Brian Gill - Musician & Songwriter
THAT IS ME in the brown shirt, but let me assure you all straight away, there is nothing remotely right-wing wing about my political affiliations.
I WAS BORN AT THE Maycroft Nursing Home, Woodford, Essex on a cold, rainy, Wednesday afternoon in February, 1949. I went back there on a recent trip to find my roots and guess what? It is now a block of luxury flats, the old nursing home having been decked years ago. (My thanks to Lesley in the USA, who was born there the same year, for this information.) I wish I could tell you that I had some credible musical bona fides, but I can't. I'd like you to believe that I had a hard upbringing, but I didn't. I can't say ‘Man...but it was hard growing up on those mean streets, but that's where I got my soul', but that's not how it was. My childhood was fine. I was cherished, nourished and protected and lived in an environment about as close to Pink Fluffy Land as you can get! Therefore this model doesn't come with a soul, sir.
THE BOROUGH OF WOODFORD and Wanstead was not a ghetto and is certainly not a ghetto now. It is quite a posh, middle-class suburb of East London, with some big, expensive Victorian houses that hark back to better times. The demographic has changed with the expansion of London and these days you can't move for the Range Rovers and posy boutiques. I did not know how to spell 'ghetto' until I was 38! I thought Ghetto was a bloke who owned an oil company!
ALTHOUGH I WAS born in Woodford, my people actually lived in Ilford, which is next door, and apart from the old village of Ilford, was all open farm land. It was one of he places that was dug up and bulldozed to make way for one of many so called 'garden suburbs' and the picturesque Essex countryside was all but swept away in the big London expansion of the 1930's. My parents both originated in Walthamstow. They both came from large families and lived almost in the same street as kids - Dad was in Northcote Rd., and Mum was in Southcote Rd. They got married in 1938 in a church that used to be in Coppermill Lane, but was destroyed in the Blitz three years later. They both worked for Electrolux selling vacuum cleaners, which were quite a big deal in those times. My Dad was in the RAF until he was invalided out in the summer of 1942.
WHEN THE WAR ended in 1945, the first thing they did was to take a shop at the Bell Corner, Walthamstow and turn it into 'The New Era' restaurant and they had a big stroke of luck when they sold it a year later to a famous actor, Richard Todd I believe, for enough money to buy a nice three bed semi in Clayhall, Ilford and a new MG sports car, which my Dad later accidentally set light to and nearly burned down the garage! My uncle Jim, my Dad's brother, ended up owning 'The New Era' some years later and kept it until he died in 1974. Dad in 1947 opened another restaurant, the first of four that he would own over the years, called 'The Dinner Gong', which was at Gants Hill, Ilford. It became famous over the next 34 years, until in 1971 he moved it into a bigger premises three doors up the street. In 1960 he opened 'The Melodie Inn', a much bigger and ultimately more successful restaurant on the other side of Cranbrook Rd., against the advice of his accountant and just about everyone else. They all said ‘You can’t open it there because you'll be competing with yourself', which was precisely the thing he was trying to do. He didn’t want somebody else opening up a new restaurant right opposite, did he? It’s not my crap spelling by the way; ‘Melodie’ was spelt that way and not 'Melody'…blame my Dad’s crap spelling.
I NOW LIVE IN THAILAND. 'Why?' I hear you ask and my reply is 'You've got to be kidding! Why should anyone not choose to live in paradise?' After years of living through a waking nightmare in the UK, with two divorces, estranged family, failing health, several attempts on my life, a string of horrendous business failures, loss of two houses, pain, humiliation, near bankruptcy, screaming madness, more failed relationships and of course the loss of two houses... no, sorry, I've already counted those. I thought 'Christ, if I ever lose my looks, I'll REALLY be in trouble...'
My half-way house was provided by the year I spent in the spiritual town of Glastonbury in Somerset, in the west country, England, which was a very healing, quiet and reflective time for me. Once you've lived in Glastonbury for a while, you find that the place never really leaves you and the 'twenty years to life' I had served in the wastelands of East London and Essex began to fade like a bad memory.
BY A HAPPY co-incidence I went to Thailand for a holiday in 2001 with my mate Mike and after one week, thought 'this is where I need to be' and in 2002 I came out again and married a Thai girl called May and took her back to England with me. We stayed there for about six months and came back to Thailand in December 2002 and rented the upstairs of a big house close to the Bangkok - Rayong railway track. I came back to England mid way through the year. My marriage to May, despite her being a lovely lady, was not working out and we decided to split. I reluctantly left Thailand and went back to England and in April 2004 moved to Glastonbury, where I spent the happiest year of my life up to that point, but I came back to Thailand in October and November 2004 and again in May 2005, when I met up with Tatiana, the Russian lady. In July 2005, I decided to move out here full time; I missed the way of life in Thailand so much I had to return, for good this time and I haven't looked back since. Tatiana mysteriously repatriated to her home city of Khabarovsk in eastern Russia, on the Chinese border - I have an open invitation to go up there to ski with her sometime and perhaps I will one day. I'm now pretty much re-habilitated. My health now seems fine as long as I lay off the bacon sarnies and don't think too much about the 'old days', but I dare only go to England for a couple of weeks at a time, because as soon as I get anywhere near my 'old life' my blood pressure once again goes right off the clock and my kidneys start waving the white flag. That's right; I do believe in psycho-somatic illness.
I have re-discovered a number of old friends, whom I see when I'm in England and have made many new ones here. I have close ties with all the people I care about in the UK, but the circle of old friends whose company I used to enjoy and whom I lost at the time, due to my marriage failures and various business catastrophies, I used to sometimes miss, but time heals.
My daughter is lovely and I see her when I go back; my son was caught up in the politics and I no longer see him, but I think of him often and perhaps one day circumstances will change. I am now, in June 2009, happy to report that we are now in contact and he also plays the guitar...
Views of Glastonbury.