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Jun 17

Dad, I wanna be a rock star

Ted Kessler, The Times, 21 May 2016

Rod Stewart's dad gave him football lessons; Chris Martin's joins him on tour; Shaun Ryder's broke his nose on stage; Leonard Cohen is funnier than he lets on; Ian Dury asked his daughter for drugs… Rock stars and their offspring reminisce about their relationships with their fathers

"Dad always said to me, 'Never give up'" By Chris Martin

MY DAD is a farmer's son from Devon. He grew up in an era where you couldn't really do what you wanted to do. It just wasn't allowed. It was the Fifties, and his parents said, "We think you should do this," and that was that. My dad's true calling was to be a ringmaster in the circus, but he missed the boat.

Now he comes on tour with us and that's the role he plays in life. He's a bit of an actor, and when he's backstage he makes everyone feel looked after. He's part of a team we have who go out into the crowd when we do big shows. Often we keep the first two or three rows empty. My dad goes to the back of the stadium and finds the kids wearing the T-shirts and says to them, "Do you want to go and be right at the front?" He loves that. He loves meeting people, talking to them and connecting.

The frontman part of me comes from him. He sees the beauty and joy in everybody. We've always got on well and he's always been supportive, whether it was at sports days or when I was playing concerts. My parents sacrificed a lot to put us into a nice school and they really had to work their arses off. The main thing he gave me was the phrase, "Never give up." He'd often say it to me. I feel so grateful to my dad for that one simple thing. I use it all the time.

"He is supposed to be the prince of darkness, but he's actually hilarious" My dad, Leonard Cohen, by Adam Cohen

My father made a remarkable effort — and one that I am much more impressed with now, as a family man myself — to remain in his children's lives despite a less than perfect split-up with my mother. He was always around. There was even a time when he wasn't allowed on the property, and to circumnavigate that he bought a trailer and put it at the T-junction where the dirt road of our house connected to the municipal road in the south of France. And we'd walk up the dirt road. A lot was imparted by that. From Los Angeles to the south of France was no small journey. We spent all our holidays with him. Every winter we would go to Montreal and every summer we'd go to Greece.

There was always laughter. Despite his notoriety for, I quote, "having a voice like the bottom of an ashtray", for being "the prince of darkness", for being famed for his lugubriousness, he is one of the most quick-witted of men, and he's generous with his humour. The guy is hilarious. I've gone into the family business and we get a tremendous amount of laughter out of that. Also, talking about life and women and the journey we're all on, that brings me so much joy. Hanging out with him is the best, whether it's over a tuna sandwich or on the front stoop of his house. He doesn't like to move much, having been a touring man his whole life. He does love being sedentary.

I've learnt a lot from him on that stoop. The main inspiration that his life provides is a dedication to his craft. He has an old-world view of it. It's not the prevalent notion that exists in new generations of instantaneous success. His whole life has been a demonstration of the opposite. I remember something he told me when I was 16 and starting to take songwriting seriously. He said there's a moment when you're blocked on a song, or on any work, and it's only when you're about to quit, having put much, much more time than you planned into it, that the work begins. That's when you've crossed the threshold of being on the right track. But the nature of my dialogue with him is nearly always instruction. From the manner in which we should greet someone about whom we have reservations, to gender relationships, to the proper dosage of mustard and mayonnaise. We talk about women all the time, too, and, if I may, out of privacy, I'll keep that princely wisdom to myself. It is a long-running and possibly incomplete transmission.

We visited him often when he lived in a Zen Buddhist monastery in the Nineties. He would periodically come down off the mountain. Whatever residue there was from his studies was always apparent to us. Like a halo. Like a film of something we knew was otherworldly. A calmness, a peace, a clarity. All of which he's tried to impart to us, not always with great success.

We've never really fallen out. We've had a series of minor misunderstandings that were corrected and actually served to provide better understanding in the long run. When you have someone in your family who is in such demand and from whom you derive a sense of identity, then you can start to become covetous of the amount of time spent with the person. There are times when, no question, I wish we'd gotten to spend more time together.

But the time we have spent together is so valuable. I've been to so many great parties and events with him. I remember he was doing a big show in Paris and Sarkozy and Carla Bruni were backstage afterwards. He said to me, "Anything that anybody says to me, I want you to answer on my behalf. I want the president of France to know that I've brought up fully Francophone children." It was a badge of pride for him.

You want to know some secrets about Leonard Cohen? Here's the dirt. He loves George Jones and Hank Williams. He travels with one small suitcase. Many of his impeccable suits are actually threadbare. He's only about 5ft 8in despite that giant baritone. He awakens at four in the morning and blackens pages every single day of his life. He cuts his own hair. He will find a patch of sun anywhere and sit in it, like a big cat, following that sliver of sun wherever it goes. Although he no longer smokes, there's nothing he'd rather do. He makes the best tuna salad I've ever had — he seems to have a knack for that. He loves making food for people, in fact. He spends a lot of time in the kitchen. Leonard Cohen's probably the best-known short-order chef in the world.

"He asked me if I had any dope" My dad, Ian Dury, by Jemima Dury

On New Year's Eve in 1987, when I was 18 going on 19, Dad asked me, "Oi, Jemima-if-I-punch-you-in-the-ear'ole, do you want to go to a party?" I said yes straightaway, thinking it might be rather glamorous and theatrical. I needed some excitement because I was having a bleak winter. I was living at home with my mum, no job, no prospects and no idea what to do with myself.

A party sounded like an adventure. I went to Dad's flat in the daytime so I could enjoy the preamble. I walked from Chiswick to Hammersmith in my vintage dress, black tights, tons of goth make-up and big hair. He was on his own when I got there, which was great — not a girlfriend or ligger in sight. Good, I'd got some visiting hours to myself. That meant I would be on minder duty later when we went out. I loved minder duty. Usually, it was a job for Spider or Strangler, but tonight Jemima was on the case. Being the minder involved toughness, strength and balance — toughness to stop him being hassled, strength to stop him falling over because the caliper he wore on his leg could make him unsteady, and balance to stop myself going over with him. I was very good at balance.

We sat through the afternoon watching TV and that was fine, the lull before the storm. After doing the washing up and tidying, I made peanut butter and cheese sandwiches for dinner and we ate them followed by some grim chocolate desserts from Safeway. I thought, "This isn't right," when Dad stayed put, in a committed way, to watch more TV. By 8pm it was starting to feel like a prison common room in there. He had two or three chairs in a semi-circle all facing a huge boxy television on an industrial trolley. It was like recreation time at Wormwood Scrubs.

So I sat down again, too, in one of the expensive Practical Styling chairs, the pink one. One of the arms had fallen off and it was very upright, so it was an uncomfortable expensive chair. More time passed and no sign of going out. He wasn't saying if he was having second thoughts but he wasn't giving off party vibes either. He wasn't getting dressed up or phoning a cab. By nine o'clock I was feeling depressed. I didn't want the evening to slip away. I knew it wasn't out of character for him to change his mind but it was New Year's Eve, for God's sake, and I was stuck indoors while people were out there discovering a new drug called Ecstasy and smooching to Chris de Burgh. Eventually we were slumped back as far as you can be in an upright chair and I was resigned to an evening of broadcast entertainment.

Perhaps around ten o'clock I must have thought, "F*** it, that's it, then." The night had promised so much and delivered so little. So there we were, one daughter, who looked like a second-hand-shop turkey, and one 45-year-old rocker, who had gone off the boil, sitting in two very camp and uncomfortable chairs in a dilapidated flat staring at the TV.

After a long silence he said, "Have you got any marijuana?"

I played it cool. It didn't occur to me to think he was being blatantly opportunistic and outrageous asking me, his 18-year-old daughter, for drugs. Inside, I felt a glow of validation because he was treating me like a Level One grown-up. This was, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the proudest moments of my life so far with Dad. Believe me when I say the mention of drugs was inconsequential, because he smoked all the time. I knew it, and actually I preferred it to his drinking. But the fact that he'd decided to trust me with something so adult, well, that made me cool and in the gang.

This was the nod I'd been waiting for. How opportune for Dad that on this night I did have a small piece of hash in the front of the dress I was wearing. The dress was silvery-blue and Forties style (the sort you don't bother to wash), with two little pockets at the front near the waist, just the right size to hide and forget about a lump of dope. I'd had it for ages — since the summer, I think — and I was genuinely so nonplussed by it that I had forgotten it was there. It was only when Dad asked me the question that I remembered, and I was so keen to be a gang member that I felt extremely pleased with myself.

"Er, yeah, I have. Here you are." I swear that not one flicker of surprise or wonderment passed over his face when I handed over a bit of black stuff in clingfilm. He laid a line of tobacco across two Rizlas and unwrapped my stash, then pulled out a Zippo and lit the hash. There was a fizzing sound and some black smoke, and whatever it was shot up his arm and disintegrated en route. It was only then that he looked up at me in surprise.

"That's a bit of asphalt, love."

He didn't have to rub it in: I was mortified enough already as my fleeting kudos shot out of the door with the fumes of burning tarmac. He didn't rub it in because he'd probably been there too many times himself, in Notting Hill or Brixton, where spending 20 quid on a piece of rubber-bin lid is not unheard of. B******s, I thought, as I remembered dropping the dope in the dark a few months before. I had obviously picked up part of the road and thought nothing of it. There isn't much more to say after this because he seemed to forget all about it and go back to the TV.

On paper, Dad's logic was completely immoral and suspect. He thought it was OK to lure me round to his flat on false pretences, get me to do lots of little jobs, build up my hopes and dash them, and then ask me for drugs. That was some interesting parenting. In reality, I barely remember any of that. What stands out for me is the fact that he accepted me as a regular experimenting teenager and didn't react when I screwed up the whole drugs thing. I know on paper that looks really bad, but I'm so grateful he didn't bat an eyelid because then I didn't feel over-stupid and judged. I loved him for that.

"I have lots of memories of Dad. In hotel bars. Backstage bars. Airport bars. Lots of bars" By Paul Weller

He was my best friend. As well as him being my dad, we had a long working relationship, from the age I wanted to get a band together when I was 13 or 14. And we were lucky enough to continue that throughout my career, right up until he got ill towards the end. He was very supportive of me. When I was into football he got a football team together, even though I was the worst player on the pitch. He was always up for whatever I was into. It was probably because he had such a lousy relationship with his own dad. That would always come out whenever we talked about being a father — how he didn't want to repeat what his dad had done. He'd always be encouraging. And then I got into music and he could see I was serious about it.

He was still working when I was getting The Jam together, on the building site or on the cabs. He'd get a van, hustled off someone, and drive us to gigs. We'd have some gear but we also had to beg, borrow or steal other bits and he weighed in there, too. Then he started getting us gigs. We'd go round all the social clubs, working-men's clubs, Liberal clubs in Surrey, and hustle gigs for the weekend. Then it started becoming a bit more serious and he became our manager, not so much reluctantly as nervously. I remember him saying to us around the time we got signed to Polydor, "I'm not sure I can do this." All of us said, "Well, if you're not doing it, then we're not."

He learnt as he went along. He had no prior experience other than street smarts. But he was the manager when The Jam were signed. We thought ourselves very lucky. Six grand and we couldn't cash the cheques because none of us had a bank account. So my dad asked for it in cash. You can imagine how that went down.

I was 18 coming up to 19 around then, which was when I was meant to be rebelling, but there wasn't much to rebel against in my old man. He was a cool geezer. There was nothing I could do that would shock him or that he hadn't done himself — maybe drugs being an exception — and that could be a bit frustrating as a teen rebel. No cause.

But there were compensations. We always had a good relationship. If he was going to the working-men's club for a drink, I'd go along with him. We were always mates. It wasn't perfect: there were things that I did in my career that he wasn't always supportive of. Such as splitting up The Jam at our peak. That's probably top of the list. He thought that was mad. Any manager would be like that, though. And even he came round to the Style Council after a while. But if we didn't see eye to eye then we'd have a tear-up and that would be that. Back to normal. You knew where you stood with him. He was brusque but charming with it. He was a bit of a bull in a china shop, but you had to forgive him that.

Some of my happiest memories are after working on the building site with him when I was a kid, loading knocked-off gear into the back of the van that he'd borrowed. Also travelling back from gigs we'd played in clubs and pubs in London. After all the years of working-men's clubs in Surrey, it was just nice to see some youngsters again. Then coming down the A3 afterwards, being p***ed in the back of the van, singing with him and the band.

The best memories nearly always involved booze, always shorts, never beer. He could drink a river dry of booze and still be bright and breezy in the morning. God knows how he did it, because he was only a little geezer. Maybe he had hollow legs. I have so many memories of him reducing me to tears of laughter and some incredible scenes in my mind. Nearly always in bars. Hotel bars. Backstage bars. Airport bars. Lots of bars. I've got so many stories about him, but none that anybody could print. So quick-witted that he got away with murder because of his charm. A Teddy boy managing a rock band. Everyone just loved him.

I thought his passing was a blessing. He was really not in a good way the last four or five years — he was ill before that, but those last years were really sad to watch. It's a cliché but, if he'd been an animal, you'd have had him put down. This once proud, strong man looking like someone in constant turmoil was not good to see. You can never tell how you're going to feel with someone's passing. I wondered if I was going to fall apart, but I didn't because the person I knew had gone years before.

When I saw him dead in the hospital it was a beautiful April day, really sunny. The window was open and he looked at peace at last. I dealt with it OK because of that. I'm my father's son. He was strong and I have some of his strength of character. I also see the lineage of him and our forefathers in my kids. It's not so devastating when you can see that link passing down through the generations. I really believe that. He's still here in my kids, in me.

"I was a bit of a mistake" By Rod Stewart

During the war years, my dad was too old to serve so he was in the ARP, the Air Raid Precautions enforcers. I remember when I got older, him telling me stories about going into children's hospitals that had been bombed. He had to go over to Highgate Wood and light huge fires with the ARP so that the Germans would think, "Ooh, we've got a house here, let's bomb over there…" It was dangerous work. In later years that's where I used to play football, which is a strange thought.

I was a bit of a mistake. As my brother tends to say, a very expensive mistake. My dad had come home one night and gone down the air-raid shelter… and, well…

Before I was born, my siblings — I've got two brothers and two sisters — were asked to leave London and go and live in the country, like kids were at that age. All of them said, "No, we want to stay with Mum and Dad." We were in Highgate, so we didn't get bombed that much, but we still got bombed.

My dad was a hero to me because of his work ethic. He was a very proud Scotsman, too, although he only spent the first 18 years of his life up in Scotland. He had to move down south to find work after a brief spell in the merchant navy.

I loved his football ethic, too. It was the same with me: football above everything. He broke his leg on Christmas Eve playing football and had to spend Christmas in hospital. My mum burnt his football boots! Football has caused more arguments in the Stewart household than Hitler ever could.

He gave me a lot of advice over the years that's stood me in good stead. When he was getting into his late eighties, he said, "The one thing I didn't want to do was find myself pushing myself out of me chair." He'd played football all of his life and his advice to me was, "Always keep your leg strong." And I do. When the muscle that keeps the two parts of the knee apart goes, you've got bone on bone smacking together and that's when it hurts. But if you keep your leg strong, it keeps everything pulled apart and tight. It's a great bit of advice. Of course, he also gave me the proverbial "keep it in your trousers" line.

He didn't say much. He wasn't a man of many words, but he was extremely loving. He was a good dad. I loved him.

"He bust my nose on stage at Wembley. Ten thousand people were watching" By Shaun Ryder

My old bloke didn't stop competing with me until I was 40. But now he's 73, he's calming down. He doesn't move out of the house any more. He just sits watching movies, smoking weed.

He started off as a postman and he did that job so that he could finish at 11am, then go out and either be a stand-up comedian or play in the Irish clubs with his accordion and banjo, or go over to the country and western clubs, just to earn a tenner. He was pretty funny and he's one of those people who could turn his hand to anything. I can't really play instruments. Our Paul was the instrument player. I can work something out so I can get a tune in my head, but my dad could pick up any instrument and be playing it in five minutes.

When Happy Mondays took off he started working with us. First of all he was managing us and then, when it got to the stage where it was beyond him, he became the sound man, the tech, the roadie, all mixed in one. He worked with me like that for 20-odd years, but it totally ruined my relationship with him for a long time afterwards. It came to a head when I played Wembley one time. I was shouting at him to sort out the monitors and in front of 10,000 people he walks in front of me and smacks me. He bust my nose! Our manager had to sack him. I was mortified.

We didn't speak for years. By the time we'd spent 20 years together on the road we couldn't talk for a long time, but now we can. In the past five years we've started being pals again. Time heals. He's a great old geezer.

"I always felt like he was waiting for my sister and me to grow up" By Florence Welch

My dad's incredibly emotional and sensitive. He's a very louche, swearing, fairy-like creature. I always felt like he was waiting for my sister and me to grow up so he could hang out with us. "Ah! You're teenagers! Excellent! Would you like a glass of wine?" He just wanted some accomplices he could trust.

A thin, elegant, smoking man. He was my idol growing up. I've spent my whole life trying to impress him. After school musicals he'd shower me with faint praise. "Wonderful, darling, not your best performance, but fantastic." But then he became my biggest supporter and he even tour-managed us. He drove us around Europe in his camper van. I think me becoming a performer was enjoyable for him because he's definitely a rock'n'roll dad.

The scariest thing that happened was that he got hit on his bike when I was on tour in New York. His bike was mangled, and when he woke up he couldn't remember what had happened. He got checked out by my stepdad, who is a doctor, and everyone thought he was fine. The next morning, however, he woke up and believed he was still married to my mother. They'd been divorced for about ten years. He had bleeding in his brain. That was terrifying. I'm so attached to him, and the thought… But he's fine now. Part of that fear is to do with his physique, I think. He's almost bird-like, and that always made me and my sister feel unreasonably ravenous, as if he'd fathered these enormous hungry cuckoos, flapping about dramatically and demanding pizza.

I'm not alone in loving my dad this much. Everyone does. He's a legend. He's the manager of an organic campsite, which sounds modest, but he always makes me regretful of my own education. I remember a lot of my childhood would be me asking questions, and he could speak so eloquently on any subject, in fluent French if necessary. He introduced me to The Smiths and The Rolling Stones. The Velvet Underground. He'd come into my room and say, "Why are you listening to Green Day? You wanna be listening to the Ramones." He used to run squat parties where Joe Strummer's 101ers would play. All of that stuff.

He's sensitive and deliciously rude. He's still the most well-dressed man. The most fantastic cook as well. My dad's great.

#paul weller #leonard cohen #coldplay #chris martin #ian dury #florence welch #rod stewart #shaun ryder

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