Back in 1977 when I was 16, I was rather poor, scruffy and desperate to be pretty and popular, just like every other sixteen year old that didn’t own boobs or nice clothes, I was dreaming of a better life that never quite came to be realised.
Looking back I wish I had the wherewithal to scrape together a few hundred quid and had flown out to New York to hang out with musicians and artists. Imagine how different things would have been!
I could have palled it with Debbie Harry, witnessed the beginning of Rap music in the Bronx and maybe even became a famous artist for fifteen minutes. Instead I stayed in Glasgow and managed to buy shoes before the summer was out.
Life never works out the way you want it.
I really wanted to wear black eyeliner, ripped tee shirts and be a groupie for rock bands. Though I suppose breasts would have helped that issue, unless Gary Glitter was looking for young people to join his gang, then I would have been in with a big shout.
Being nearly 50 has made me realise all the ambitions and yearns have passed me by.
Debbie Harry now looks haggard and that’s probably how I look as well, but haven’t the guts to admit it to myself yet.
But she got to shake her booty in Studio 54 in New York, she watched Bianca Jagger turn up at the famous club on a white horse….a fucking horse….how rock and roll is that?
In 1977 I turned up at the community disco in a nylon top with cardboard in my shoes to stop the holes leaking rainwater into them.
Mind you I saw Bianca Jagger at an anti-war rally not long ago and she did look a bit old and tired….but she did get to live the life of a glam star, so she has earned the right to wear autumnal layers and ethnic beads, I don’t. I never got to be a rock chick or live the high life, it all sucks.
I wish I had headed off to California and got to visit the Troubadour club and listen to The Eagles, Jackson Browne and James Taylor sing live…way before they all became organic drug counsellors, fat and bald. I wanted to jump into Jacuzzis with them when they wore denim shirts and skinny jeans; I wanted them to dedicate a song to me, why didn’t I get to have mindless sex and a heroin habit with the groovy Americans?
I was too busy trying to avoid scurvy and head lice when ‘Hotel California’ was being immortalised to vinyl.
I am off to apply full strength expensive wrinkle cream and try on a dress that will never fit me again.
Youth is wasted on the young.
