Chuck Wood - 'Seven Days Too Long'
This was 1968 and I was on my third secondary school by this point, and it was the year I left. Now, I hate it when people go on about this being northern soul - it's not! It's just fucking soul. Same with 'Breaking Down The Walls Of Heartache', they weren't northern soul records because northern soul didn't exist until the early 1970s.

You've described your life once you left school as drifting...

I was fifteen years and three months old, and I felt like a failure. My older brother Pete, he'd done OK, my sister was going off to teacher training college, and me - it felt like I was a failure. I'd been quite good at English, but pretty rotten at everything else. I started working for Dunn & Co, selling hats and suits, I was there for a year and that would be my longest job. I was just drifting. Working for a printers in Willesden, that sort of stuff.