“I first became aware of rock ‘n’ roll music because of the Beatles. I was a small child under three years old when a friend of my mother left the 7-inch of “She Loves You” in the small northwest London flat where I spent the first decade of my life.”
“I was obsessed, playing it over and over on the small Dansette record player in our front room. I kept discovering new bits of the song—because it took me days to work out how to put the needle on the very edge of the vinyl enabling it to be heard from the beginning.
My parents were separated and my brother Dave and I would spend every other weekend with my dad in his tiny apartment in the Lots Road area of Chelsea. If I stood in the hallway I often heard the music of The Beatles filtering down the stairs from the top floor flat. The guy who lived there invited me up one day and we listened together—he was as transfixed as I was. He was probably in his early twenties and I was six—but the music transcended that age barrier. We drank Tizer together (a peculiarly British 1960s soda) and listened to Beatles For Sale.
Then my dad bought me “Ticket To Ride” for my birthday. My love of vinyl was certified by now, but I’d never owned a full vinyl album.
A couple of years later my Mother, myself and Dave were on holiday in Spain where my gay uncle Eric and his boyfriend “uncle” Keith owned a fantastic restaurant called Los Faroles in between Marbella and San Pedro on the Costa Del Sol. We went every year. In fact Mick, Keith, Brian, and Marianne came in for lunch on their way to Morocco one afternoon but I was too scared to ask for their autographs—but that’s another story.
That summer—1967—I worked relentlessly doing odd chores and lots of washing up around the bar and restaurant and my uncle paid me enough to buy a vinyl album. As soon as we got back to England I went straight to the local record store and bought Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—and my life changed forever.”
—James Stevenson, Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel
Dance Underwater, the new release from Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel is in stores September 15, 2017 via Westworld Recordings.
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