I Owe You Nothing. Luke Goss

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СКАЧАТЬ the time I was fourteen I knew that I was going to give the music business a very serious try when I left school. We were rehearsing five nights a week, and I’m afraid homework always took second place to drums. I thought that if I didn’t make it in the music world I could always study later. Needless to say, my school reports were littered with remarks like ‘could do better’ and ‘needs to try harder’.

      I was happy enough to go to English lessons, but that was because the teacher was pretty. There was another teacher who was really tasty, the music teacher. I used to look at her and wish I was a few years older. It worried me though: fancying a teacher seemed a bit kinky, almost a perversion!

      Matt – at this stage of his life everyone called him Matthew, except for me and I called him Maffy – and I were often in trouble for childish pranks, pathetic little rebellions against the mindless authority of the school regime. Years later, when we were famous, the school asked if we would go back there to perform: I wouldn’t go back there for any money. They did nothing to encourage me and I can actually remember a chemistry teacher laughing with contempt when someone said I wanted to make records when I left.

      There was one thing about school I enjoyed, and that was running. I was county standard at cross country and 1,500 metres, and every afternoon after school I would change into my running gear and do an eight-mile run from Camberley to Frimley and Lightwater and then back home. I was ridiculously fit. Matt was more interested in athletics, and always did well at long jump, high jump and triple jump.

      After Caviar I was invited to join another band called Hypnosis, with another couple of brothers. They were a class above us, but by this time I had a reputation as one of the best drummers around the area, for my age. I did a couple of gigs with them and they were keen that I should stay. I insisted that Matt also be allowed to join, as a singer. They agreed, and that was Matt’s first taste of singing in public. Everyone always assumes that Matt was the instigator of our career in music, but it was actually the other way round: at that age it was me who was paving the way for him.

      Meanwhile, though, he was more interested in a career on the stage. He took drama as one of his optional subjects at school, and his teacher, a lovely lady called Jane Roberts – one of the few teachers you could really talk to – recognized his potential and gave him the starring role in the school production of Cabaret, in which he played the German Master of Ceremonies. He was brilliant: he got tremendous reviews. The actress June Whitfield was in the audience, and so were some senior members of the Royal School of Ballet, friends of the drama teacher. They all said that he had a real talent and should go to drama school.

      All the family came to see the show. Mum was very proud, and even she admits she was surprised how good Matt was. Dad said he was bowled over: it took him a few minutes to realize it was his son up there speaking German and performing so brilliantly. I had a small one-line role as a sailor in the same production. I thought it would be good fun and I got to miss a few lessons for rehearsals.

      After playing with Hypnosis Matt and I broke away and started rehearsing just with Craig. We didn’t really have a name, but we played a few gigs in clubs and discos, with club owners paying us in Cokes. We were happy to do it for the experience. We were writing our own songs, but they were not what the punters wanted to hear, unfortunately. I remember one evening we played at a working men’s club, and we’d run through lots of stuff before anyone even started tapping their feet. That was when we played ‘House of the Rising Sun’. I hate that song, but it always gets people going.

      Afterwards the barman asked how old the drummer was, and said he thought I would go far. I have always put everything into my drumming, even in a place like that where they were definitely there for the beer, not the music. You see some drummers performing as though they are half dead, with a cigarette balanced on the edge of their kit and a cup of tea to hand. I can never play like that: for me, it’s all or nothing.

      When I was twelve I met a whole new branch of my family. After Dad’s mother died he contacted the people in her address book, to let them know. One of the names was a sister of her first husband, Dad’s real father. There had been no contact between them since Dad was a baby, but the letter to his aunt triggered a feeling in her that Dad might like to meet that side of his family. He travelled up to St Anne’s, near Blackpool, and stayed with his father and a stepmother he had never met before, and also met two half-brothers and two half-sisters for the first time. He found the family very warm and welcoming, and after he had established a good relationship with them he took Matt and me to stay with them. It was a lovely experience, they were friendly and easy-going. My step-grandmother was gentle, homely and kind to us, and cooked us huge breakfasts in the mornings. Unfortunately, Dad’s wife Margaret was with us and, as had become her habit, she tried to impose her standards of behaviour on us. She insulted me by asking me if I had washed my hands after I had been to the toilet, as if I was a tiny child.

      Dad enjoyed his new family for five years, until his marriage to Margaret broke up. Then, tragically, his father and stepmother decided to side with Margaret, who had told them a highly coloured version of the marriage breakdown. It was she who left Dad – not the other way round. Dad is philosophical about it. He still keeps in touch with his half-sisters although he has no contact with the rest of them. He says that his stepfather, Denis Weston, was the man who brought him up, and he is still very close to Denis, who he regards as nothing less than his father.

      I have no sense of loss through not seeing them any more as they never figured in my childhood; but I do know how important my father has been in my life, and how vulnerable I am sometimes because of the times when I felt rejected by him, so I have a lot of sympathy for his difficulties with his own father.

      Throughout my early teen years, my relationship with Mum, Tony and Dad was fraught at times – and with my stepmother Margaret I ceased to have any relationship. She objected to the way we dressed and did not want to be seen with us. It reached the stage where we only wanted to visit their house if we knew she was not going to be there. Dad admits that he wasn’t too keen on our taste in clothes (he says we both looked like the Thin White Duke, dressed all in white with long blond hair), but he took the line that we were well-behaved, polite and had never given him any serious cause for worry, so he was not going to make an issue over the way we dressed.

      The first time that we came face to face with Margaret’s rejection of us was when we were going with Dad to a Divine concert at the Lyceum. It’s hard to know how to describe Divine: he was a fat, camp entertainer whose very bizarreness accounted in part for his success. Another large part of his success was that he was managed (until his death in 1988) by Bernard Jay.

      Bernard has been a friend of Dad’s (and Mum’s) since Dad was first a bobby on the beat in the 1970s. Bernard was general manager of the Mermaid Theatre, and one day Dad popped into the theatre, in uniform, to get out of the rain. He was on duty escorting the Lord Mayor of London to the College of Arms, and was not needed again until it was time for the Lord Mayor to leave. Bernard took pity on him and plied him with coffee and brandy, and while chatting discovered how hard up Dad and Mum were. After that, he took the trouble to invite them to every first night party at the theatre.

      They both appreciated it: it was a sparkling break from the routine of bringing up two small children on a tight budget, and the only problem they had was finding suitable things to wear. Everything else was laid on free for them.

      Bernard has remained a fixture in our lives since then. We were never christened so we don’t officially have a godfather, but Bernard has always been like one to us. After he took over management of Divine he invited us to the show at the Lyceum, and we were thrilled to accept.

      I was genuinely upset when Dad told us that Margaret had decided that she preferred not to go if we were going to be there. Although Matt and I did not get on with her, we were sad for Dad’s sake that this night out became a showdown, putting him more СКАЧАТЬ