I am starting to get back to playing music regularly again. I didn’t play for a month after Mr D died, the longest period of time when I haven’t picked up a saxophone for decades. I started playing relatively late in life. I changed schools a few times and never really made traction in terms of friends or fitting in. I had dabbled with guitar, strumming Puff the Magic Dragon at the school lunchtime guitar club, but it didn’t really engage me. We had an old piano in the house when I was very young but lessons weren’t available. My Dad played a lot of vinyl in the house and would take me to gigs at the Manchester Apollo so I was probably the only 10-year-old in Macclesfield with a good appreciation of Billy Joel’s best early work, the soulful tones of Hall and Oates, Suzanne Vega, Queen, Bowie and the like.
Then a couple of things happened. First, when I was choosing my O’levels (I am aware that dates me!) I noticed that Music clashed with PE on the school timetable. When you change schools a lot you don’t just miss out making friends, you are always the new girl, always with a slightly different accent, and in my case with slightly darker skin and terrible clothes. So to say you are a target for bullying is an understatement, and PE, with the spectre of communal showering, was the low point of my week. The only part I enjoyed was cross country running, because I actually could run. So, whilst the cool girls walked the course, stopping to sit on a wall for a fag and to annoy local residents at regular intervals, I stretched into a good pace and got back to the changing rooms a good 20 minutes ahead of everyone else. I could shower in peace and be safely away before a cigarette fug heralded the return of the rest of the group. But when I noticed the timetable clash there was just one problem, I didn’t technically play an instrument. This is when the second significant thing happened – Live Aid. I was mesmerised by David Bowie. Not just by his effortless style, his generosity and appreciation of his band, or the superbly slick set, but by the sax player. Clare Hirst stood at the front of the stage, tiny in a fitted black dress, pumping out fabulous rhythmic lines on a tenor sax that looked almost as big as her. When the set finished with Heroes that was it, I was going to buy a saxophone. My mother wasn’t terribly impressed, but it was my post office savings account and it was my liberation. I went in to school and said it was OK, I had a plan, I would take O’level music and play the saxophone. This was South Yorkshire in the 1980’s, a grade 1 saxophone exam wasn’t even available yet, the school didn’t take me very seriously. I went to talk to the visiting peripatetic woodwind teacher. He mostly taught clarinet, but was a big band jazzer at heart, and delighted to have a saxophone student. He registered me for free 30-minute weekly lessons and helped me buy my first student sax. This was a key turning point in my life. The powers that be at school still weren’t impressed - I had to pass grade 5 by the time I sat my O’levels, or I wouldn’t be entered for music. I don’t think they really thought I could do it, I couldn’t even read music. For me that was the perfect motivation. With a stubborn streak that has prevailed for the rest of my life I would prove them wrong. So Heroes is a pivotal track for me, I never forgot that Live Aid set, I can always hear that sax line even though it is buried in the mix on the album track, and it changed my life. Let’s skip forward around 30 years. I’ve been married for nearly 20 years. Mr D grew up with Bowie, the Berlin years were his favourite era. I remember him drunkenly singing along to Heroes during many a kitchen disco after a night out, waving a fag indoors when you still could. Then one Sunday morning in January 2016, the day after my birthday, we woke up to the news that David Bowie had died. It just didn’t seem possible that someone who had just recently produced such stunning, vibrant work could be dead. Mr D was working overseas a lot at the time, and went away on a long trip the following Monday. I listened to Blackstar relentlessly, watching the videos which were now so prophetic, mopping up all the Bowie documentaries on BBC4 late at night. So why am I telling you all this? Last week was the 40th Anniversary of the album Heroes. I was driving back late from a big band rehearsal with a very nice bunch of people, having spent the evening with my favourite saxophone (baritone, which a bit like Clare Hirst’s tenor at the time, is pleasingly almost bigger than me). I was feeling centred, happy, settling into a new kind of life, 6 months after Mr D died. I was playing a lot, going to gigs, feeling alive and more like myself than I have for a very long time. I switched on BBC Radio 2 in the car and heard Tony Visconti talking about Bowie in Berlin*. My heart stopped in my chest. I knew where this was going. I chose the music for Mr D’s funeral very carefully. I knew anything I chose might be spoiled for me forever but it had to be right, and Heroes had to be a part of it. I sat in the crematorium, looking at the coffin, knowing exactly what was inside - I had been with him when he died, sat with him in the hospital mortuary waiting for the police, chosen and taken his clothes to the chapel of rest and done my best to make him look like he had in life, in death (I failed, but it was an impossible task). I had got through most of the day stoically, but unsurprisingly it was music that brought me closest to losing control. Sitting in Golders Green Crematorium, listening to Heroes, looking directly forward with a rock in my chest was one of the hardest parts of the day. All I could see was Mr D singing along with gusto in his Glaswegian accent, waving a fag, slightly worse for wear. I didn’t hear the track many times after that. I started to avoid it but whenever it did pop up, I always had a battle to stay in control, and I didn’t always win. It seemed so unbearably sad that not only was Bowie dead, but less than 18 months later so was Mr D. So I sat in the car with a heavy heart, realising this was probably a 1 hour show, it was only 10:20pm and I had a 40-minute journey home down the A1. I couldn’t turn it off, it was too compelling even though I had heard many of the stories and anecdotes before, but I knew how it would finish. I had a good journey and got home at 10:50, but sat in the car in the dark outside the house, still unable to switch the radio off. And then it came. That track. Swelling out of my old car stereo but still sounding magnificent. My chest tightened, my eyes welled up, and then something surprising happened. I remembered Clare Hirst. I remembered why this song mattered so much to me. I spent the small hours watching that Live Aid Bowie set over and over again, listening to the album version, reprogramming the connections in my brain. I will always experience a tightening in my chest when I hear the opening synth swell and craggy guitar riff. I will always see Mr D, but I will also see Clare Hirst and remember that playing the saxophone has saved my life. *david-bowie-the-revealing-stories-behind-his-incredible-album-artwork **BBC Radio 2 David Bowie's 'Heroes' 40th Anniversary
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