

on the roads was palpable. And I'd had

1:11:34

a couple of near misses. I was

1:11:36

approaching my 50th birthday and I said

1:11:38

to Chloe, I think this Friday's ride

1:11:40

will be my last training ride

1:11:43

in the early mornings. Something

1:11:45

doesn't feel right to me. And

1:11:47

I went out on the training ride and

1:11:50

we'd done a couple of really steep hills

1:11:52

up in the Pacific Palisades and

1:11:54

up off the PCH, Latigo

1:11:57

Canyon and things like that. And

1:12:00

we got to the bottom of the hill and I was like, come on, let's

1:12:02

do it one more time. And we did. And

1:12:05

we were on the descent, which was steep and quite

1:12:08

fast on a residential road.

1:12:10

And I stayed at the back because I'd

1:12:12

had some first aid training and I didn't talk

1:12:14

about it, but I carried a first aid kit

1:12:16

in my shirt in case anybody

1:12:19

took a spill, so I'd always come down last.

1:12:22

And the team went through

1:12:24

this narrow gap between cars and dumpsters.

1:12:28

And this car just pulled out. He got tired of

1:12:30

waiting and drove straight towards

1:12:32

me. And it was either a head on collision.

1:12:35

Try and fit through the narrow gap between

1:12:38

the dumpster and the car, or hit the dumpster.

1:12:41

And so I dove off the bike, and as

1:12:43

I was diving off, the car clipped me,

1:12:46

and I spanned through the air, and then hit the ground

1:12:48

pretty hard, and slid beneath,

1:12:51

partly beneath the dumpster. And

1:12:53

I had a head injury and broke my shoulder,

1:12:56

broke my clavicle and had a skull injury

1:12:58

and a brain injury and I didn't

1:13:00

have health insurance at the time because it was pre Obamacare

1:13:03

and because I had that road accident when I was 17,

1:13:05

I was considered high risk and couldn't get

1:13:07

health insurance. It's

1:13:09

a two bike accidents. I noticed that in your

1:13:11

story. It's in a segment.

1:13:14

And

1:13:18

so I was taken to UCLA

1:13:20

and the first day was 85, 000

1:13:23

in the head trauma unit. And

1:13:26

then they dispatched me. I kept saying, I don't

1:13:28

have insurance. And they

1:13:30

dispatched me and said, you need to go to city hospital.

1:13:33

So they discharged me without diagnosis.

1:13:36

And I called city hospital and

1:13:39

they said, Oh, it's a 72 hour wait. You'll have

1:13:41

to come in and be reprocessed and come in

1:13:43

as walking wounded. And

1:13:47

the nurse at UCLA said to

1:13:49

me as I was leaving, I think your clavicle is

1:13:51

broken and you may have some other broken bones. You

1:13:53

need to go to hospital.

1:13:56

And I was like, I'm not going for 72 hours. And

1:13:58

I was really confused. I had a very serious

1:14:01

concussion and I thought, fuck

1:14:03

it. I just won't go. And I sat on the couch,

1:14:05

and then the, everybody was like, you need

1:14:07

to go to the hospital. And the team rallied around

1:14:09

the bike team, the fireflies. And

1:14:11

one of the riders said, we need to get you to a surgeon.

1:14:15

And they organized for me to get x rayed

1:14:17

at St. John's in Santa Monica. And

1:14:19

they were like, yeah, your clavicle's in nine pieces.

1:14:22

So I had titanium plates put in, that was

1:14:24

25 grand. And

1:14:26

it just amounted to, hundreds

1:14:28

of thousands of dollars in the end. And then Obamacare did

1:14:31

come in, but my co pays and deductibles

1:14:34

every year for the following three years

1:14:36

were like 25, 30 grand. And it

1:14:38

ended up being something like a quarter of a million

1:14:40

dollars. And because I

1:14:42

couldn't work because I was in a state of post

1:14:45

traumatic stress, post

1:14:47

concussion syndrome. I'd

1:14:49

had a bleed on my parietal. My

1:14:51

optic nerve was damaged. I

1:14:54

was in a massive amount of pain. I'd gone

1:14:56

from an incredible amount of activity

1:14:58

to sedentary overnight, which is the shock

1:15:00

to the system. I

1:15:02

was hallucinating. I was in a

1:15:05

I truly believed that

1:15:07

I was in some Bardot state,

1:15:09

that I was in some replica reality,

1:15:13

that I needed to find a way

1:15:15

of breaking through back

1:15:17

to the reality that I was previously in.

1:15:20

And I was afraid to talk to anybody about that.

1:15:23

But for more than a year, it was my

1:15:25

secret and I couldn't sleep. I couldn't lie

1:15:27

down. It was too painful for me to lie down

1:15:30

and I'd probably average somewhere

1:15:32

between two and three hours sleep a night

1:15:34

in broken intervals. So

1:15:37

the sleep deprivation was extraordinary

1:15:40

and there was sometimes quite almost

1:15:43

like low dose psilocybin

1:15:47

type visual interference.

1:15:50

And this sense of being in this dream

1:15:52

like state and anyway, I

1:15:54

had the surgery and

1:15:56

because the true damage

1:15:59

to my brain hadn't been properly diagnosed,

1:16:02

I didn't pay too much attention to it. The surgery

1:16:04

was long, six hours and

1:16:07

it was probably too long for me to be out with

1:16:09

the kind of head injury that I had. And

1:16:11

then they gave me opioids because I had now

1:16:14

a titanium plate where my clavicle used

1:16:16

to be. And

1:16:18

then they gave me more opioids to take home

1:16:20

and they discharged me after the surgery.

1:16:22

I took the opioids and my brain was like enough

1:16:25

and just, and I

1:16:27

slipped into a deep unconsciousness and,

1:16:29

a coma, basically. Yeah,

1:16:32

for how long? For a day.

1:16:36

And then I came, and now in and out

1:16:38

and in and out to different levels

1:16:40

of what we think of as consciousness.

1:16:43

And so this altered state of consciousness

1:16:45

was there for months, and

1:16:47

profoundly for weeks. I

1:16:50

like the image that you have in your

1:16:52

book of the deck of cards with

1:16:54

all the characters you've played, the

1:16:56

music executive and the street

1:16:59

musician. The different personas that I've been

1:17:01

able to manifest, and I saw

1:17:03

them separate out. And

1:17:06

I remember in this unconscious state,

1:17:08

seeing them and having

1:17:10

this realisation that I needed to order

1:17:13

them again, and choreograph

1:17:15

them. And it just seemed extraordinarily

1:17:18

improbable. And somehow

1:17:20

I had this realisation that if I wasn't

1:17:22

able to align them, it

1:17:25

would manifest as some sort of behavioural abnormality.

1:17:30

Here you're fighting for sanity. Fighting

1:17:34

for coherence. Across

1:17:39

all levels of what coherence means,

1:17:41

yeah. And functionality, yeah. And

1:17:43

so I was really for twelve months or so,

1:17:46

truly dysfunctional. And

1:17:48

I couldn't I was claustrophobic where

1:17:50

I'd never been before. I

1:17:53

was blacking out a lot. Transcribed I

1:17:55

would feel like I was okay and we would

1:17:57

go to a cafe like Cafe Gratitude

1:17:59

on Main Street or Real Food Daily

1:18:01

or somewhere in Santa Monica.

1:18:04

And I'd be looking forward to it and

1:18:06

I'd get there and then there'd be a loud noise or something

1:18:08

and I'd pass out, just pass

1:18:10

out. I remember walking

1:18:12

up Broadway to the

1:18:15

co op market on Broadway and it was a blazing

1:18:17

hot summer's day and I felt

1:18:19

relatively okay and I walked in

1:18:21

and the air conditioning, the temperature dropped

1:18:24

and that temperature dropped just, I

1:18:27

went, I think my legs just gave way and I was on

1:18:29

the floor like a puddle. So my

1:18:31

system couldn't tolerate, my

1:18:34

capacity and my tolerance

1:18:36

was practically zero. So

1:18:38

anything that affected my state of being

1:18:40

to that. degree put

1:18:42

me into VESA, VEGO, and

1:18:45

I would just basically faint or pass out and

1:18:47

sometimes I would properly

1:18:49

be out. I

1:18:52

remember face planting in Café Gratitude

1:18:54

because somebody walked by with a tray

1:18:56

a bowl of knives

1:18:58

and forks and plates and it was jangling

1:19:00

and I was just sitting there and

1:19:02

then the next thing I know I was, I'd face

1:19:04

planted on the table. Because the stimuli

1:19:07

was too much for my nervous system. Wow.

1:19:11

So then you became the recipient

1:19:13

of somatic services. And

1:19:17

then that led to understanding

1:19:19

the value of that type of work.

1:19:21

Is that what, is that? Yeah. Yeah. It

1:19:24

was, I'd had a few therapies

1:19:26

and It was the only one that I was like, oh,

1:19:28

it just made absolute sense. And I felt

1:19:30

an immediate expansion. I felt

1:19:32

an immediate move out

1:19:35

of contraction and

1:19:37

self protection and rigidity.

1:19:39

And I was pinging between rigidity and

1:19:42

chaos. And it was

1:19:44

the first thing that gave me this sense of

1:19:46

center again. And

1:19:48

then over time my

1:19:51

therapist said, you should learn this. I think it'd be

1:19:53

very good at it. Who was

1:19:55

the therapist? Her name is

1:19:57

Gina Wright. So she, she

1:20:00

inducted you. It's interesting

1:20:02

how these things chain. Yeah.

1:20:04

And so I signed up for it and was able to get

1:20:07

in based on life experience qualification

1:20:09

rather than prerequisite qualification.

1:20:12

And went through the training and

1:20:14

with a view to it. Just to

1:20:17

go into this snowball, it was really different.

1:20:19

My, my view was it was going

1:20:21

to be for my own journey, for my own recovery.

1:20:24

And then I'll get back into music and

1:20:26

I'd idealized my past. I'd idealized

1:20:29

my former self because

1:20:31

the state I was in was so desperate physically,

1:20:34

mentally, spiritually and financially.

1:20:37

that my past suddenly became this

1:20:39

golden aura promised

1:20:42

land that I needed to return to. I'd somehow

1:20:44

conveniently forgotten I'd

1:20:46

wanted to get out of the music industry for

1:20:48

at least a decade and a half at

1:20:51

that point. But because it just seems

1:20:53

like such a period of relative

1:20:56

painlessness, I idealized

1:20:59

it. That, that makes me think

1:21:01

of a John o Donahue quote,

1:21:04

that your unconscious

1:21:06

is already working on the next phase

1:21:09

of your life that you're not aware of, So

1:21:12

you still thought you were orienting to get back into

1:21:14

music, but something else was building

1:21:17

it. It very reluctantly,

1:21:20

but then during the training

1:21:22

and when we were getting into diads and triads,

1:21:25

necessarily to practice the modality.

1:21:28

I realized that it did have

1:21:30

a similarity to the nurturing

1:21:32

of and creating a

1:21:34

container for people to find

1:21:37

depth of expression. which

1:21:39

was part of my work with artists

1:21:41

as an A& R man. And there

1:21:43

was something enormously

1:21:47

rewarding, not

1:21:49

necessarily on an egoic level, there

1:21:51

was something enormously rewarding

1:21:53

about. Being

1:21:56

able to participate in somebody's

1:21:58

healing that was

1:22:00

unique, again, yes, there was some

1:22:02

similarity, but nothing like, and what people

1:22:05

were sharing about their experiences in those

1:22:07

practice sessions. And the majority

1:22:09

of sign up to any cohort

1:22:11

is women. The ratio is about seven to one

1:22:13

in America. I think it's about

1:22:15

10 to one in Europe, maybe more of

1:22:18

ratio between men and women in the mental

1:22:20

health field and most health field. And

1:22:23

so everybody I was practicing with were

1:22:25

women and the vast majority of

1:22:27

their stories were some form of sexual

1:22:30

trauma or sexual abuse. And

1:22:32

that opened my eyes enormously

1:22:34

to, oh wow, and

1:22:36

what that felt like as a man. And

1:22:39

for a while I felt like a walking apology,

1:22:43

which is helpful and

1:22:45

necessary, but it's not ultimately

1:22:47

what's needed. And so that

1:22:49

took a while, and the burden of that and

1:22:52

the sense of shame, really. It

1:22:55

was, I felt the burden of shame which

1:22:57

I had to figure out a way of navigating through.

1:23:00

And I felt, I thought about all of the times

1:23:02

in my life where, maybe I'd been

1:23:04

like, a bit pushy and

1:23:06

a bit cocky and not seeing the sensitivity

1:23:09

in the moment because of, testosterone

1:23:11

and ego and whatever it might be.

1:23:14

You reflect on all of that, and it doesn't even occur to

1:23:16

you at the time. And there's nothing in your

1:23:18

culture that suggests

1:23:20

that you should. In fact, quite often, the

1:23:22

opposite. And so I

1:23:24

really reflected on that and I had felt,

1:23:28

as men go, I was, and I was

1:23:30

known in my hometown

1:23:32

as being particularly sensitive and

1:23:34

respectful towards women. And even

1:23:37

with that, I

1:23:39

could see, my, my areas of ignorance

1:23:42

and clumsiness, and

1:23:44

ego, and that I

1:23:46

think is a day, it is, it's a daily

1:23:48

practice. One of

1:23:50

the things about getting older moving

1:23:52

into my 60s, is

1:23:55

it's amazing how much easier it

1:23:57

is now to be able to talk to young women,

1:23:59

and by young women even women in their 30s.

1:24:03

Without there being some assumption

1:24:05

that there's an agenda because you're older

1:24:09

and it's so liberating. It's

1:24:12

so liberating to

1:24:14

be able to just, hey,

1:24:16

how are you doing? And it can be met with

1:24:19

not a protective response.

1:24:22

There's something in that is truly joyous

1:24:25

and is unexpected in there. I

1:24:27

never, I hadn't thought that aging might have

1:24:29

that gift in it. I think

1:24:31

it's a particular issue for sensitive

1:24:34

straight men, or I don't know how

1:24:36

you identify, but sensitive

1:24:38

men they are excluded

1:24:40

in some ways by exactly what you're talking

1:24:43

about with women. They're outsiders

1:24:45

to female culture, and they're somewhat

1:24:47

threatening. And then masculine culture

1:24:49

is so antithetical to

1:24:51

sensitivity and emotionality, the

1:24:54

sense of man has, no

1:24:56

real community. I think

1:24:59

that defines probably

1:25:02

40 years of my life. Exactly

1:25:04

what you just said. Yeah. And

1:25:07

now as I'm moving into my 60s there's

1:25:09

a liberation because you're no longer

1:25:11

seen as being motivated.

1:25:14

Just by aging out, which I'm

1:25:16

totally fine with, and I'm obviously deeply

1:25:19

committed to my beloved anyway.

1:25:21

But just that automatic sense of,

1:25:24

you surely must have an agenda, that, that

1:25:26

guardedness, totally understandable

1:25:29

that guardedness should be there, but it's not

1:25:31

there anymore. And it's joyous.

1:25:35

Yeah. And I feel in your work,

1:25:37

you've cultivated A

1:25:40

community of sensitive people. I

1:25:42

think so, yeah, and, the

1:25:46

other thing, Steve, this has been, there's

1:25:48

been a reluctance and a hesitancy

1:25:50

for me to fully enter into this. It took

1:25:52

years. I was really reluctant

1:25:55

to identify myself as

1:25:57

being somebody that did this work fully.

1:26:00

And it took a lot of time, and

1:26:02

even during the COVID years, I volunteered

1:26:04

entirely through that entire time. It

1:26:07

felt like the right response, but it also

1:26:09

felt like something that I

1:26:11

needed to go through when

1:26:13

I gave of myself to fully

1:26:15

inhabit my skill set

1:26:17

and to feel that I

1:26:20

inhabited in a way that

1:26:22

felt commensurate with taking

1:26:25

money from people. Of course I'd been

1:26:27

paid before that, but there

1:26:29

was always this strange tension around

1:26:31

it for me. I think because I did

1:26:33

so much volunteer work with doctors and

1:26:36

nurses as an emotional support volunteer

1:26:38

through the COVID period I've really felt

1:26:40

like it may, it might be the 10, 000 hours thing

1:26:42

that people talk about, that you become experts

1:26:45

after 10, 000 years of practical

1:26:47

experience, 10, 000 hours of 10,

1:26:49

000 years. Roughly 10 years, right?

1:26:52

Yeah. And I think perhaps that I

1:26:54

needed to feel that to fully

1:26:56

inhabit and embody the

1:27:00

profession, if you like. And

1:27:02

at the same time, I

1:27:05

think I have a healthy amount of

1:27:07

attendant self doubt. It

1:27:09

keeps me humble. I check

1:27:11

myself and I don't think

1:27:13

I've ever started a session. Without

1:27:16

a certain amount of apprehension. Say,

1:27:18

if this is the one where

1:27:21

I'm just confronted by my limitations,

1:27:23

and there's something about that, that

1:27:26

brings an intensity that

1:27:28

really helps with my focus

1:27:31

and my presencing where

1:27:33

I don't take anything for granted.

1:27:37

So I think that it's a healthy doubt

1:27:40

and it's keeping me grounded. Whereas

1:27:43

I can't, with all honesty say I

1:27:45

ever had that before, certainly not in

1:27:47

my music career. I think I veered more

1:27:49

towards not necessarily

1:27:52

arrogance, but a sense of this

1:27:54

is my domain. I am

1:27:56

a creature of this realm. Yeah.

1:27:59

So there's a healthy respect

1:28:01

for the work and humility

1:28:03

that you have. is an anchor for you. I

1:28:06

imagine your working class

1:28:08

background being in

1:28:10

the music industry where money corrupted

1:28:13

the creative process and different ways

1:28:16

that there might be some imprinting of

1:28:20

monetary success being

1:28:23

detrimental to health

1:28:26

and vitality and creativity.

1:28:29

Yeah, very much very much the health part,

1:28:31

especially, access to decent food.

1:28:34

I grew up with food poverty, my

1:28:37

mom had this strange thing around

1:28:40

drinking and not drinking too much.

1:28:42

'cause it mean you'd have to get up a lot at night

1:28:44

to use the bathroom and wake the whole house

1:28:46

up. 'cause it was a really small house. Two

1:28:49

up, two down, two rooms upstairs,

1:28:51

two rooms downstairs. And

1:28:53

so don't drink too, so I'm pretty sure I

1:28:55

went through my entire childhood seriously

1:28:58

dehydrated. And malnourishment

1:29:00

was a thing, there was social welfare

1:29:03

organizations that used

1:29:05

to give out these little brown bottles of intense

1:29:09

orange juice concentrate because

1:29:12

kids weren't getting enough vitamin C. They

1:29:15

were dispensed. to

1:29:17

go to the welfare office to get these

1:29:19

little food supplements, quality

1:29:21

of food and processed, it was all

1:29:23

processed food. So yeah,

1:29:26

there was I think at some point There

1:29:28

are universal aspects to suffering.

1:29:32

They may manifest in different ways

1:29:35

in the actual events, they may show

1:29:37

up in different forms, but

1:29:40

the behavioral consequences

1:29:42

and the systemic consequences

1:29:44

start to look a little bit like,

1:29:47

oh, okay, you can relate it

1:29:49

to. your own experience?

1:29:52

There aren't many weeks that go by where I don't

1:29:54

hear myself say something to a client

1:29:57

that I myself need to actually hear,

1:30:00

if only as a reminder, because

1:30:02

we forget. What

1:30:04

would you say is at the core of

1:30:06

your current snowball? What it was it

1:30:08

about? What are you doing?

1:30:11

It's shifted a little bit and it's

1:30:13

shifted when I had that near

1:30:15

death experience with the head injury. And

1:30:18

it's crystallizing as I'm getting older.

1:30:22

And I think now it's orientated

1:30:25

towards, without

1:30:27

trying to define it in any specific

1:30:29

way. All of our work

1:30:31

essentially is about a spiritual journey.

1:30:34

It may be dealing with psychological, physiological,

1:30:37

emotional issues. But

1:30:40

I think what I see

1:30:42

as this container,

1:30:44

this responsibility is

1:30:49

more orientated towards

1:30:51

can we get to the point of transition,

1:30:54

death, whether that happens

1:30:57

suddenly through misadventure or misfortune.

1:31:01

Or in the natural course of events, can

1:31:05

we reach that point of transition

1:31:08

with a familiarity with our own

1:31:10

authenticity, even

1:31:12

a glimpse of it? Free of

1:31:14

the burdens of the things that we had to become,

1:31:17

because of the things that we've suffered, free

1:31:20

of adaptation, free of coping

1:31:22

mechanism. Do we, can we

1:31:24

get to experience ourselves fully, even

1:31:26

if only for a moment, in

1:31:29

our trueness, what

1:31:31

we would have been had we not suffered the things

1:31:33

we have, and had we not

1:31:35

suffered the things we ourselves have created.

1:31:38

That we've normalized, that we call civilization

1:31:41

and society. Can we

1:31:44

experience that sense of liberation

1:31:47

and ourselves fully before the

1:31:49

moment of death? So

1:31:51

that should we need a reference

1:31:53

point for that in transition,

1:31:56

we have it. We have a familiarity

1:31:58

with it. So that we are not

1:32:01

overwhelmed by

1:32:04

acquaintance with our own true

1:32:06

self. And

1:32:09

that we're able to recognize it when we need

1:32:11

to. And

1:32:13

so I'd say that has become something that

1:32:15

has formed

1:32:18

some sort of impetus for me but peripherally,

1:32:21

I very rarely actually name

1:32:23

it, but I'm aware that I'm

1:32:25

trying to identify that authentic,

1:32:28

pure, innocent,

1:32:30

maybe even naive aspect to

1:32:33

everybody that I work with. And

1:32:36

then it just becomes a question of what

1:32:38

is blocking them from

1:32:43

being more fully acquainted with that part of who

1:32:45

they are, if that makes sense.

1:32:48

It does. And I appreciate you putting words

1:32:50

to it here. And

1:32:54

it does seem like healing

1:32:57

and spirituality are different

1:33:00

language systems for the same

1:33:02

process. As the healing

1:33:05

journey continues, it becomes more spiritual

1:33:07

in nature. And

1:33:10

your what you were speaking about

1:33:12

there made me think of Lao Tzu's

1:33:15

line, a man who experiences

1:33:18

the Tao in the morning can

1:33:20

die contentedly in the

1:33:22

afternoon. Yeah, exactly.

1:33:27

So So yeah, there's something that now,

1:33:29

you know, and so I

1:33:32

think that's a guiding. That's like

1:33:34

a North star. Yeah,

1:33:37

I've felt it in our work. I

1:33:39

think that's what, it's remarkable that one hour

1:33:41

of therapy a week or whatever cadence

1:33:43

one's on, it's not a lot. It's remarkable

1:33:46

that can actually change a life.

1:33:49

And so I think we have to call on these very big

1:33:51

forces in order to do that. There

1:33:54

has to be some, a reference point for something

1:33:56

larger than ourselves, even if it's only

1:33:58

the mystery, even if it's only

1:34:00

the infinite or the vastness of space.

1:34:02

Thanks. Because it gives us the largest

1:34:04

possible context to

1:34:06

place our own experience in. And

1:34:09

that doesn't mean to suggest

1:34:11

that we're deliberately making

1:34:14

ourselves small or

1:34:17

inconsequential. But

1:34:19

more that we belong to

1:34:21

it, that we are a part of it, that we are literally

1:34:24

manifest from it. And

1:34:26

that sense of belonging, if you can let

1:34:29

it in, does tend

1:34:31

to contextualize that all

1:34:33

our experiences is. The

1:34:36

difficult ones and the beautiful ones

1:34:38

exist beneath an infinite sky. It's

1:34:41

an absolute truth. I've

1:34:44

experienced you as a village

1:34:46

elder, or the

1:34:48

like a Native American wise man or

1:34:50

someone who just is, it was

1:34:52

ahead of me in the journey and, could point

1:34:55

to some things and it feels

1:34:57

like that role fits you well.

1:35:00

So I appreciate you for that, for

1:35:03

holding that space for me. Thank

1:35:05

you. Steve. It's been a privilege.

1:35:09

If you enjoyed this conversation and

1:35:11

you want to become more involved, look for

1:35:13

Snowball Psychology on Patreon. Our

1:35:16

music is Find Your Way Beat

1:35:19

by Nana Kwabena.