We present an extract from My Family and Other Rock Stars, the new memoir by Tiffany Murray.
In a small corner of a field in Wales, Tiffany Murray is hiding with Boggle the dog, dreaming of her mum's moussaka, blackberry and apple crumble, and, if she's lucky, ice-cold lemonade. A sheep bleats. The smell of hay tickles her nose. The twang of a guitar and crack of a snare carry on the breeze. It's the late 1970s and Tiff lives with her mum, Joan, at Rockfield, the iconic recording studios. This place of legend, where some of the most famous rock albums of all time were recorded, is the background to a freewheeling, ever-changing whirlwind of a childhood...
I am five and three quarters and I live with my mother in a Vicarage in Herefordshire, at the mouth of Wales. Because she's a chef Mum wears pink plasters on cut fingers and the gloss of butter on her burns. We don’t live alone in the Vicarage. I have my Great Dane, Cleo. Mum has her boyfriend, Jackson, and sometimes bands live with us.
The bands have strange names. Strange to me, at least: Black Sabbath. Horslips. Trax. I suppose the name 'Queen’ isn’t that strange. I watch Freddie Mercury pick up our no-name cats, one by one. He tries to pet them. Careful, Mum says, they’re feral.
The bands stack Vox or Marshall amps in our fireplace. They tape black cables down onto the bright Victorian tiles. They come to us because of our hall. Acoustics, Mum says.
We have a hall so big if you shout your voice echoes------------oes-------oes--------- oes……expands…..e-x-p-l-o-d-e-s!
The acoustics wake the bluebottle husks on the rafters, shaking them awake to a buzz.
and they play a violin called a fiddle that sounds like lead guitar.'
His name is Jimmy and Jim, and Jimmy is grand, grand, grand. I tend to fall asleep on him but today he is marching up and down the gallery above the hall, playing a silver flute. I follow behind, step by step. It’s ‘What’s the Time Mr Wolf?’ but Jimmy doesn’t know he’s Mr Wolf. I freeze to a statue when he turns. He laughs and I squeal with delight. Mum says a little folk band from Ireland are here, the house smells of her boeuf bourguignon, and this band called Horslips like me.
Mum asks them, ‘are you sure Tiff’s not bothering you?’
‘No, Joan, she’s grand. Grand.’
She told them their music ‘doesn’t sound like folk to me, the dog’s howling,’ and they laughed. The farmer’s slurry spreader is back. The postmistress told Mum the farmer has truly taken against us now. Mum said, ‘that’s not news, Betty.’
Horslips have penny whistles, flutes, a drum that looks like a big tambourine, and they play a violin called a fiddle that sounds like lead guitar. They also have guitars and regular drums, keyboards, and all together the sound makes our rafters shake with centuries-old dust. Their songs tell me stories of blindmen and mad men and dancing when ‘the evening turns to gold’. When Horslips hold or wear or sit behind their instruments, I can walk up the stairs and dangle my legs through the shapes carved in the balustrade because they don’t mind me watching at all. I stare down at the crowns of heads and say their names out loud: ‘Jimmy. Barry. Eamon. Johnny. Fritz. Charles. Man Horrid.’
Man Horrid wears a sweatshirt that says ‘Man Horrid’. That’s how you know. He ironed on the transfers himself. He’s also ‘Paul’ and he came with the band to cook. He made a drinkable fruitcake. Horslips prefer Mum’s food.
‘Onetwo, onetwo,’ the band say at the mics. They tune guitars and fiddles and run about with cables. When they start the song, it makes me jump up and hop-dance. They stomp on the pretty hall tiles in black platform zip-up boots, and they sing about being lonely nighttown boys.
‘Try it again, Jim,’ Barry says. Barry has a bass guitar in the shape and the green of a shamrock. Two of the band wear chokers at their throats and I can see the bones below their Adam’s apples. They told me this album is about a blind Irish harper from centuries ago, a man called Turlough, and I try to follow the story, but it’s hard when the songs stop and start, stop and start. I like it when they sing to me about Mad Pat.
These men call me ‘Tiff’. I am not invisible. I’ve stopped peeing in the garden.
Very Good Things about Horslips
1. Their talking voices say caaaam not carrrrrrm and grand, grand, grand.
2. Mum says they are nice, kind, family men, she loves having them in the house and at least she knows where I am now.
3. They sing stories about the best years of their life spent in ‘barrowlands and borderlands’.
4. Their producer, Fritz, has a black and white, one ear up, one ear down, limping dog called Boggle who cocks his leg on Mum’s big bag of onions.
5. Sometimes they pull me around the garden on my toy truck, the Vicarage’s kittens in the back trailer.
Last night someone had a fight with our holly bush and slept in a puddle. Today Mum dragged our small telly out into the porch to play football matches from the World Cup in Germany that sound tinny. The sun is shining on the apple orchards and Horslips are running about the lawn with croquet mallets, laughing and hitting the balls into the wrong places. The black and white splodged dog, Boggle, is chasing croquet balls and trying to fit them into his mouth. My Great Dane Cleo watches from the gravel: her skin twitching. I had to lock the chickens away because Boggle would eat them. Nanny my goat can stand her ground with headbutts, but the peacocks wail down at him from the Cedar. I run across the gravel with hard bare feet as one of Horslips say, ‘hit the ball again!’ There aren’t any rules.
I dodge the telly and Barry’s shamrock bass guitar in the porch as I skip into our big hall and run to the kitchen. Mum is cooking paella and kitchen smells of the sea. I bounce about her and gather up garnish. She’s chopping squid, throwing small purplish tentacles into the paella pan. She pauses.
‘One thing, Tiff, would you stop climbing all over those poor men? You’re like Velcro.’
I won’t: I think I love Horslips.
My Family and Other Rock Stars is published by Fleet, Little Brown
