Day three. Peace Frog. (3/1/19)

("Let it roll, baby, roll, all night long. Do it Robbie, do it." Then a guitar break.)

I knew what I was writing about tonight. And if I'd written this on my phone at lunchtime as I'd intended, then you'd be seeing something completely different. But the typeface was so small that I seriously couldn't be bothered. And I had a mate to email about something that'll happen later this year that I've gone on and on and on about for about two years now and you'll finally see.

I had a classic bait and switch ready.

The bait was this:

"It's the sense of anticipation, the knowing that what comes next could define everything that comes after, the knowing that you have no control over it but that the effect on your emotions, the way you walk through the world will be enormous. It's the trepidation that this might not turn out the way you want it to but the gut instinct that, if it does, everything will be glorious."

The bait being that you would be lulled into thinking this was a direct flow on from last night's piece about my decision to make a massive change to my employment situation.

( "This is the strangest life I've ever known.")

The switch would be that I was actually talking about the football. Talking about Man City vs Liverpool. Asking the question, "Is this a must win game?" Answering with, "Every game has been a must win since the middle of August."

This is what City's success last season has made the Premier League: to overhaul them will take perfection.

I would talk about the disparate ways we're approaching the match; the terror, the calm, the nervous, the anticipatory, the doubters, the faithful.

But there's only an hour until kick off. What's the point? Some of you may not read it until later. Because you're watching the match and that. And J might not share it. A Liverpool post three days into the year? Yeah, leave that to your red followers, Sammo.

She might not share this anyway. It's a music blog.

But it's about a band she likes. And it's about what that band means in life. What it means at a remove of 37 years from the point that I discovered them.

I'd been reading this month's Mojo. I'm still a magazine fan, still see music journalism as one of the highest arts. It's one of the many 'only things I ever wanted to do'. I didn't become a journalist because, on the day of my interview for Sheffield Uni, the only NUJ accredited course at the time (apparently), after absolutely walking the exam, I was told in no uncertain terms that I was the fifth person that morning to say that the journalists I wanted to write like were Paul Morley and Ian Penman. The interview went downhill from there. Perhaps if I'd said Paul Foot?

Anyway. Mojo. Piece on The Doors. Piece on Jim Morrison because this year is the fiftieth anniversary of it all going to shit. It's the anniversary of Morrison's arrest for 'lewd and lascivious' behaviour. Getting his **** out at a gig in Miami basically.

I discovered music the way we used to. Through the music papers, the weeklies, the inkies; through interviews with the bands we already liked, talking about the bands they liked.

The Bunnymen were compared to The Doors. So we all started buying Doors albums. And we all started to regard Jim as the perfect pop star. And we did this at a perfect time.

The Morrison/Doors biog came out in the early 80s. The book was turned into a documentary. The documentary was on TV. The Granada programme from 68 was shown again. And the video recorder was giving us the chance to record stuff. And watch it again and again and again. So we did.

I was 18/19. I was unemployed. I was in a band. It's possibly the most perfect blend on earth. Me, Mal, Geoff, Andy, 1982 to 1983, sat in our living room watching and rewatching this band from an eternity earlier (15 years, as large a gap as could be conceived in music, a gap large enough to be forgotten about and revived), rewatching until we could quote passages verbatim in a way that only makes sense to, only amuses, teenage boys in bands:

"Wait till we get you to Raiford, boy" (intimating that when they jailed Jim, they'd get rid of that hippy long hair)
"uhhhh... Jim" (staring down the lens of a British camera for the first time, stepping off the plane, totally stoned)
"They're the most beautiful lyrics I ever heard, man. Let's start a band and make a million dollars"

That was the summer I started calling people 'man'. It started as an in-joke, it lasted my entire adult life.

From this remove, looking at these young men, now the same age as our adult children, they look naive, pretentious, filled with the folly of youth. Back then? Impossibly cool, living the life you wanted to live, living the dream, doing nothing but create.

You're 18, you need your touchstones. You need the things that make sense to you and your mates. The things that your parents could never possibly 'get' because they're too old. Because they were never young, never cool, never as young as you are now, never as vital, never had the whole world waiting for them like you have.

I try to bear that in mind when I'm driving Matty to work and enduring twenty minutes of wall to wall, relentless hip hop. Those are the tunes that will last him his life. He won't grow out of them; they're not a phase, they're special and they'll carry the memories.

So I went to the loft to get 'Morrison Hotel', the return to form album after the (frankly quite wonderful) oddity that was Soft Parade. It's on Apple Music, it's on my iPod, I've got the CD. I needed the vinyl. Because that was how I listened to it then. That's how I'm listening to it now.

And part of me is 18/19/20 again. And I can feel my mates. And it doesn't matter if you don't see them that often, they're always there. Just one song away.