It’s 1972 and I’m indulging my teenage passion for speed. No, not the drug, the real McCoy, motorbike racing, or in my case, Speedway. And not the American idea of Speedway, this is the gritty version of dirt track riding round and round a large oval.

I was seventeen years old in 1972 and Speedway was something of a waning passion. I was never a sporty person and the only reason I liked Speedway was the noise and thrill of four bikes racing round the track, but what did catch my eye, well, my ear actually, was the Music played on the PA system between races. It was a quirky little number that had a lead singer who seemed to have a warble to his voice. It was fast paced music, strange and haunting, that had a constant droning beat that was enhanced by the lead singers trembling voice. Naturally the PA system was only used for announcements about the race and never introduced the music they were playing. My brother, who went with me to the matches had no idea who was singing. His idea of good music was James Last, and that is all I will say about that.

So it took me while to find out who this singer or group was. There was no internet in those days, no social media, no computers even. All we had was an old landline phone that was a nice shade of blue and a public library a few hundred yards from where I lived with my parents. I was working as a shop assistant in a wine merchants at the time and my boss was older than Old Father Time, in fact he may actually have been Old Father Time’s dad, so no joy there.

I found my answer on a BBC TV program called Top of the Pops. And the revelation blew my impressionable mind. It was a new band called Roxy Music and the lead singer was one Bryan Ferry. It was the beginning of the Glam Rock era and the rest, as they say, is history.

Copyright © Tom Kane 2020

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