Rod Clements saw considerable chart success with folk-rockers Lindisfarne, penning their hit Meet Me On The Corner. He currently works as a solo artist and with his band, The Ghosts of Electricity. He also collaborates with other musical kindred spirits and has worked with the late, great Bert Jansch, Michael Chapman, Rachel Harrington and Rab Noakes, among others. We trust you’ll enjoy the latest of Rod’s musings in which you'll find he’s NICELY OUT OF TUNE Recently a lady I know was asking me about her young son, Jake, who is eleven and has started playing the guitar. He’s keen and his parents are encouraging him. They bought him a cheap Strat copy and a little practice amp, and got me to show him a few riffs to get him started. Then his mum wanted to know if I could suggest anywhere they could take Jake to see live music, as it’s difficult to take someone so young into the kind of pubs and scruffy dives where rock’n’roll is usually made. I suggested a couple of venues which I thought might be suitable, but there was something at the back of my mind which was troubling me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, so I decided it was time to consult my inner teenager. When I was Jake’s age, my parents used to take me to the theatre. This wasn’t as grand as it sounds - it was our local Tynemouth Repertory Theatre, deep in the bowels of the dilapidated old Plaza building on the seafront. The resident company used to put on hoary old whodunits and romantic comedies featuring the kind of people who lived in drawing rooms and employed maids, and in the interval they projected lantern slides advertising local businesses onto the safety curtain. I used to enjoy going; it made me feel grown-up to be let into this adult world, and I was intrigued by the live performance and all the paraphernalia of scenery, lights and so on, with the added frisson that something might go wrong (which it quite often did). It didn’t last, of course. I became a sulky adolescent and didn’t want to go out with my parents any more, and it was a long time before I considered going to the theatre again (by which time Tynemouth Rep and dozens like it up and down the country had ceased to exist). I started listening to rock’n’roll and going to gigs, and soon it wasn’t enough to stand and watch – I wanted to have a go myself. My discovery of music, like that of so many of my contemporaries, was tied up with teenage angst and rebelling against the older generation’s values. Rock’n’roll was our thing and our parents didn’t understand it , which made it all the more special. If Jake’s parents were encouraging his burgeoning interest, would that have the adverse effect of turning him away from it? I had an uneasy feeling that I was helping to consign the guitar to the back of the wardrobe, along with the Lego and the Batman costume, when Jake finds something more likely to provoke disapproval. But maybe sitting in the darkened theatre with my Mum and Dad all those years ago sparked a fascination with live performance, the “nightly miracle” as Orson Welles called it, the contract forged between performer and audience when the lights go down, neither party knowing exactly what’s going to happen next. And maybe Jake will feel a bit more grown up when his folks take him to gigs, and feel that something special is happening (I think he will); and if he does end up leaving his guitar in the wardrobe, maybe something of those nights will stay with him and illuminate whatever he does next. I ran this past my inner teenager for his reaction. He groaned and rolled his eyes skyward: had it really taken me so long to work that out? I should speak to him more often. (Note: Jake is real, but he’s not really called Jake.)