The First Song We Ever Wrote

The first song I ever wrote with my brother was called ‘Not Another Book By Douglas Adams’.  I would’ve been about fifteen years old. For Christmas I’d been given a cheap Casio keyboard. We were upstairs in my bedroom – I can picture the dressing table with drawers of clothes underneath it and a mirror at the back and the keyboard perched on top . I’d have been mashing some random keys and making some vaguely musical sounds while Tim sang the lyrics.

Some 45 (rpm) years later I could still sing you the chorus to that song. In fact I could sing you the whole song since the whole song was just that chorus. And the lyrics are all contained in the title.

Tim wrote a lot of songs in that vein. There was a famous 82 Downers number called ‘Do The Cake’. It came about because he’d had a doctor’s appointment and the way they’d written out his name on the card made it look like his surname was Cake instead of Lake.

I didn’t play on that song, but it did feature the Casio keyboard I’d acquired a few years earlier at Christmas. The lyrics  went like this – ‘Everyone do the cake/ It makes you feel real great/ Come on everybody/ And do the cake, cake, cake’

A guitar (presumably played by Dave) chugged away in the background and the rhythm was something in a bossa nova style also provided by the Casio. From the same session there was a dark song about nuclear war – Tim and Dave had a good repertoire and various styles and moods would be juxtapositioned in a single session. The Casio on this one is playing some suitably mournful chords.

Those primitive songs were good. Captured (as explained elsewhere) often using only salvaged parts of an old telephone for a mic and then recorded onto a cheap cassette tape. Of course I’m biased, but the fact I can still sing all of these - and many more - is testament to the strength of their simple melodies.

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The Christmas that I received the keyboard, I would also have been given a paperback copy of the third volume of Douglas Adams Hitchhiker’s series. Hence the title for the song. Not that I think Tim had anything against Douglas Adams. We were just messing around and the book was probably the closest thing to hand, the inspiration for a lyric to go with the music I was plinking away at. The song was never recorded. It wasn’t even a song. It was just a moment from my childhood – a random few minutes spent with my brother that has stayed with me for all these years. Along with many others.

Hitchhiker’s was a bit of a cult back then. It started life as a radio show. I’d have been thirteen when it first aired on Radio 4. Comedy and science fiction and the radio were the perfect sweet spot for teenage me. I loved it from the get go. I was not alone. At school someone (from an older year group) set up The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy Appreciation Society and naturally I became a member. As far as I recall all the group ever did was meet up at lunchtimes (in one of the science lecture rooms) and listen to recordings of the radio show.

On our school report book there was a space at the front where our form teacher had to fill out various biographical information and one of the sections was for school activities or clubs and I remember the slightly fusty Mr Hill (French teacher and my form teacher in my second year at high school) reduced the society to initials for sake of brevity – H.H.G.T.T.G.A.S.

He must’ve rolled his eyes and wondered what the hell this weird sounding group was all about – although then again, the clue was in the title.

Mr Hill was a quiet, slightly odd and old fashioned teacher. His nickname was – inevitably – Mole and he used to wear a blue suit. He was an eminently forgettable figure. A single man of a certain age who it was hard to imagine having a life outside of teaching.

And then one day out of nowhere he apparently inherited a large country house upon the death of a close relative. He quit teaching, presumably to take up (improbably to us) the life of a country gentleman. We never heard of him again after that.

It wasn’t quite as strange as Arthur Dent getting picked up by a passing Vogon space craft, but it came a close second. I suspect my brother must’ve also been taught French by Mr Hill – or at least been aware of who he was – but we never wrote a song about him.