Recently I asked a few friends to share their thoughts on their love for music. Our first story has been written by Charlie Gladstone. Charlie is is an entrepreneur, creative director and enthusiast. Here, Charlie writes passionately about his love for music and community.
The short answer here is a great deal. I don’t know where it came from - certainly not my
parents who had no interest in music whatsoever - but I was hit hard by the bug when I was
six years old.
My first record was Little Jimmy Osmond’s Long Haired Lover…. (I know, but everyone has to
start somewhere and with no older siblings or cool friends that was just what grabbed me).
Pretty soon I was hooked; Top of the Pops was my weekly highlight and I tuned in to the
Sunday evening chart show on Radio 1 with deep, butterfly-inducing fervour. Would the
bands I loved, my bands, be in the charts?
Soon I had started to spend every penny of my pocket money on records. Then came music
mags, especially the NME (a bible of sorts) and then - heaven - gigs. By the age of 13 I was in
really deep, music was my principal passion. I loved football too and being outdoors, but
music was the main thing.
It’s stayed that way. I’m 57 now and I still buy records every week, read the mags, go to
shows (or did before Covid and will again soon), chat music whenever I can, listen all of the
time. I am deeply - profoundly even - interested in music and retain knowledge in ways that
surprise even me.
Why do I love it? It speaks to me, it comforts me, it consumes me, it lifts me up, it brings me
down, it excites me, it infuriates me. I think about it, dream about it, live it. Part of the
answer to why? is that I am one of those people that might easily be characterized as an
enthusiast, I am predisposed to find joy in stuff. I have a lot of enthusiasms - reading,
walking, food, football, design, travel, art - that I think about every day. But music is the one
that I hold above all of the rest and in seeking an answer to the question at the top of this
piece I have been trying to figure out what that is.
Of course, the answer is that it’s a lot of things. But one thing that occurs to me is that music
is about people and community more than it is about anything else and that excites me,
because I love people and they are, perhaps, at their very best when they’re joined by
shared love and enthusiasm.
In trying to find the catalyst to writing this piece I was flicking through a new and very
beautiful coffee table book about the band The National, a group that really speak to me.
And there, in a double spread photo, was the singer in the middle of a seething crowd. He
does this at every show, jumps across the safety barrier and takes a walk amongst the
audience. It’s a bit like Jesus walking amongst his believers, but with more sweat, more
camera phones and a thousand smiles.
That, I think, is the essence of community, the band and fans coming together in a moment
of deep shared euphoria. Until that moment they are a sort of community, living where they
live and all thinking about - or indeed being - the National. But that community is separated
by distance. And then they all make plans and travel and stand and wait and then - boom -
that moment happens, that intense sense of belonging hits them….we’re all here, in this
together, happy, sharing our love for this magical thing called music. These are our people.
This is our community.
So, I think that that’s what I love most about music, community. I love the chat in a record
shop with others that feel the way I do. I love that chance meeting at a party or an event
when you discover that someone you’ve never met before feels the same way that you do
about The Smiths. I love my gang of family and old friends that come to gigs with me; I love
the fact that we all love the same songs, the same messages, the same record sleeves.
We’ve all listened and read and studied the sleeves alone so that when we come together
to hear those songs that we know that we truly belong where we are.
This morning I was listening to the outstanding final show played by LCD Soundsystem
before the split up (long story…they reformed a few years later). This was a big deal and
they played a series of farewell shows in huge arenas in New York. Anyway, this is a band
absolutely at the peak of their power, playing all of their hits. But it isn’t the music that
really speaks to me, it’s the community. At the very beginning of the show they play one of
their bona fide classics, Dance Yrself Clean and as they launch into the opening bars the
crowd roars like I have rarely heard people roar; deep, raw, joyful and - this is the main
thing - they scream as one. I don’t know quite what each one of them is thinking but I think it
goes something like this ‘we’re here and it’s now and I love this band and so does everyone
else here and I want to hug them and jump up, and down and for this magic to never, ever
end. These are my people, this is my place, the rest of the world can wait’.
Picture by Department Two
