Brown Shoes Don't Make It

Quit School, Why Fake It

When I was about 15 a journalist friend of my parents, Sue Vaassen, was writing for a New Zealand magazine called New Zealand Home Journal. She knew that I was active in the music scene (as active as a 15-year-old can be) and came to me after asking my parent’s permission.

She was writing an article called Pop Music and the Generation Gap. She came with a pile of records and said that she wanted me to listen to them and then give her feedback on them. I was allowed to keep them if I did the interview. I didn’t need any further persuasion.

She also wanted my parents to listen to them and see if there was indeed a generation gap. The records included Led Zeppelin III, still one of my favourites, Procul Harum A Whiter Shade of Pale, Thick as a Brick (which has to be one of the best album covers of all time, and more.

I slept in a caravan out the front of my parent’s home. Long story short for now. I came home from Holland about to turn 14, with my grandparents who I had been living with. There was no room in the house for all of us and when we came back, we toured New Zealand in my father’s Van der Plas Austin Princess, towing this little caravan. That became my bedroom and home. I would later take it with me, parked out the back of Auckland Alternative School, at Foul Farm, an urban commune in Mt Albert, and eventually gave it back to my father who would use it as a floating studio, on pontoons, next to our ketch at Spanfarm boatyard.

I had a record player with a Garrard deck similar to this between the sink and my bed in the caravan.

A Garrard record player

I cranked those records up as loud as they could go without distorting the little speakers. Sometimes my parents would come out of the house to tell me to turn the volume down.

I think Sue came to the wrong family because my parents shared a liking for some of the music I listen to. One that my parents didn’t really appreciate, but I loved was a Frank Zappa compilation, which included the song Brown Shoes Don’t Make It.

It came at a time when I was fed up with having to be at Kelston Boys High, a school that had no music course, which was the only thing I was really interested in. Actually, I was fed up with that school before I even returned to New Zealand because all I wanted to do was study music, and the height of achievement at that school was getting into the First 15. I never really forgave my father for not getting me into one of the schools that I could have gone to, which had excellent music studies.

I wasn’t interested in anything that meant staying after school or going back on the weekends. I did enjoy watching rugby during school hours and ran on the field for 50-a-side lunchtime matches once in a while. I was more likely to be found smoking cigarettes at the back of the field.

To change the subject briefly, the school made up for lack of skill with aggression when playing rugby in the 70s, the key strategies were “the bigger they come, the harder they fall”, and “make them fall often.” In later years they were highly successful, often winning rugby and sevens, with many players later becoming All Blacks.

Don’t get me wrong, I had some good mates, but I wanted to be a musician. They did have a band/orchestra and I learned clarinet and played that and guitar, which got me out of some classes and onto some road trips which were OK.

Anyway back to Pop Music and the Generation Gap.

When I heard the lyrics: “Brown shoes don't make it, Quit school, why fake it?” I was hooked on the hook. The rest of the song and album appealed to this young teenager.

I did the interview and got to keep the records. I may even have a copy of the magazine somewhere. I learned a valuable lesson, which I used to my benefit as an adult, having featured in well over a hundred magazine and newspaper articles over my career. That is read and approve any ‘quotes’ first.

When I told Sue that I loved Led Zeppelin, she took poetic license and added “the music turns me on.” I didn’t get to see the article until after the magazine was published and I would never have used those words. The conclusion in the end based on interviewing myself and my parents was that perhaps there wasn’t a musical generation gap. I wonder what would have happened if she had gone to a different family.

I didn’t work hard at school because I didn’t want to be there, but I was bright and was really good at cramming. Some of my teachers told me that I wouldn’t have much of a future, because I wasn’t applying myself. Little did they know that I was gaming the system really well.

I learned earlier on that being bright, was not something that was appreciated by fellow students at Kelston. It was likely to get you beaten up by kids who thought that you thought you were better than them. I didn’t, but I wasn’t up for getting a hiding either. Low profile for me, although I did get a few turns at the cane, allegedly for smoking in Titirangi in school uniform, and detentions for not paying attention in class and not doing my homework. There was even a competition for who could get strapped or kicked out of class most often. I didn’t win, but I was up there.

Later I would find out that listening to Renaissance music was conducive to learning, and I applied it. But at the age of 15, I found that the rhythm of Rock Music worked equally well. I got excellent results in my exams.

I would always be a fan of Frank Zappa and still have a newspaper clipping of the day he died, having joined the establishment as the composer of classical music and briefly as Czechoslovakian Special Ambassador to the West on trade, culture, and tourism, however, U.S. officials pressured Havel into retracting the appointment.

Zappa was irreverent, he was a protestor, a satirist, a polymath, and above all else, an amazingly clever and creative musician. I remain grateful to Sue for introducing me to his music.