Summer 1996

______________________________

MILESTONES

by Billy Jenkins (Reprinted from Venue magazine, March 1996)

_____________________________

A GUITARIST WRITES:

I hated school, hated every school, from nursery downwards.
But, aged 12, one teacher had my attention. Mr. Ashbee (where are you Mr. Ashbee?) What you did one day helped forge my future.

You didn’t always teach English - you once played us Charles Ives. Was it Symphony No.1 or No.4? Who cares. You told us about the different marching bands converging on the town square - but I wasn’t listening. I was in that small town American square (transported by your Dansette Major portable hi-fidelity gramophone with disc stack facility andtone control....) And somehow the life Ives led (successful insurance man by day, crackpot composer by night) was never the Unanswered Question.
The Muse shot all that to pieces. To use 1968 vernacular, Ives was groovy and `far out’. The others in the class seemed to prefer The Beatles. To me, The Beatles were a `drag’, `uncool’ and `square’.

So I checked out Variations On `America’. Written in 1891 for organ when Ives was 17. To us the tune is `God Save The Queen’. The Twentieth Century composer had been gazumped. From that day onwards I was never ashamed of the first name on my birth certificate - Charles.

And now, when it’s thunder and lightning on it loudly goes - Symphony No.4 with Leopold Stokowski conducting the American Symphony Orchestra (CBS 72451 - a 1966 vinyl release). `Watchman Of The Night’, `Nearer Thy God To Thee’, Yankee Doodle Dandy’ and dozens of other tunes mashed up with bangs and crashes falling like the rain through the holes in my roof.

I still don’t care about insurance."

Variations on America was one of Billy's choices when he appeared, with Noddy Holder of Slade and opera singer Sally Burgess on 'Striking Chords' on BBC Radio 4, picking two tracks which influenced him. The other was Sonny Rollins' East Broadway Rundown. The programme stimulated interesting debate among the participants, such as 'Is opera too highbrow?' (Answer: Possibly) and 'Should rock and rollers continue touring after the age of 40?' (Answer: No)