During the years of being a chorister, my belief in God appeared to be solid, if not flourishing. I had a simple wooden crucifix on the top of my child sized writing desk, bookended by two tiny brass candlesticks, without candles. My parents had bought both my sister and I brand spanking new Bibles. Frequently I imagined myself in the future becoming a Vicar. Such was my seeming devotion and youthfully naive aspiration. Meanwhile the chorister singing was proving ever more satisfying, as I was now one of the most experienced singers in the choir, and had begun to take solo parts in anthems. The choir master at Halifax Parish Church, recommended I attend a residential week for choristers, run under the auspices of the Royal School of Church Music at Rosall School, in Fleetwood, Lancashire.
My parents would certainly have struggled to afford this, but they did find the money, because singing was a talent my Mother understood and both my parents were prepared to support. Once I'd arrived at the school, I remember enjoying all the rehearsals and performances. The dormitories, the communal dining, the sheer number of people there, a lot of them quite posh, meant I felt very much a fish out of water. Being in the grounds of a public school, was a bit of a culture shock for a eleven year old boy from the terraced houses of Halifax, to take in. I had no friends with me there, I was really lonely. And I'd started to be picked on and bullied by some of the older boys. And I wrote a postcard to my parents. This was my first time living away from my parents, I felt homesick, and living in this strange place was freaking me out. And, in retrospect, I can see this was the beginning of a souring of my relationship with devotional singing.
As I progressed through my teenage years, people started preparing me for when my 'voice broke', as though this would prove to be of real significance. I'd never even thought of my boy soprano voice as having a use by date. This notion coincided with my new and burgeoning enthusiasm for glam and subsequently progressive rock music. Glam emerged after the late sixties hippie era, and was in part a reaction to the denim dressed idealistic worthiness that preceded it. Five years after gay relationships were permitted, being deliberately and ridiculously camp, suddenly made sense. In the midst of the 70's oil crisis, glam was light hearted frothy fun. And I fell in love with its sense of its own ridiculousness. Once I did become rather more earnestly into heavy rock, my having a sweet boy soprano voice, began to lose the kudos it might have once possessed for me.
About this time, I'd bought a copy of The Jesus Book, which was part of a late sixties phenomena The Jesus Movement in the US. In response to the 'alternative' permissive culture of the era, this movement dressed Christianity up in some borrowed counter cultural garb and threw itself into the religious melting pot. And I'd thought that this might be one way of, bringing both my music and Christian faith together. But I wasn't that impressed with it. For as my voice actually started to break, it began to dawn on me that my faith, such as it was, was rather strongly tied to my contribution to religious music. And I began to have doubts, whether my faith was based on anything more than just the love of singing.
I was fourteen or fifteen I think, when I finally burnt my bridges with the Methodist faith of my parents. Unconsciously, I was in the middle of some sort of crisis of confidence within Christianity. I booked myself on a Methodist residential study weekend, specifically aimed at teenagers. My parents must have paid for it, but my recollection was of it being at my instigation. I endured that weekend, like I have never endured anything before or since. I found myself reacting to the place, the leaders, other people, the way they dressed, the subject matter, the faux earnestness of it all, it really got right on my tits. My head got stuck in a groove of inner contention. At the time I was far too shy to voice a word of any of this, but internally I was a seething rebellion It was going on that weekend which compelled me to tear up my card carrying membership of Christianity. On my return, I told my parents I no longer wanted to attend chapel with them on Sundays. My investment in the Christian faith appeared spent. What faith I'd had, left on a long round trip to Vegas.
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