One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time

Q: One thing that comes across from your book, One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time, is that you are a huge fan. Did that ever inspire you to play in a band or write songs?

A: When I was at prep school, aged 10 or 11, I did play guitar in a group called The Undertakers and I remember learning G and D7. I still know where to put my fingers for G and D7. The only song I can remember playing was ‘Rock Island Line’, which was a Lonnie Donegan song, for which you only need G and D7.

My family are all quite musical, but they point out to me ceaselessly that I can’t hit any kind of note. I can recognise tunes if they’re played on the piano. I don’t think I’m entirely tone-deaf. But if someone sings a note I generally can’t echo it. Weirdly, if I do manage to echo it, I do know I’ve hit it, but it’s a completely haphazard process. That’s why I’ve never been in a band. Obviously, I’d like to have been, but I don’t have much sense of rhythm, either, so I couldn’t even do drums or tambourine. I suppose I could be someone like Bez in the Happy Mondays, who just dances madly.

Q: The fantasy was there.

A: Yes. I did have a theory once, which I think is largely true: that anyone under the age of—well, it would be any age now, as everyone under the age of 80 is post-rock and roll—who says that they wouldn’t have preferred to be a rock star is lying. Obviously, it is the ideal thing. How much fun would it be to be at Glastonbury with a hundred thousand people worshipping you and singing your songs out loud, knowing all the words and all that kind of thing? You don’t get that thrill as a journalist or as a writer.

Interview with Craig Brown on The Best Books on Rock and Roll