Awake in the Dream — the spiritual diary of a rock star
The University of Life accepts me, and the Music presents its vast curriculum.
Look back through this window with me, three years earlier, playing an old guitar my uncle bought (thirty shillings worth of cracked-neck defiance) — a real challenge, like an untamed wooden horse; a test of character for sure. But I persevered through many plunks and clunks on the road to eventually manifesting the tools I required. Through playing with other young aspirants on the way, and replacing homework with hours and hours of practise, I had progressed to the point where I felt able to take my dream a step further — to turn professional! and turn the clock forward. Ready? — of course not, but life had gathered together a willing band of young boys equally madly in love with the idea of being in a group.
There we were: Gary Leport –lead guitar, Pete Mariosa (later Mike Webb) –rhythm guitar, (later still, Kenny White) — Brian(Chick) Kattenhorn –drums, Louis Cennamo –bass guitar(by now) and Rod Stewart –vocals… So the recurring cyclic dream I’m sharing with you began there — a musical merry-go-round of thrills and spills, plenty of both, and it holds a secret that I will attempt to unfold in this way…
Do we create our own ‘reality’? — let’s make that rhetorical and move on. Five teenage boys on the road, one by one taking their own directions after a while spent weaving patterns together, each with a path to a destiny with all of life’s twists and turns.
Later some chose the sensible option — a ‘proper job’ with guaranteed money and prospects within a safe and sensible parameter — life delivered it just so.
The other two? — Here’s where things become uncertain, risky — taking the road to a dream the mass are conditioned to believe is the Impossible one. To take on the unknown head-on and create a life from what they really love to do — Do you remember mine? — to play music, and travel. Rod, as everyone knows, had the same dream, and I may share comparisons between our paths a bit further down this book’s path (or not). It is of interest to me, and maybe of great value to you also — how the big decisions, and after that, the unfolding choices we make, determine the outcomes of the great moving picture world we experience as ‘real life’.
1963 (in a dream)
As young men who had abandoned schoolwork to further the dream that promised far greater visions of ‘things out there’ — there was a brief period when Rod and I hung out together. He would come to my family home and my dear sister would ‘bouffant’ his hair, (my close family were all hairdressers, except me) — then we crossed London to go and watch the Rolling Stones, who had a residency at Eel Pie Island. They were already becoming big news and here in 1963 when I was just 17 and Rod, 18, these older musicians had made the transition to ‘rhythm and blues band’. Our dream unfolded thus after a couple of trips to Eel Pie — and to cut a long story short, that dream evolved after several months of gigging with another vocalist who we joined up with, as he had work and no band and we had a band and no work. He also had a contract with a top agency, and soon, as Jimmy Powell and the Five Dimensions we were working 7 nights a week at R ‘n B venues all across the UK. Intense and exciting and most educational. We also did several gigs supporting the ‘Stones’ with that line-up.
The compromise made by the band was that Rod would play second fiddle to Jimmy. Rod always had that totally unique and original voice and it developed and noticeably matured with time on the road. My playing also began to take shape as an original style in this way. Rod would do the first set of vocals and Jimmy would come on as the star turn, (he had worked his socks off alongside The Beatles at the Star Club, Hamburg), and he would wow the crowd with his more polished and powerful set.
It worked well for a while, Jimmy was older and young Rod got to do a set, everyone was gaining experience, and the band was getting known nationwide. We were on the quickly expanding RnB circuit, that included up and coming star turns like the Rolling Stones, Manfred Mann, Long John Baldry, the Graham Bond Organisation, (that consisted of Bond, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and Dick Heckstall Smith), and of course the Yardbirds, who were to feature big time in my own unfolding life dream –(not really in any past, remember- let’s say another dimension of the present) — it was as much NOW then…as it is now. I love to share this by NOW well known secret — thank you, Eckhart Tolle.
The dream bubble expanded and being a bubble eventually surrendered its form with a silent pop! like bubbles do. The sunburst scenes within it — like all outer surface life story happenings that present an illusion of solid reality, before dissolving into the quantum field…. Rod leaves shortly after a most eventful and largely enjoyable tour, the length of Scotland — teenage blues band soaking up the experience of both Scotland’s beauty and the Scottish people’s warm hospitality. True kindness, enthusiastic audiences greeted us everywhere. From the mists I recall especially one show, sharing the bill with the Hollies, great fun, but more memorable than even the contrasting music of the bands was something that touched my heart — a gang of large leather-clad, scary-looking ‘rockers’ — (opposite to ‘mods’ at the time — they would frequently fight each other in organised meet-ups — vicious, brutal gang warfare). The gang approached us outside whilst we were loading our gear back into the van. To my surprise, one giant came forward and in a most gentle voice asked me …’ Can we’s help you wi’ the loading o’ you’s gear?’ Of course with Rod the ultra mod in the band, you can see what might have been on our minds…yet they did so, and even waved to us as we left.
How wonderful to share this with you now. Observing this current dream bubble, I experience gratitude and kindness as two of the major keys to the opening of our heart’s healing wisdom — our shared treasure store of a Love that has no opposites.
Sometime after the tour, my inner camera snaps the moment — Rod apologising to me in the car park, after a gig at the Ricky-Tick Club, Windsor. He was too good to be a back-up singer now. We shook hands, waved goodbye and ‘that’s a take’, the director cries. We meet up again briefly, further up the road.