We moved as a family to Ryde in 1966.
I started school at Sandown Grammar in September and the first person I spoke to there was Chris Howe. We got on immediately and he’s been a lifelong friend ever since that encounter in the geography room.
I made so many good friends at that school; the atmosphere was happy and dramatically different from the oppressive Catholic Boys’ school I’d left in Portsmouth.
Chris was a Dylan fan.
When we met I thought that he’d (Bob) died in a motorcycle crash in Woodstock earlier in the year. I don’t know why I thought that; he was playing in Australia on his ‘Judas’ tour.
Anyway, this picture celebrates my grandad’s drawing room where he kept his piano. It was the place where we hung out as musically-aware teenagers, well, teenagers really. We were all pretty musically aware.
We listened to John Peel on Sunday afternoons in 1967 which was a sacred appointment. I don’t think anything or anyone got in the way of that. Blonde On Blonde, possibly Dylan’s greatest album, was released a year earlier, the year of Revolver.
It sat uncomfortably with grandad’s Bach and Saint Säens records, and this picture illustrates Chris looking at the sleeve.
Printed on heavy 315gsm etching paper.
Limited Edition of 50.
Signed by the artist.
Frame not supplied.