I want to talk to you about Jody Wildgoose. Google him. Simply put, his album Lovely White Teeth is what I wish maybe my music could maybe one day be. I saw him play at Green Room when I was 16. 15? 16? When he told us his name, he said ‘It’s Jody with a ‘y’. Not an ‘ie’. Just so you know.’

I actually cannot remember his set at all, but I guess I enjoyed it because I spent a tenner on one of his CDs. I think he had 2 albums. I bought the older one, and he told me it was a collection of 4 track recordings that had been mixed and mastered into a collection. I took it home, and probably listened to it the next day. And from that day forth, I’ve been in love.

I work mainly with digital recording at the moment, because for one thing, it’s what I have, and I’d rather create something on digital than do nothing whilst I wait to acquire some analogue stuff. But analogue is just so much cooler. The way you can physically turn the knobs is severely under-rated, as well as the way you can see an actual tape moving. It’s almost like the difference between knowing someone face to face, and knowing them online.

I think I’ve only ever made one song on a 4 track, by myself. It was called Away. I wrote it at a church summer camp. I wonder if that had bearing on the song. It’s doubtful, since mostly the only words were variations on ‘away’ – ‘my way’ ‘your way’ ‘the way’. Actually, that is pretty poignant – maybe I was saying that I wanted Christians to go ‘away’. I wanted to do it ‘my way’. I didn’t think too much of ‘your way’. Who knows?

But anyway, recording the song. With a pretty shitty microphone that I had, I recorded myself singing and playing the song on 1 track, and then did that again another 2 times. So I now had 3 of me singing and playing. Then I turned the tape over and did a backwards guitar solo on the whole thing, pretending I was John Frusciante on Usually Just a T-Shirt.

I played it back to myself, and suddenly I realised how cool this could be. I could, with my own hands, turn the tracks up and down, move them from side to side, whilst it was playing, and I could even speed it up or slow it down, to my heart’s desire. It was all so dynamic.

I love the hands-on element. If I’d done the same thing into Cubase, digitally, I’d basically have got the same raw information. The backwards guitar would have been impossible to properly do, though. But in Cubase, everything feels so static. If I want to change the volume of something, I’ve got to tell the knob what to do, in advance, or use my mouse to move a virtual fader. On a tape machine, I can just push the fader, or turn a knob, with my muscles and tendons. Systems exist where you can connect to digital with knobs and faders, but I can’t afford those at this time.

Back to Jody. You can hear his real-time mixing. It’s wildly experimental. It’s often kind of out-of-tune, or out-of-time. His real-time varying the speed of the tape. His bringing tracks in and out. The degradation of the tape, at times. On Cubase, if you want to bring tracks in and out, it’s a lot more effort to do in real time. There’s such a beautiful crumminess to Lovely White Teeth. It was never going to be a hit. Fuck no. But I don’t think that was what Jody or the record label were going for.

Sometimes when I listen to it, I wonder if it was made for me. I’ve derived so much enjoyment for it, that in my model of reality, I can just assume it was made to inspire me to do something in that spirit. I really want a tape machine.

Something I dream a lot about is what I would put in my own home studio, in between recording on digital and being annoyed with its shortcomings – what I can objectively see as a million times more choices, but what I subjectively perceive as obstacles to creativity – it’s a bit like being in a restaurant that makes my 4 favourite dishes (analogue recording), as opposed to being in one that makes 100 dishes I like a bit (digital recording.) In my home studio I would like an 8 track tape machine – I could do a lot with that.

I want to meet Jody. I wonder if he still makes music. I wonder if he would even care how happy his music makes me. I’d love to buy him a coffee, or a Heineken.

When he sold me his CD for £10, some would say I gambled. I didn’t know what it would sound like, I just knew what his live show sounded like (entirely different, from my vague recollection – he just played acoustic guitar and sang). So I gave him a tenner, exchanging his value for mine. I’ve got way more than £10’s worth of value from him, however. Way, way more. So due to the rule of reciprocation from the book Influence, I feel indebted to him, because he has given me more than I’ve given him.

What excites me the most is the fact that maybe I could make music that could mean as much to somebody as Lovely White Teeth means to me, maybe even more so, and to somebody I’ll never even meet, but they will feel like they know me through my music. When I think in those terms, rather than ‘what will people think of this song?’ it really frees up my creativity. When I think that I’m making music that means a great deal to me, the fact that it means a great deal to me has to mean something in itself. If it means a great deal to me, it has greater potential for good once unleashed on the world. If it’s just a piece of shit that I think will do well commercially, but I don’t feel like an eagle when I listen to it, what does that say about me as a human?

My favourite song on Lovely White Teeth is Hello, I Love You Jimi Hendrix. The vocals are phased, or being rotated, or something… they’re heavenly. And it’s such a haunting premise – he had a dream that he met Jimi Hendrix.

There’s a line in the song, ‘When I woke up I thought I could play the guitar.’ Shivers, every time.

I got cash, and got to the Green Room. There was a band setting up. The guitar player had a brown MESA amp which I’d never seen before. I want to say it looked vintage, but in actual fact it looked like it was new, and the manufacturer thought a good marketing tool would be for it to look vintage. Brown amps always excite me. They remind of a time before I was even born. I have a brown Marshall that I should get round to fixing one of these days. We blew the speaker with rap-rock vocals 5 and a half years ago.

He had some cool pedals as well. I like those old BOSS ones – the colour of the metal seems more saturated on the older pedals.

Everything is too shiny in 2012. Everybody is pretending to be too happy.

The bass player had 5 strings. I can’t play 5 string. I need that bottom string to be an E, to anchor me. To let me know my place in the world, let me know my boundaries, sonically. That E is like bass gravity for me. If I’m playing a 4 string, and I’m rocking out, I always know what that bottom string will do when I hit it. It’s so dependable. I can’t handle having it not being an E. But I never really tried hard.

I heard them do a little jam, it sounded like a better version of me and Joe, and I say that being a huge fan of me and Joe. We should make an album sometime, just the two of us. The Sega Mega Rhythm Section. Yeah.

I got a Staropramen. One day I don’t think I’ll drink. I see myself one day living on just fruit. Not for a while, but I think I’ll get there.

As I walked down Division Street, I walked slowly, and observed. I love to watch people, especially Division Street people. I love to wonder what their stories are. Where are they going? What will they get up to? Why do they look so angry? Why does she smell so nice?

I love it when women walk past me on the street. At first, you smell nothing, then maybe 1 or 2 seconds after you pass each other, you get that blast of perfume. I’d like to buy a notebook and work out how many times per day I smell each perfume. Like trainspotting, only cool.

Recently I’ve been trying an unusual mental technique. Say I’m on the bus, or I’m playing in town, or I’m just hanging with people, I hold the thought that these people are all me. They’re all versions of me. We’re all one, and the physical me that’s there with them is no more me than they are. It’s bizarre, but a nice feeling. It makes it harder to dislike people. I’m going to continue to experiment with that.

I got to Viper Rooms, and slowly the band arrived. We got some free drinks. I tried a Wray and Nephew’s with ginger ale. Why is ginger ale produced? It’s just weak ginger beer. Who wants that? Assholes. The drink was pretty nice, if a little bit flammable.

I’d only been there once before, and it’d been okay, but I find it harder and harder these days to get in the mood to go to a club. It was fun going when I would wear make-up and paint my nails and wear a hat, but who wants to deal with walking into a place and thinking everybody’s an asshole?

You see, men and women have turned each other into enemies, without realising. One thinks that the other wants them to be a certain way, and adapts itself, but do we really want that? I don’t know.

You go to a club like Viper Rooms on geek night. Now, I love a girl dressed as a geek, don’t get me wrong. In fact, school girls ARE my #1 stereotype, but my point is this: do they want that role? Do the stereotypical people I see in clubs actually want to be the avatars they’re portraying?

Do the guys want to do their top button up and wear chinos and say in a Croydon accent ‘Mate! She was well up for it!’ I mean, do they want that? Do they want to see the girls as enemies to be conquered? Is that fun for either of them? Wouldn’t they rather get to know the girl, and have more of a solid love/hatred for them?

Do the girls want to apply a little bit too much fake tan, show off their delicious legs and shoulders, and spend most of the night dancing in a circle with their friends, occasionally peering over their shoulders to see if the guys are looking at them? Do they want that? Is that fun?

It’s just so hard to not see everyone as an asshole. But wait. If they’re all me, then am I everybody’s asshole?

The first band had a bass player, a guitarist and a manly looking woman vocalist. They had a drum machine and synths backing them up. I think they used a CD. That seems so retro now. They sounded like a cross between every British early/mid 80s new romantic synth-pop band I could think of.

Afterwards I told the bass player they had a good set, and how the night before I’d been listening to all that stuff. He said ‘yeah, but that’s not all we’re influenced by, there’s just so much going into the mix, so many different styles, that’s why it sounds the way it does.’ I sort of agreed and then said I had to go the toilet, but I didn’t agree with him at all. It sounded, and looked, like they’d been playing this music in the 80s when it was popular, and now almost 30 years later, they were still doing it. It didn’t sound like ‘loads of styles in a mix’. However, who am I to disagree? When you put treacle in a bolognaise sauce, as people are wont to do, you don’t notice it, but it improves it. How do I know he’s not massively into Mongolian throat singing? How do I know it didn’t majorly influence their synth-pop stylings? I don’t.

We played a good set. It’s getting more and more psychedelic each time we play. We got an encore. Getting shouted ‘encore’ at is like being offered a blow job. It’s so gratifying for the ego.

I couldn’t hear shit, however, except for vocals and drums. It’s bizarre. Back in the day I used to be able to hear bass and Miles’s guitar. Never my own, or the vocals or the drums. Nowadays I hear crystal clear vocals, and if you can’t hear Joe you have no ears.

Afterwards it was Revolucion De Cuba. I’d like to die in that place. I’d been earlier in the evening, to say hello. When I got there the second time, the university big band was playing. They were tight. They were starting ‘The Chicken’ by Jaco when I got there, and I walked past shouting ‘The Chicken!’ This tasty blonde sax player gave me a grin. It possibly wasn’t sexual attraction. It possibly looked like I had either mental health problems, or alcoholism, and she felt sorry for me. But it was a grin. Not a smile. A grin. And I remain open to the possibility that she fancied me, and was swooned by my enthusiasm for her big band’s music. And for her.

Led Zeppelin’s first album (creatively titled Led Zeppelin) is such a masterpiece. 9 tracks of British blues-rock psychedelically-tinged heaven. Love the word tinged. I’m all about Bonham – how could I not be? During my short lived drumming career, I was constantly referred to as a wannabe Bonham. I always took this as a compliment. I expect that it was not.

Good Times Bad Times sounds so mean. My friend John has a habit of pulling an amazingly scrunched up face whenever the music affects him deeply – it works best with funk music, but then again, Led Zeppelin were a funky band. They were funky as hell. And nobody seems to ever remember that. Chad Smith knew about Bonham’s funk. However, the one time it seemed like they were trying to play funk – I forget the track name, but it’s on Houses of The Holy – and I heavily dislike that track. Such is life.

I wonder if Jimmy Page ever listens to those first 4 albums. Make that 5. Album #6 was also good, but the first 5 were just on another level. They were channelling something, those naughty Zeps. How could they not have been? Have you ever seen the Song Remains the Same DVD? When I indulge myself with viewing pleasures of that ilk, I start to believe in magic, if only for a few minutes.

I remember being 15 years old, and it being November time, and I remember been feeling a bit lame all day. You know when you’re a tiny bit ill. Not ill enough for it to matter, but like somebody’s drained you of your vital life energy. I watched that DVD before I went to sleep, on a Sunday night, and felt really excited – tons of nervous energy – I started to make these elaborate plans in my head about how I could live a life that compared to the beauty of that performance by those 4 hairy men in 1973. At some point I fell asleep. I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, staring at the moon, which was huge, and extremely visible since I never shut my curtains at night. I’d woken up during a dream, and the dream had continued, despite my waking up. I was in Led Zeppelin, but I wasn’t measuring up – they still weren’t sure whether or not they wanted to be a 5 piece, and when they’d approached me about it, I had thought to myself “No, you guys are perfect, you don’t need me.” But I couldn’t pass up the chance to be in Led Zeppelin, or at least my dream-self couldn’t. And I started going around my room, seemingly awake now, looking for their phone numbers, so I could phone them and kick myself out of the band, to save embarrassment. Whilst I was looking, I came to and realised it had been a dream that had gone on too long. I had to laugh.

One issue people have with Zeppelin is their constant thieving, but I see two options – accept it and enjoy the fruits of their labour; or gripe about it and make people not want to spend time with you anymore. The world is rife with negativity, most of it totally unnecessary, and it doesn’t need any of us complaining about Led Zeppelin’s habit of taking riffs and lyrics from old blues men. Who gives a shit? They turned it into beauty – can we punish them for that? No.

Are you a creative person? Are we not all creative people? I wonder. Is it a matter of being what you believe yourself to be? I’ve always seen myself as very creative, but I don’t know how you measure that. I certainly know that at times in my life I’ve squandered that creative spirit, and I can tell you something about creativity – the more you give to it, the more you get back. If you’re going around living a life where you think that writing a song, and giving it to the world leaves you with less possible future songs, you’re living a lie. You get more songs by writing them and sharing them with the world. Write.

Sometimes when I listen to Jimmy Page play the guitar I forget what day it is.

Have you seen the movie Coffee and Cigarettes? It’s sublime. Everybody knows it’s cool to smoke, but did you know it’s also cool to drink coffee? I got into coffee around 7 years ago now. I think about quitting every now and then, but I honestly don’t want to. I wonder what happens with alcoholics who don’t want to quit. Society hammers it into them that they should want to not be an alcoholic, but what if it genuinely works for them? Why would they want to quit?

Dazed and Confused. I’ve forever wondered how many takes it took. It’s my suspicion, and my hope, that nothing on that track was done in more than 2 takes. Overdubs don’t count as extra takes. I’m saying they basically played it through, and then Plant sang, and Page fucked about with it, in a way only he can.

Where have tapes gone? Digital is not better. It upsets me, but what can I do? I try not to complain.

There’s a bit in the film Funky Monks where Rick Rubin and Chad Smith are listening to Dazed and Confused – the bit of the song at about 1:50 – I think this was where the waltzy Bonham fills in Breaking The Girl come from.

I enjoy so much having these theories about my favourite music and films. It doesn’t matter to me in the slightest if I’m wrong. If I believe it then I’m right. That’s the nature of the mind. I can’t believe deep psychology isn’t taught in schools right from the start. If schooling is going to be compulsory, which is another debate in itself, they could at least teach subjects that will benefit their students, teaching them to live lives of conscious choice and empowerment. Goal setting, how to learn effectively, social dynamics… it’s just a dream.

Are you interested in social dynamics, or are you fascinated?

I crave a time before mobile phones, before social media, before artificial light. We’ll get there. In a few hundred years. Einstein’s sticks-and-stones World War IV. It’s hardly upsetting – especially in the West, we’ve been living very affluently for years, it’s about time we got our comeuppance.

Have you ever deliberately murdered? What about those tiny little red spiders? I was once sat on the roof of the crematorium, and I saw that I’d squished one – I got very upset, and started hating myself slightly. Then I realised if I’d squished one, I’d squished hundreds – without even realising, or trying. It was a big perspective shift for me. I realised that just by existing in the physical realm, I was killing hundreds of tiny little creatures. And there was nothing for me to do but accept it. How upsetting.

Your Time Is Gonna Come.

We could have been really happy. If you’d only been who I wanted you to be. I knew best. We both knew that. If you’d have just let me be who I am, we’d have both been happy. I can see you right now, disapproving. But you know I’m right.

By Oliver Manning