A Life in Pop Writing

IT ALL STARTED at school when as a Bluecoat Boy I smuggled me into the local record shop in Horsham, Sussex, and my buddy told the man to pipe 'Why Do Fools Fall In Love' into our hard-board cubicle. Or was it the year later when a van came down a street in Essen, Germany, playing the demo of 'Heartbreak Hotel'? It was confirmed when the top history scholar at Balliol, my Oxford college, told me to cut the crap about Scarlatti and whipped out and put on Elvis's Golden Hits. Point made.