About..... "A Million Miles Away"
Written on my first time away from home, having moved to London to study Business Studies. I`d left a girlfriend at what had become and still call my home-town, Bridlington. A seaside resort in East Yorkshire. Where I had summer jobs such as Ice Cream salesman and Bingo Caller. Couldn`t get me off the microphone even in those days!
In fact I noticed that bingo callers always had their trade marks. Special names for certain balls. Kelly’s Eye, Number 1, Jukebox Jive, Number 5, Two Little Ducks, Twenty Two and so on.
I decided to make up one for myself. I still remember the looks of the punters when I picked out a ball and announced it as "Sherwood Forest."
As everyone gave me a puzzled look I grinned and said "All the trees Thirty Three." which got a quite a few groans. It was nice, twenty years later to pass a bingo hall in Bridlington, on a rare visit back to hear the same number being called "Sherwood Forest" with the same corny joke.
I was now in a student "Hall of Residence" in Wood Green, London. I was in a cell that they called a room, which just about fitted in a single bed, desk and wardrobe. On the bedside table was my leaving present from my then girlfriend, a travel radio alarm clock. She had bought it so I would remember her the start of every morning.
That radio alarm clock still sits on my bedside table, fifteen years later. In fact it has sat on many bedside tables in those fifteen years. With a lamp wired into the same plug, following a shortage of sockets in my hall of residence room. It and the lamp have been with me where ever I have roamed. I`m just glad they can`t talk!
There was only one pay-phone per floor of the Halls of Residence, and was in use virtually all the time. I had been missing her one evening, queued for over an hour to call her, to find she was out. So many people around me and yet I felt so alone.
I returned to my room and picked up my guitar for solace. How could I tell her how much I missed her, without making it obvious? How could I let her know I loved her, when she wasn`t there to hear me say it?
The answer? A song of course! Well, it was for me on this occasion. The song of course being "A Million Miles Away." I couldn`t even work out how to start it. So I decided to start right at the very beginning, and let it hopefully flow out. Which is why it simply starts "Gonna sit right down and write myself a love song, Gonna write it down with you in mind"
They was never meant to be the actual first lines, more written instructions to myself to focus on the job in hand!
I wasn`t without new friends at college, one of which was a fellow guitarist. She had heard me singing in my room one day, knocked on my door and asked if she I`d fancy a jam? For non-musicians, that is playing together and nothing to do with the eating of sandwiches or sex.
She was a songwriter too, so we spent an evening of going through our repertoires. I then played a basic tape I`d made of some of my songs.
I could never afford proper studio time, or even a 4 track. But had managed to do things like record guitar and vocals on one tape, then record myself playing guitar to it on another recorder. Then sometimes play that back and record some backing vocals as well.
Of course this took absolutely ages, everything was live, and getting the recording balance right took frustrating hours. Even then, each recording meant lost quality, so the resulting finished copy was quite difficult to hear through the multiple tape hiss. But for me, I was learning the trade the hard way. Which is why this independently produced CD is a dream come true for me after 20 years.
After playing this tape, which she enjoyed, she offered to go and get a tape of a friend of hers.
He, was just like me, she said. He had learnt guitar while in Christian youth groups and wrote similar songs to myself. All his songs were about love, yet he couldn`t get a girlfriend, because he was "Too nice." When he did get into a relationship, he would be elated. Then they would soon turn to tragedy one way or another. With the hurt always seemingly landing just on his shoulders.
Eventually he told her he was going to give woman just one more year. Otherwise he was going to become a Roman Catholic Priest. She cried the day he left for the priesthood a year later. By then he`d given up playing the guitar and playing his songs, because it was just too painful for him to do it.
I must admit, I really didn`t want her to play the tape. I was too busy basking in the glory that she had liked my songs so much. And I expected not to enjoy it anyway.
By the end of the evening I had arranged to get a copy of the tape. I'd sat in awe at a songwriter completely out of my league, who played guitar the way I wanted to be able to one day, wrote lyrics that grasped the heart and squeezed, and a voice that brought those lyrics to voice in a way no-one else ever will.
Apparently the Youth group he was a member of, liked his songs so much, that he was kept being asked to teach other members them. Fortunately for me, she had learned two of them, and was able to show me. It`s always nice for a guitarist for someone to sit down and show you how to get different sounds, effects and chord progressions.
The guitar intro for "A Million Miles Away" is borrowed from a Mark McGreevy song. Where ever he is. Whom I`ve never met, don`t know what he looks like, but heard his tape. Mark, I promised your friend I would give you a mention if I ever made it big. Well... this is about it I`m afraid for now. But here is a fan you never knew you had. And everyone I`ve ever played your tape too was blown away by it as well. Hope you don`t mind me borrowing your intro.
After recording the song, everyone I played it to loved it. It came instantly part of my repertoire and has never left. Basically because they way I felt that evening, are feelings a lot of people can identify with themselves. When you are away from a loved one, just stare up at the sky and somehow you know, right then they were thinking of you also. Or at least hope that somehow your message will travel through the stars to them, to let them know that they are remembered and missed.
My girlfriend loved it too, and was rather touched by it, but "...still preferred "Valentine" (Now "Words of Love") which I`d written for her."
Hmm, was that what I`d told her? Opps!
However young love never lasts. Especially when people you thought were friends stab you in the back the moment you`ve gone. Christians happen to be real people. Every rumour imaginable was told to my girlfriend because a lot of other males rather fancied her too and I wasn`t around to dispel them. Our relationship was a mental one, not a sexual one. We were both Christians as were our friends. But a lot of un-christian things then went on.
Eventually she`d heard enough rumours to begin to distrust me, after all. I was 225 miles away, (Which was in fact also my room number). When the trust goes, it's very hard to put right when you are miles away.
Eventually when I got up to see her, she told me that God had told her I was from the devil and that she no longer wanted to see or have contact with me in any shape or form.
When you`ve been praying for your girlfriend to become a Christian, that is rather a kick in the teeth when they become one and do that.
I`ve had my times of disbelief in my journey with God. I must admit after her saying that I totally gave up my faith. I had been a Christian for as long as I cared to remember. Trying to not be one was actually difficult. It took ages for me to learn to smoke.
But I felt that if people believed all these rumours then I might as well go and do them. I`d the lost the only thing I`d really wanted. I didn`t just lose my girlfriend, I lost a whole set of friends. A couple of who have apologised years later. But the hurt I went through at the time put me through a very dark depression.
The only good tiding that came out from it for me, was after we had spilt up, she refused to out with anyone from that group. Funnily enough she surprised everyone by choosing for her next relationship another singer/songwriter/guitarist, who drank gallons of tea (I drink gallons of Coffee). Can`t possible think who she was trying to replace. But he was locally famous for his punk see-through PVC jeans. Ah... now that's where I went wrong.
The song though has touched many hearts over the years I`ve performed it. I remember donating my services as a childrens entertainer/counsellor to a kids summer camp. Except I soon learnt that the kids we were taking on holiday were kids who were already heavily involved in crime, or had been sexually abused at home, or lived in extremely poor homes. The staff included several cadets from the nearby Hendon Police College. Two were on my staff.
I still remember the campfire in the evening where I was playing my songs. I must have sang "A Million Miles Away" just at the right time. Because a voice came from behind me "Can you play that again" and turned around to see one of these male police cadets with tears in his eyes. Apparently he was in love with this girl at home, but just couldn`t summon the courage to tell her rather then risk losing a friendship. Just shows they are only human, not matter what we sometimes think.