Madden The Participant

I must’ve started playing keyboards when I was 10, I’m thinking that getting a keyboard for Christmas 1986 makes sense but perhaps it could’ve been 1987. I definitely didn’t play keyboards yet when I first heard Madonna’s True Blue but I think I did play a little bit by the time Burnley started their Sherpa Van trophy campaign of 87/88. I remember entering the talent show at St. John’s RC Junior school in the summer of 1988, I was playing my trusty Casio MT220 and Sean Kerry joined me on his own Yamaha PSS-270. We played an instrumental we’d written ourselves. Scrap that, I wrote it. No point giving Sean Kerry credit for fuck’s sake, he has a successful career in marketing and doesn’t need this on his CV. We didn’t win anyway, we came second place and were awarded a pencil each with the school’s name written on the side. The winner was Louise Rodaway, daughter of Burnley ace Billy Rodaway, who did an amazing gymnastics routine to music. The music she performed to was Live To Tell by Madonna.

I was having lessons at the time at Dawson’s Music in Burnley, it was our music shop in general but the organ was king down there and everybody who worked behind the counter also spent weekends playing show tunes at working men’s clubs and old folks homes around Lancashire. The lessons were given upstairs in the Yamaha Electone suite, a classroom with six organs in two columns of three with a teacher’s console at the front and a whiteboard with musical staves across it. I was taught by Chris Broughton who still teaches in Burnley now though he concentrates more on vocal coaching. I was always going to struggle getting anywhere at the whole endeavour because I only had the aforementioned four octave Casio keyboard at home, I didn’t have anything with two manuals or bass pedals, or even full size keys. I did alright learning the note names and a few chords but there was a point past which I could never really advance.

I was keen though, you can’t take that away from me. My first public appearance was at Burnley Mechanics not long after starting, certainly in the first six months. I think we played Michael Row the Boat Ashore, I can’t be sure but that one was about two thirds of the way through book one so I’ll settle on it. We played in our class groupings, six Yamaha organs in columns of three on the stage all playing a basic melody in unison. You honestly couldn’thear one of us from the others, the teacher was probably loudest. A few people came up to me afterwards and said “You were really good!” As in they were suggesting that I, Christian Madden in particular had stood out as talented. It’s taken me till just now, literally as I type these sentences, to realise they were taking the piss.

There’s a live performance from back then that stuck with me more though, that I remember more vividly. It was early in 1989 that we got the news from above, the mothership was calling us. Yamaha were organising their own talent contest, the Yamaha Electone Festival of 1989 and we were all invited to participate. The Burnley heat was to take place at Ighten Mount Bowling Club and we all had a guaranteed slot. I don’t know why but I really thought I had a shot at this, you’re encouraged to believe in yourself by society and it’s a sweet sentiment but sometimes you should look at the evidence. I wasn’t even the best in my class, my mate Rishi was the best. He had a Technics organ at home to practice on and was skilled in pedal usage, he’d even written a tune of his own for the competition called Sand Dunes. It sounded pretty good to me, accomplished actually. Still I thought I had a special something, I was going to play the Roger Miller banger King Of The Road using the auto-accompaniment feature and a swing rhythm. Not unlike this version, probably not as good, I definitely didn’t know the middle eight and I don’t think I opted for a harmonica sound but I’d have been aspiring to something like this.

In the interest of balance I’ve found this version by youtuber Linda Varey, who says her channel “has something for everyone.” I don’t want to go hard on her here but I’m not quite sure what she’s trying to do and I also don’t think I’d be a fan of it if she achieved whatever it is she’s trying to do. Which she doesn’t.

It’s a useful yardstick nonetheless. We’ll put the 12 year old Christian Madden’s version of King Of The Road somewhere between exhibit A and exhibit B.

I performed it on the night anyway, 12 year old me in Ighten Mount Bowling Club surrounded by pensioners and fellow organ enthusiasts. I thought I’d chosen a good tune for the crowd, I’d read the room without really knowing anything about reading the room. Rishi was probably going to win it on genuine ability with the added bonus of having the kind of get up and go that makes a fifteen year old write a piece of contemplative home organ music.

Nobody was older than fifteen, nobody was better than Rishi. I was certainly in with a shot at second place. We went through two hours of kids playing Merrily We Roll Along, Ode to Joy, Secret Love and When The Saints Go Marching On. Parents were watching proudly, it was very much a celebration of “taking part” and “having a go.”

With the evening all but finished they announced one last contestant, and I swear the guy who got up was in his 30s. There was no rule against it but you wouldn’t do it would you? He confidently got up, took to the organ and performed a bombastic and rousing rendition of the fucking Dambusters March. It was roughly like this.

Maz is in my ear again, saying “Pissed on your chips, and fed ‘em to you.”

The judges were three guys in their 60s and 70s. In my inaccurate memories of the evening they are deeply moved, it reminds them of our darkest hours as a nation, and our brightest heroes. In my inaccurate memories of this evening one of them is wearing war medals on his jacket, watching with stoic calmness that hides a bursting heart. In these same memories one of the judges raises his spectacles to dab at the corner of his eyes with a pocket handkerchief. Whatever happened in reality this fucking grown up who’s walked into what is basically a children’s talent contest absolutely sweeps the board, proudly takes first prize without a shit to give for the broken hearted amateurs around him. Laughing all the way to the regional finals in St. Helen’s I imagine. Probably guffawing out the anecdote to this day, “…and then I got there and they were all twelve years old!” What a shitbag.

Rishi obviously took second prize, he was good after all. I got a keyring for taking part.

Weirdly enough I’ve used it every day since, it’s remarkably useful for opening bottles.

James Booker knew how to play King of the Road. Imagine if I’d have gone on last and played it like this, on a piano too instead of that tepid Yamaha Electone. I’d like to see the face on old Johnny Dambuster after I pulled this out. That’d show him, the bloody bully. If I could play like this I wouldn’t have been entering the Burnley heat of the Yamaha Electone Festival at Ighten Mount Bowling Club though. I’d have been a minor celebrity losing his childhood on the road somewhere, Michael Jackson style. Small graces.

Giles sent me a video of an 8 year old girl playing Tarkus on a Yamaha Electone the other day via Instagram. I couldn’t find the same video but here’s a different video of an eight year old girl playing Tarkus. I hope this is the same girl, otherwise there’s something of an infestation of little girl prog rock virtuosos sweeping the globe and that’s quite a terrifying prospect. Even our Ighten Mount panel of World War Two veteran judges would have to concede that this pisses on any version of the Dambusters March.

I’ll tell you who wouldn’t have had the slightest hesitation about getting up, at Ighten Mount Bowling Club or anywhere else in the known world. A man who never paused for a second’s self doubt or imposter’s syndrome, the self-proclaimed hardest working man in showbiz James Brown. Dave Rofe sent me this picture of James Brown’s Hammond the other week, would you fucking look at that! No time to be sat wondering whether or not you should be playing the bass pedals or whether you have any right to be in the building when you kit is decked out like that.

James Brown’s organ is now in the Smithsonian, last I’d heard Paul Shaeffer of the Letterman Show house band had bought it so he must’ve donated it for the greater good. James loved to get behind the organ and have a crack, prompting Jimmy Smith to publicly comment that he should probably stick to singing. James wasn’t put off though releasing a full album’s worth of organ meanderings called Handful of Soul. Perhaps “Fistful of Soul” would’ve been more appropriate, he’s not the tidiest by a long stretch. On some tunes you can even hear an earlier take of organ spilling on to the other mics as the new version attempts to drown it out. The man who dropped fines left and right throughout a gig for the slightest dropped beat or glitched note from his employees, was uncharacteristically forgiving when it came to his own right hand.

All that said though, it’s still good. It’s still a James Brown record, it’s still got a peak James Brown band on it, it still grooves. I even like his playing, it really is unique and souful. Take some time out for the World’s boldest, most sensational amateur organist.

To round out the life’s journey from the school talent show, through Ighten Mount Bowling Club and beyond, here’s a video from the hottest night of the century in Barnoldswick the other week. It’s one of a few taken by Janet Redfearn but I’ll go with this one, it’s a cover but you get to hear all the boys take a solo which is nice. I’ll post a few more over the coming weeks as they generally sound pretty good. This is Flood In Franklin Park by Grant Green.

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