1. The BeatlesBeatles For Sale
I was born in the perfect generation. A 1949 baby. Rock & roll coming along when I was a boy. Fourteen-years-old falling in love with The Beatles. Beatles For Sale was my album in 1965. The way it starts with ‘No Reply’! Whenever I hear it I remember my grandmother’s house in Hetton, near Sunderland, this two-up two-down miners’ cottage with an outside toilet. I’d grown up living on a dairy with my parents but they moved to Leicester when I was 15, and I stayed put in Hetton to finish my O-Levels. It was a pretty rough era but I was pretty untouchable because my mother was from a miner’s family. The Coal Black Kids, as they were called, said to anyone who wanted to mess around with me, "Don’t touch Trevor, or we’ll kill you." They were all a bit Biffa Bacon out of Viz. But it meant I was OK!
When I was living there my grandfather was dying in the front room of silicosis. He was only 64. I spent a lot of time in my room listening to this record. John, Paul and George to me were almost like brothers – there was that quality to their voices. John was more reedy and nasal. Paul had a big range. George was softer, but it was still a voice that could be a lead vocal. You could hear and feel they’d been singing together a long time, like The Gibbs brothers of The Bee Gees. I’ve never got tired of that sound.
