This may be a bit self-indulgent but, hey, this IS a home page.
I first became aware of XTC, though not by name, at school in 1979 when I was twelve. Some school friends who sat behind me during French were singing "Making Plans For Nigel". I noticed this probably because some years earlier I'd had a friend called Nigel but he'd moved, and with it not being a particularly common name in our area, the song lodged itself somewhere at the back of my head.
We move on a year or so and I'm in high school, oddly enough now in the same class as my old mate Nigel who is a MAJOR XTC fan. I'm just beginning to wake up to music now and am enjoying bands like Madness and The Specials. Nigel keeps going on about XTC, mentioning songs I'd never heard of - "Life Begins At The Hop", "Wait 'Til Your Boat Goes Down", etc. As far as I am concerned they are the band that did that "Nigel" song and that's as much as I need to know.
One morning, as I'm travelling into school on the bus, the Radio 1 DJ - Mike Read, I think - plays a strange stop-start song, short slices of guitar and barking vocals, all fired off by a staccato drum roll; "Sgt. Rock". I am bowled over. I rush into school and tell Nigel that he was right all along, if that's what XTC can do they must be brilliant. He looks at me like I'm something he's just stood in. Apparently XTC aren't cool anymore. In that case, I say, you won't be needing all those records, will you?
In two days I am a couple of pounds worse off but now armed with a few second-hand XTC records - "Generals and Majors", "Towers Of London", "Making Plans For Nigel", "Wait 'Til Your Boat Goes Down" - and one brand new one, "Sgt. Rock." Nigel is so against XTC now that when I get the records off him, he has scrawled "XTC = Ugh!" on them. I am a bit cross, but this will give me hours of pleasure in later life as I trawl record fairs looking for better sleeves. I play the records. Hmmm. "Generals" and its b-side "Don't Lose Your Temper" are great, "Nigel" is wonderful but its b-sides are a bit odd. "Boat" and "Towers" are lifeless dirges enlivened only by "Ten Feet Tall". I file them away in my singles box. Only the "Generals" single gets much play.
Another year or so goes by. I've been living with my mother and her second husband since my parents divorced in about 1977. This second marriage isn't working out either, and to avoid arguments my mother finds any excuse not to be at home. This is fine for her, but for me it's a living hell as I spend night after night alone in the house with my stepfather who is taking his frustration and anger out on me. Slowly I begin to crumble and draw in on myself.
t's 1982, and as I'm listening the radio one evening a song comes on that makes my hair stand on end. It's a plodding sort of drone to begin with, but then there's an exhilarating "j-j-jing" of guitar as the drums spiral upwards into full flight "And all the world is biscuit shaped..." I am dumbstruck. My girlfriend at the time, who is older than me and works full-time, buys me the single as a gift - "Senses Working Overtime" with the special fold-out sleeve. I am in heaven. The b-sides are tremendous, too. As the stress at home increases, my relationship with my girlfriend disintegrates proportionately. The only consolation I have is this incredible record which lifts my spirits whenever I hear it. I didn't know you could do things like that with music. The way that after "1,2,3,4,5" the drums did a full roll sometimes and a single beat other times was just amazing to me. I had a very old record player that had the long stem and the repeat play option. I played that single over and over again. "Don't worry," it was telling me, "the world is a wonderful place, really. You'll see. Just hang on."
The strain at home eventually got to me, though, and I couldn't concentrate at school. I dropped out, lounged about at home, and gained a lot of weight. I really couldn't have cared less. One night in 1984, about midnight, my mother hammered on my bedroom door and told me that we were leaving. I packed a small bag and we left the house - and my stepfather - for good. As we drove through the night I was stunned by the suddenness of it all. My mother told me that everything would be fine now, and that we'd find somewhere to live, we'd spend some time together so she could explain and try to patch things up between us; she said a lot of other things too but I was emotionally drained after so long and I didn't really hear it all. The promises were short lived though. She installed me in a room at a pub run by a friend of hers and stayed one night before moving in with the new man in her life. Alone and utterly dead inside, I just vegetated even more.
My father, worried for me, offered me a job working with him as a painter. I had no skill for the job so I got to do all the guttering. As most of the work at this time involved churches it meant I was spending a lot of time thirty feet up in freezing winds, trying to dislodge slumbering bats with a paint brush. Strangely, though well intentioned, this did not bring me back up to par. I got to meet my mother's new man - David (a finer fellow you couldn't wish to meet) - and we moved into a proper house again. Although it was nice to have somewhere to call home, and the atmosphere was never less than comfortable, I had let myself slip to such a stage that I was wallowing in self disgust. I was vastly overweight by now. One day, while painting around bats in the eaves of a cemetery lodge (gee thanks, dad) I heard, amongst the "Careless Whispers" and "Electric Dreams" of Radio 1, a choral drone followed by a rattling salvo of drums. "Do something for me, boys..." I was dancing on my ladder. What was it? The voice sounded familiar. I hurried down to catch the end of the song. XTC! Were they still going? After work I ran into Woolworth's and bought the single - special pull-out sleeve - and played that to death. It might seem a bit dramatic, to say the least, but that record changed my life. It intrigued me; what other wonderful music was there out there by this band that I didn't know about? I pulled out those old dusty singles; Dirges? how could I have been so stupid? Had my ears been faulty? "Towers of London" and "Wait Til Your Boat Goes Down" are great tracks!
One of the painters I worked with was about four years older than me and when he heard I'd bought an XTC single he offered me three LP's - "White Music", "Go2" and "Drums And Wires". I bought them, played them and was hooked. Now I had something to do. On my days off I would rake around in the second-hand records shops trying to piece together a decent collection. I really knew nothing about the band and that was all part of the excitement; when I uncovered "Wonderland", "Great Fire" and "No Thugs In Our House" I was thrilled - these were records I'd never heard of. The wonder of the actual sounds just compounded the thrill of discovery. I now had something that was "mine", something that I did just for me. I began to sort myself out. I got back into things like washing my hair, and ironing my clothes. Eventually I got a better job. With my first week's wages I bought "The Big Express" and "English Settlement".
The new job was only for a year, but it earned me enough cash to continue my collection. To my surprise I discovered I'd developed a social life and a sunny disposition. By the end of the job I was in the previously-unknown position of having to wait for the release of an XTC record. All my other purchases had been contemporary or retrospective, but now I had the teasing anticipation of wondering what "Skylarking" would be like. I bought it, played it. And hated it.
As I always did in those days, I taped the LP and put it away safely. "Skylarking" just washed over me - all the songs sounded the same. I'd heard "Earn Enough For Us" on the Radio and was expecting a big rush of Revolver-era Beatles workouts, instead I got what sound like a Sky album. I tried to like it but gave up. A few weeks later I started a new job twenty miles from home which meant, with the typically British system of public transport, that I had to get up at 6am to catch the first of three buses which would get me to work just after 9am. To combat the misery of doing all this in December I bought myself a little Walkman. Deciding to give it one more go I took "Skylarking" with me. I don't know what happened, whether it was the solitude, the cold, the sheer "rightness" of sitting on a warm bus watching people scurry through the rain lashed winter evenings while listening to "Ballet For A Rainy Day", but "Skylarking" and I began a deep, and as yet un-ended, relationship.
I subscribed to Limelight (the now defunct XTC newsletter), and one fateful day I set off into Newcastle to seek out a Peter Blegvad album; I got sidetracked and came back with a CD player and "White Music" and "Mummer" on CD - the fact that my rather ancient Amstrad stereo did not have the necessary connections meant that the day turned out very expensive indeed. Later that year I became ill and, during my six weeks off work, I played my XTC music constantly until I was finally inspired to pick up the guitar I'd been noodling around on for years and actually try writing some songs. They were terrible, but I enjoyed it.
When it became obvious that my year-long contract in the new job would be extended I really began to sort myself out. I lost all the weight I'd gained, I began to think about the clothes I wore, I actually had my hair styled a little, rather than just cut so that it didn't dangle in my trough. I devoured the Dukes and waited for the next signal from Swindon. It took three years, by which time I'd fallen for a girl who had fallen for me but, as we were friends, it took us a good few months to actually admit it to each other. She was a bit younger than me and didn't actually mind me blasting XTC out of the car stereo whenever we went anywhere. The wait between "Skylarking" and "Oranges And Lemons" was a long one, but that worked out pretty well for me; without all the hamstering around collecting XTC stuff I was able to relax, and enjoy the new shape of my life. I expanded my musical tastes and then, about six months into my new relationship, "The Mayor Of Simpleton" came out.
Amy, my girlfriend, was the daughter of one of my old school teachers, and she and all her school-mates had stayed on into the sixth-form to study 'A' levels, something I'd had to give up on because of my home life. Although nobody ever said anything, I think some of her friends regarded me as a bit "second-class" because I hadn't been to college like they were planning to. "Mayor" came out just when these feelings were getting me down and its sentiments buoyed me along through it. It was grimly satisfying to see that over half of these sixth-form snobs dropped out of college after six months because they found it a bit hard going.
That sort of brings us up to date. "Nonsuch" was slightly patchy but wonderful nonetheless; I'm now married to Amy and she's equally wonderful.
So, is the music of XTC a panacea for all the world's ills? Would we all be happy if we worshipped the Seers Of Swindon? I doubt it. All I can say is that when I needed something, I discovered the intricate joys of their amazing music, and it helped me through some difficult times. No matter how many XTC records I buy I can never pay back what they gave me.
Now I am, more often than not, a happy man. Does that mean I no longer need this music? No way. It's still as uplifting and inspiring as ever. Whether I'm idiot dancing to "My Paint Heroes", or curled up with my wife, drinking wine and wandering "Through The Hill", XTC are as much part of my life as they ever were. As has been pointed out by others before me, there is so much in the music that there are new bits to discover all the time. That's what I love about them, and what's so good about the Chalkhills newsletter - I might pick up "White Music" and think "Nah, I've heard that too many times," and put it back. Then I read a little comment that someone makes about a track and I think "Hmm. Let's put it on," and I explore the music anew.
I don't want to get analytical about the music. I bought "Revolution In The Head", a very scholarly book about the Beatles' music, and it was so clinical that it rendered the songs down to calculated parcels that killed off the joy completely. That's the key element for me in XTC's music - not that I am dismissing the more serious songs - there's an enthusiasm and pleasure in what they do that comes over in the music. I'll end this piece with one of my favourite little lyrical segments, from the end of "Gold":-
"And it's okay,
For the setting sun,
Will colour everything around you,
Even though it's brown,
You'll see your old brick town,
Turn gold."Thank you, and goodnight.
Simon Sleightholm
