Halfway through the year I knew

I wouldn’t make the grade.

A freezing night in ’72,

the time of Bloody Sunday.

Tension in Coventry.

But rock and roll

can save your soul.

Johnny B Goode,

lift me from my misery.

 

I had nowhere else to go.

The duck walk, Nadine, Carol,

Maybelline, and that novelty

song that must have

eaten half the set.

The wolfish grin,

part-shaman, part-showman.

We bellowed as Chuck

gleefully short-changed us.

 

The joke was they recorded it.

Months later top of the charts,

hundreds of us on the vinyl.

Number one, ma, that’s me!

Danced out of the Locarno

at midnight, past my mates

queuing to see the Floyd.

The night that was the start

of my comeback.