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A Soul Song by Russell Stone A
galaxy swirls majestically, moving rapidly away from the centre of the
universe. On an outflung spiral arm of that galaxy, an anonymous star
system continues its own preordained, elliptical dance. Within that
system, third from its sun, is a planet that houses a miracle – a
species exhibiting the beginnings of awareness. It has come to dominate
the planet, and has recently engaged in one of its more enduring forms
of recreation. It
was evening, shortly after the end of WWII, and lying in bed, in an
upstairs bedroom of a newly-built house on a council estate in a small
Norfolk village an infant listens to his father sing a lullaby. And is
happy. The infant that is. At
least, I think I was. In fact I must have been! Why would I not be happy
listening to my fathers’ warm baritone singing to me? That
is:
mmmMMMEEEE!!! The
centre of my known universe. IMMERSION
Intro/Prelude I
do not know the genesis of my connection with music. I
do not know what music is. I
know I have a feeling for music and that the connection, that feeling I
have, is something that has been a constant throughout my life. Even
when I appeared to go away from music, I found it was in order to return
to it. Music has shaped my life, and my changing connection with music
has reflected my
tragedies, joy, and personal growth. The
culture I was embedded in dictated the music I experienced growing up.
My childhood memories are defined by popular songs from the previous
century onwards – songs from the first and second world wars (For
All We Know – Pack Up Your Troubles), songs from between the Wars
(Autumn Leaves – How Long Has This Been Going On?) and songs
current in the 50s (Shrimp Boats are a-Coming – Que Serà). Snapshots: Waking
up as a boy chorister in the village church having falling asleep during
an evening service. Figuring I’d had enough of that and walking out of
church mid-service to go home to bed. The vicar was not best pleased. I
can sense a papier-maché sheep’s head (something to do with baby
Jesus) from a school Xmas play in the village hall where apparently I
sang a solo of I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus – and remember
the astonishment and pride in my mother at seeing her child, me, singing
for the first time in public. Playing
the record of Behind the Green Door over and over on a great
uncle’s radiogram before a party with my mother’s extensive
London-Irish family. Vague memories of that party, where everybody had
to do a turn, and reveling in it. Picking out tunes on the piano in the
same room. Seeing
a dance band, on the first-floor of a village pub for the first time and
being absolutely fascinated by it. Staring the whole evening, right
beside of the band, trying to figure out what the hell they were doing. Sitting
in the back seat of the car, watching the headlights brushing the tree
branches as we drive back, singing the songs of South Pacific after
seeing it at the pictures in Beccles. Mum already knows the
lyrics, she’s good at that, and works on the melody with Dad; me
joining in as best I can.
Some Enchanted Evening still evokes a delicious stirring from
then – impossible to describe. The
first album I bought at 11, Take Five by Dave Brubeck, the
second, Scheherajazz a wonderful version of Scheherazade.
Singing
the lead in Gilbert & Sullivan operettas at college, loving it. Hearing
Ray Charles for the first time and being blown away. Mucking
about on the piano as I loved to, when a teacher pushes open the door
and says, “Right Stone, get off that piano, get out.” Banned from
all pianos in the college for daring to ask my piano teacher to be
allowed to study the Moonlight Sonata. He deemed this pop music,
the strongest denigration he could muster. Silly old sod. Going
to hear Booker T & the MG’s in Norwich playing Green Onions and
being more blown away. Having
an emotional crisis as I neared A levels, realizing that I did not want
to be an engineer, but not knowing what else to do – until a teacher
(the first and only) asked what I could do? “I can
sing.” So he suggests looking in The Stage. At my first audition I
land a job in The Black and White Minstrel Show. Singing
in front of the school assembly feels great, some kind of twisted
revenge. I am leaving. I have a Job. 1st Verse I
am still unclear why I never elected to undergo formal training in
music. I spent years blaming others for this, but gradually I guess I
begin to understand that I did not wish, at an unconscious level, to
engage with music in that way. My intuitive feelings have always been
very powerful around music; less so in other areas, but strong in music
– so much so, that once I began a professional career in music I moved
forward effortlessly on an upward curve to the peak of the profession. My
voice has variously been described by others as strong, rich, marvelous,
moving etc… but the only way I can describe it is as a feeling.
Singing was what I did. It was as much a part of me as breathing. However,
I was now required to shape this voice, to shape myself, to shape my
behaviour in certain ways. Thus, over a period of time, my upward career
curve was accompanied by a downward character-developmental curve, that
tracked my gradual estrangement from my self, from that inner
connection, forged in many excursions into the countryside and communion
with nature as a young boy. Snapshots: My
first professional step –going onstage at the Blackpool Opera House in
my first production number in front of over 3000 people I am immediately
blinded by the lights (I have never rehearsed with full lighting).Guided
around the stage by the hands of a succession of Minstrels and
Television Toppers. I survive – a miracle. On tour with the Minstrels
at the age of 17. Quite a move from a boarding school in the depths of
Norfolk to a summer season surrounded by lots of leggy, gorgeous women
… and sharing a room with a gay guy. Life has got very interesting
indeed. Walking
into Boots to get a hangover cure – after a night on virtually neat
gin with some Toppers and Donald Peers, the star. I feel absolutely
bloody awful. Never doing this again! (ah well!) A
year later I am summoned to the Minstrels’ London production at the
Victoria Palace: my voice is working well. It’s
Sunday morning, the run-through for the Minstrel’s weekly TV show at
BBC Centre in Wood Lane, having done vocal pre-recordings the previous
week – my first sessions. A typical week: rehearsing the TV show from
Monday to Saturday during the day and recording on the Sunday – on top
of ‘twice nightly’ theatre shows and two matinées. A
week’s pay is about £45. Being
told off for singing the wrong harmonies during the production numbers
on stage. Despite the work-rate I was getting mightily bored. Leaving
the Minstrels and getting a job in the chorus of what turned out to be
the final Billy Cotton TV series. 1st Chorus Although
I got married far too young, the mid 60s was a period of stability for
me. I was still deep in the trance of unawareness and responding to life
as a series of emotional and behavioural knee-jerks. I had no awareness
of the depth of my connection to music, and leaving the security of a
long-running show introduced me to the insecurities of the freelance. No
doubt this served to promote my deep in-built insecurity around life
itself. I knew I could sing, but somehow belief in myself, in my talents
and abilities, was deeply tainted with Family-of-Origin dynamics …
learned behaviour modeled by my father around his own insecurities …
and who I was … what I brought into the world. However,
there was something within me that would not lie down, would not let me
settle into security, I was always pushing, always looking to move.
Others saw this as ambition, and so did I at the time, but now I wonder
… was it maybe, that deep down I knew I was in the wrong place, doing
the wrong things, trying to find what I was searching for? With no way
of acknowledging this to myself, my inner connection grew fainter. So,
I now moved into more TV work, tours and more studio sessions. I began
to work with more contemporary material, listening to fusion bands,
Blood, Sweat & Tears, as well as Sinatra and others. Snapshots: Asking
Val Doonican what it took to be a star and being told, Driving
along the A4 to do my first cabaret in South Wales Working Men’s clubs
– the proud owner of a yellow second-hand Triumph Vitesse. (The M4
stopped at Maidenhead) The
next morning I’m on the phone getting the lyrics to Tom Jones’ hit The
Green, Green Grass of Home – having been booed off the stage the
previous night, all my arrangements of wonderful, classy, cabaret tunes
having been murdered by a female organist with bottle-bottom glasses
who’d previously announced ‘No problems’, after riffing through
the parts extremely briefly while standing at the entrance to the
men’s toilets, my changing room (after years of theatre and TV
dressing-rooms it isn’t easy to adjust to avoiding splashes). I
triumph with three reprises of Grass and head for England in huge
relief In
the changing room of a London nightclub, I’m copping crafty glances at
the breasts of the showgirls as they preen in their costumes in front of
the mirror, preparing for the show. They know I’m looking, but I
don’t know that. Or do I? It’s starting to get a bit confusing. And
exciting. I’m gradually aware that women are interested in me. Shame,
about being married, but what the fuck! Twice
while working these clubs I have out-of-body experiences. Immersed in
the songs I am slowly aware that I am letting go of everything and
floating upward, looking down on myself – that singing is now
effortless. I am just in it, in the song and observing myself with no
judgment – not scared, not concerned, just present. Singing
Goldfinger, encircled by girl dancers, and having a
complete blank on the lyrics. The look on their faces is priceless as
they circle, with me singing garbage. 2nd Verse By
now I was making connections in the Music Industry, and begin singing
with The Mike Sammes Singers on TV, radio and studio work, which
necessitated concentrated sight-reading. I cut my first record and began
getting a different kind of studio work, more contemporary with
different singers who were mainly non-readers, and who had a very
different attitude to those they perceived of as ‘straights’. I was
increasingly insecure, frequently astonished that I got calls to work,
yet more arrogant about my talent. I had begun to write and was
exploring this very different expression of my abilities. Snapshots: Rushing
into a pub at lunchtime to throw down a quick double brandy. I’m doing
three radio sessions in one day, 10-1, 2-5, 7-10, live in the studio
with the Ray Davies Button-Down Brass. There are two other singers, Mike
Sammes - bass, Nick Curtis – tenor and myself - baritone: both serious
readers and I’m busking. Terrifying. Hence the double brandy. By the
end of the day I am growing in confidence, and my reading has improved
vastly. Auditioning
for Opportunity Knocks and being told by the producer that I came over
as arrogant – astonishing her by replying that my knees were knocking
together like drumsticks. Inner and outer moving further apart. I
tell Mike Sammes that I wouldn’t be doing studio work much longer as I
am cutting my first record soon. Ah, the arrogance. Singing
Sly Stone’s Dance to the Music on a TV show, next to the
wonderful voice of Johnny Goodison. My first trip abroad with
Brotherhood of Man. This is it! My
first tour with James Last. Rejected by the German PA I was having an
affair with for hanging around in bars after the shows drinking with
English musicians, I tell each German band member, one by one, to fuck
off. Next day I have no memory of this and wonder why the Germans are
all ignoring me as we board the bus. Coming
back to England at the end of the tour, staying with a fellow singer and
being found outside the next morning naked, curled round a rose bush. I
sit frozen all night on a couch, listening to my wife’s screams of
emotional pain from upstairs, having told her I’m leaving. Drinking
heavier and heavier. 2nd Chorus My
behaviour was by now chaotic, reflecting the deepening fear and
insecurity I was experiencing within, but still singing, still getting
work. People loving my voice but having problems with me. On
another James Last tour I met my second wife, over from New Jersey. She
joins me in England with her gorgeous son Rhashan. Now really being
exposed to Soul for the first time in a conscious way, being blown away
by it. Singing and writing coming together as my writing adapts to
accept new stimulus. However, vocal insecurities began to mount as I
sing next to people blessed with superb talent. My
wife and I cut some of my tunes; these are picked up and one song
eventually becomes a hit single. Made
it! Or
have I? I
had now moved into mainstream popular music in Britain and was briefly
at the cutting edge. The marriage brought stability into my life and for
a while this papered over things. Joanne and I have a beautiful son,
James, who is much loved. Snapshots: Shame
at being admonished publicly by James Last for ad libs he didn’t like,
my response, have a drink! Lots! Singing
on my own with a Big Band in very successful Swedish TV special. Alcohol
gets more important as my nerves get worse. Getting
married for a second time
– drunk in the evening. Sitting
in my car in Bond Street, listening to the radio, The single We Do
It Joanne and I had cut is at number 5 in the charts. That’s it
then – R&J Stone. Definitely made it!!! When
R&J Stone do a TV special for LWT, I am greeted warmly by MD
Harry Rabinovitch in the production office – so very different from
the cutting tongue Harry used with me as a session singer. I am somewhat
bemused, what’s changed? Of course – I’m now a pop star. But I
haven’t changed and I’m finding it difficult to square all this. Cabaret
with pickup bands off the back of the single – which I hate. The
musicians are tired and bored and this is hurtful. I’m no longer
enjoying music. Looking
at my hands on the piano as they struggle to find a chord sequence that
will give me inspiration for a new song. I’ve always written because I
like writing songs. Now the commercial pressure is crucifying –
there’s so much at stake and I’m becoming more and more scared …
though I have no way of acknowledging this, least of all to myself. So
much pressure to come up with another We Do It, and I can’t. In
Australia I read a bad crit about my voice. Never had one before, this
goes deep and causes me great pain. I’m gradually losing connection
with my voice, and that spells bad trouble for my soul. In
a white stretch limo on our way to a charity performance at the Sydney
Opera House Joanne has a really bad stomach and is throwing up out of
the open window, trails of puke streaming down the sparkling white door.
When we get there, a doctor gives her liquid valium so that she can
perform. Instead of waiting for my cue to go on stage she wanders out,
high as a kite and just stands around grinning. The conductor has laid
the parts out wrong and when we begin the first song, half the band
plays one song and the other half plays another. I’ve had it by now
too and collapse with laughter. Happy
days. Middle Eight /Bridge I
decided I didn’t want to be a singer any more, I would just write
songs and produce Joanne. But we couldn’t come up with another hit
single. A second album didn’t do much. A third was recorded but never
released. My
drinking was going strong now. But I was writing with musicians and had
at last found a writing partner I really liked. An Icelandic, Thorir
Baldursson who was living and working in Munich in the high days of
Disco, Donna Summer et al. I went there to work with him. Really
good songs coming out, 10 in 10 days. I
called Joanne to come over to hear the material, she loved it. She still
looks so beautiful in the picture I took of her in a field outside
Munich. Back
in England, my mother called from Winchester to say that Joanne had had
some kind of fit. In
the hospital the consultant had asked Joanne to wait outside. An
eternity passed before he spoke, and in that eternity an iron grip took
hold of my entire being. “Mr Stone, I’m afraid that…” and “…
I think it best if you don’t tell her just now; let her have some
months of normal life.” It
was five months later. Joanne had asked to go for a drive. In the car
she turned to me and asked “What’s wrong with me?’ I went cold
inside, it was the moment I was dreading. Although she had been ill for
months I had had no preparation. How do you tell someone you love they
are dying? I still don’t know. It
was an extremely malignant brain tumor. Joanne was dead by Xmas. For
months I maintained while she was alive, but when she finally ‘died’
I went off-planet for about a year, living in a bottle. I didn’t know
it then but I had lost something around music. I didn’t want to sing,
but it was all I knew. For
the next 13 years I continued, 13 years lost in my own private hell.
During that time I had another beautiful son, Sebastian from a
relationship that eventually broke up because of my drinking. All I did
was drink and tour with James Last. My dark night of the soul was long,
ugly and extremely painful. I was now completely stuck in my tune. I had
no idea what to do but to keep singing the only song I know. But it hurt
so much. Snapshots: Walking
away from the funeral, having put Joanne into the ground, looking up at
the branches of a tree I think, ‘It’s been six days since she died,
how the hell am I going to get through this?’ I
hold my son Sebastian in my arms, just after he’s been born and look
at him through tears of joy. The
pain at yet another rejection of a tune – why is this happening? Getting
out of a car in Hollywood, drunk, after dinner with Tommy LiPuma, one of
the top American producers, who’s looking for material for Randy
Crawford. He is interested in my writing; but this evening I just walk
away, not knowing where the hell I am. Now
I’m really scared – I have stacks of supermarket bags all full
of letters, bills, cheques etc …
I daren’t open them. Standing
up to the microphone to do a sound check at the beginning of another
tour, I have no idea what is going to come out of my mouth. I haven’t
sung for 10 months and I’m terrified. I am as far away from my self,
my voice and my music as I will ever be. This is a truly terrible place
to be. EMERGENCE
New Movement I
couldn’t do the old way any more and did something absolutely radical.
I asked for help. And help was given. During six weeks in a treatment
centre I owned my addiction and gave myself a chance for change. I quit
drinking and rebuilt my life, a day at a time. After
a while something astonishing happened, I discovered a desire to sing
again. I couldn’t believe it, after so many years. I spent nine months
writing songs, arranging them for a nine-piece band and getting horn
parts done. My musician buddies were very generous in letting me use
their names to put a band together and for five years I had a monthly
residency in a Jazz pub. I
knew that staying sober was not enough for me, I also knew that
spirituality was the way forward. I went to meetings of AA and worked
the 12 Steps. I talked to people, asked questions: I became a sponge. I
would go anywhere, do anything in order to learn. I began a counselling
course. I
quit the James Last band, which felt absolutely wonderful. In
time I became a professional counsellor – helping others, the best way
to help myself – doing service. I became a teacher. Counsellor and
teacher, two vital roles for learning. I embarked on an MA, researching
chanting. Finally
I came back to music, but in a very different way, engaging my intellect
in all that I did, as well as my heart. I had begun to move towards
balance. Finding myself and learning. I
remarried but this was no 3rd Chorus. I’d come to the
relationship in a very different way after seven years on my own. I have
come home to Polly my new wife, with whom I regularly share long,
wonderful walks in the country, getting deeper and deeper into that
inner connection, and all is well. I am blessed. Snapshots: Bawling
my eyes out in group therapy as I begin to mourn my dead wife in
sobriety, instead of with the tears of a drunk. The iron grip begins to
loosen after so many years. A
stunning miracle – I hear a voice within saying ‘I want to sing.’
I have never been so dumfounded! What I thought had died and gone
forever is stirring. Walking
in the rain and cold on a February evening in North London, going to a
singing lesson and feeling sorry for myself. Suddenly, I awaken, and it
comes to me that despite the conditions, I am doing what needs to be
done in order to grow and learn. Just as suddenly, I feel absolutely
marvelous, putting my face up to feel the rain and laughing. Saying
goodbye to the James Last band, one by one, on my last tour having
realised I don’t have to do this anymore – so very different from
what I’d told them 22 years before. It’s time to stop. A wonderful
feeling. Asking
the reception desk at Alton College for the room number of the
counselling course I have signed up for. Re-engaging with education,
dealing with unfinished business. Singing
with my band, feeling the groove, working the music, working my songs,
working myself. Ahhhh!! Sitting
in an empty room as a trainee counselor, waiting for my first client,
feeling so nervous – but knowing that I am feeling
nervous, being present with myself. This is one of the huger changes in
my life. On
the phone to the landlord of the Jazz pub, who is canceling me after 5
years – because I had the temerity to have a cold and am unable to
sing. I feel the anger and unfairness, let it through and it is gone.
Time to move on. I thank him and replace the phone. Very different
behaviour. Chanting
for the first time with people who have no connection with music in a
professional sense, so liberating. Knowing there is something very
important here and not having a clue what it is. Wonderful! Reading
Don Campbell’s book on the broader aspects of music. Ah-ha, here we go
– another universe becoming available. I suddenly get the sense that
this is the way forward. I expand within, fear is shrinking and I become
more deeply aware of others and myself. Coda So
here I sit at the word processor, organising these words; six months
through my journey into researching chanting/sounding for my MA in
Transpersonal Counselling and Psychotherapy. I take a big sigh. Where
am I? Part
of where I am is now moving towards the essence of music and away from
form, just as Miles Davies and other jazzers were around 1960. For the
past two years I have hardly performed at all, but have been busy with
exploring modal music and my own spiritual practice which includes
chanting/sounding using the tunings of the 13 Indian thats or
scales for meditation, accompanied by a Shruti box (a kind of harmonium
with no keyboard). I
sing in a kind of free-form improvisational /explorational manner, based
on whichever that I am drawn to that day. This has opened
something within, as well as freeing me up vocally and mentally –
altering my experience around music to expansion rather than
contraction. At the same time, my personal growth work /therapy /yoga,
and commitment to my wife /life has served to decrease the fear that had
been present for so much of my life. I
have looked briefly at Quwwali with my voice and mind, chanted with
different groups and individuals such as Gilles Petit, and feel a
growing synthesis as this Eastern aspect of music begins to merge with
my Western music experience. Something is growing and I am in the
process of exploring this as a singer and writer with colleagues from
the Music & Psyche group and others. My teaching and counselling
commitments mean this is a slow process but that is good. Slow is
excellent for me. But
I am also coming to music in a much broader sense: to its deeper
purposes/aspects, for example, the embedded healing properties it
offers. This has powerful musical and psychological implications that I
am now in the process of exploring under the auspices of the MA.
Chanting normally uses pre-composed melodic structures with text/lyrics:
I am more interested in Sounding because I find myself moving away from
pre-composed melodic forms aligned with text. Feeling an intuitive need
to work completely spontaneously, allowing whatever emerges through the
voice to emerge, that any sound is acceptable, melodic or
otherwise. I actively encourage this process, for I feel that in doing
so we are working pre-verbally; facilitating direct expression of the
unconscious. Also,
my role as a facilitator of voice/music workshops has led to a deeper
and growing awareness of these aspects of music – very little of which
I experienced as a professional singer and writer. It took a helluva transition
to get here. It took something as powerful as the fire of alcoholism to
shift me out of the trance, the immersion [,and make me aware of the
emergence]. But shift I did, and those 13 years were not lost years,
they were absolutely necessary in order for me to shift (I still have
difficulty in accepting that, but that is the truth, as I see it). In
that shift I have learned: What
this ‘more’ is, I do not know, but I have a feeling that moving
towards the essence of music, exploring my relationship with it through
the vehicle of vocal expression, will shift me towards that ‘more’. And
so the wheel turns. I move deeper into this slow dance, away from my
egoic self, expanding to become aware of others, of the world, of the
universe out there. I had to go far away
from myself in order to begin the journey of finding myself. Joy
to the world, love and light to all – to uuuUUUUSSS!!! |