Dotoar

With a little help from my friend


I recall one time when I was about 15, one summer break (in Sweden we have vacation between the grades from early June until late August) and I was browsing through the local newspaper. There was an article about two guys who had been granted a few weeks to perform on guitar in some kind of communal activity. It caught my eye because I had actually applied to that as well but was not picked for it. Instead I was granted a few weeks of work at a nearby camp, on which I and a couple of school friends spent most of the time playing cards and lending each other records, which was nice as well. What I for some reason noticed in the article however, was that one of the guys was cited to have been playing the guitar for like three years or so and I remember thinking "Wow, that's a long time! He must be really skilled.", since I myself hadn't been playing for much more than one year at the time. Set in perspective it's quite amusing to think about such thoughts of the past, considering I today have been playing guitar for 15 years, more than half of my life as of yet. That's a long time, I must be really skilled! On the other hand, I still haven't been picked for any communal musical activity.

I was a relative latecomer when it comes to music. Alright, not exactly music itself; I have always loved listening to music and trying to ape what I hear, but regarding a conscious approach to music, both in listening and practicing, it took until the 8th grade for me to finally reach the conclusion of who I was and what I was to be, as music would constitute a main pillar of my being ever since. It must have been around the summer of 1996 when I got my first guitar, an acoustic Levin bought at a local auction house, Roberts Auktioner, for 180 SEK (about $26). Towards the end of the spring term during the obligatory music lessons I had acquired a taste for the instrument and picked up a few chords in order to learn the song "Bandstarter" by the swedish band Brainpool, which had been a hit here. A friend of mine had a guitar in the house, belonging to his father, and I used to terrorize him with my very rudimentary skills on said song. As the summer came along and I got my own guitar I spent it almost entirely on perfecting the chord fingerings, which was D, G, A and a malformed Bm. The amount of attention span must have been gargantuan back then.



Remember that this was the mid-90's and the britpop wave was in full bloom, and the things that spun on the radio (that always was on in the background in our house) obviously had an affect on me during this crucial time. You see, I already had been playing trumpet in the musical school for several years by then, from which I had acquired general musical theory, such as an understanding of the sequencing of notes. I never cared that much about whether or not it was considered 'cool' to play trumpet but I couldn't help but notice how much more versatile the guitar was in order to reproduce a basic sound of any selected song. And you could sing over it as well, something which is not easy to do with a mouthpiece occupying your lips and lungs. In short, as I started to take interest in the britpopsters scenting the air around me as well as realize the potential of reproducing that sound myself, I quickly grew tired of the trumpet and eventually handed in my resignation to my musical teacher who by the way deserves his share of props for encouraging me all the way until I quit. It wasn't to happen until well into my 8th grade though, but I certainly didn't care much for practicing the trumpet by the time, and the trumpet proved to be my final touch ever with formal musical schooling.

I concentrated wholeheartedly on the guitar from the summer of 1996 and onward into the fall term. I borrowed books from the library to learn all the essential chords and in the process I found out that all those britpopsters I somewhat subconsciously had grown fond of were derived from a distant past which I until then only had been witnessing through vintage footage on TV, and maybe an occasional song airing on the radio. I somehow learned that the main inspiration for all these flowery melodies, jangly guitars and nasal vocals that scented many of the popular acts of the day, was a band which I certainly knew about but hadn't really conceived as much more than an object of general knowledge.

The band was The Beatles.

I was aware of some of their biggest songs, like "She loves you", "I want to hold your hand" and "Help!" and they were among the first songs I learned on guitar (which forced me to expand my knowledge about chords). But at this point I more or less decided that this was a band I just had to get into since I somewhat realized that they were a crucial influence on just about everything I had begun to acknowledge as good music, or more precisely, my music. I feel I have to emphasize this factor; The quest to acquaint The Beatles was not really due to me being particularily exposed to their songs. It was more like a determination to grow a solid musical interest, both to exercise my guitar/singing aspirations and to sport a definite niche as a listener and as a dedicated fan.

My aforementioned friend tipped me off that his mom and dad (living separately) both had a few Beatles records in their collection and offered me to tape them which I thankfully did. One was the blue double album 1967-70 concisting of their most well-known songs from the later period. I remember us listening through it and I had one of my most revealing aha-experiences ever. I caught myself recognizing every second song that came on, up until then not even aware of that it was Beatles; "Penny Lane", "With a little help from my friends", "Hello goodbye", "All you need is love", "Revolution" and so on. And even those I hadn't heard before quickly grew on me and I felt a strange but wonderful kind of joy in that - and this might sound silly - I had picked a band for my liking that turned out to be simply awesome. And in addition, as luck would have it, the swedish national television was at the time airing the Anthology documentary, which I taped on our ancient VCR and watched repeatedly, all the while growing more and more enthusiastic of this band that had achieved so much in so little time.

The rumour of my newly-found fanboyism spread among friends and relatives and I remember I got "Sgt. Pepper" and the first volume of "Anthology" for christmas that year, as well as "Magical Mystery Tour" for my birthday in February thereafter. I started to save money to acquire their every album, for which I had to take the bus to Köping (about 15 km from where I was living) where the nearest record store was. I started to grow out my hair and comb down the fringe which I previously had been combing upwards and when it was time to upgrade my glasses, I chose a pair of thick black frames of the kind that in a few years would become very popular among the artsy crowd (which is to say that I was by far a pioneer in our little town, albeit without knowing it). All this meant that, while I always was kind of an outcast at school, I had finally taken the crucial step to prove that not only was I an outcast - I was consciously emphasizing it in order to show that I was fully comfortable with it. And I had a damn good reason to be as well; I listened to The Beatles and played the guitar! You can tell I did by my moptop and my turtlenecks!

And since I know that you wonder; I was John, thus I had to go for a nasal kind of singing voice and a side-parted fringe, which in turn meant I had to start using hairspray in order to fixate it. My morning habits became severely affected.

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