As I kid I lived a year in Newcastle Upon Tyne. Sunday's in Northern England in the mid-1970s were endless boring. The religious program, Anno Domini was on TV followed by the 'Look North'  news program – which featured a blue globe rolling across the screen. It was endlessly boring if you were fifteen and locked up with your family. On Sunday's Newcastle shut down. It was a blue-collar, working-class town - not the sophisticated city it is today with its millennial bridge and toney modern buildings on the riverside. On Saturdays, after the football match, the pubs filled up and barrels of ale got drunk. Being from out-of-town, we'd evidently given up church for the year - which is kind of weird since our practice, Methodism, was from the Newcastle area.

But thank God dad read the Sunday newspaper.

On Sundays, the only place to get a newspaper was the Central Train station. (Commemorated in the Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits) track, Fare Thee Well Northumberland 

Sometimes we'd walk down to the station, which was a jaunt. Other times Dad would drive the yellow, four-door Austin Maxi.

The London Times was a big paper that felt like tissue paper in your hands. The smells of the trains and the station, the freshness of the newspaper, and burnt unleaded fuels became familiar smells that filled my nose. The paper was sold in a Newsagent kiosk at the station. The agent had chocolates, candy, and, as I would later learn, the most current editions of the NME or Sounds (weekly music newspapers). Getting out of the house and going to the newsagent was like being delivered from hell: manna so positive that eventually, I learned to read the newspaper. 

The excursion was the highlight of my Sundays - pure bliss on the day of the week that for a 15-year-old was endlessly boring.

It was on one of these morning ventures that we discovered the Quayside open market. It was a bit like an open flea market. People! Tons of people hawking and gapping at generally useless stuff wrapped and hung in clear plastic bags so you could see - "but you'd better not touch, boy." Hundreds of people milling about, on the edge of the Tyne River, under the famous arched bridge, looking and buying.  

                                                                                                                                                                Some were talking, eating a "cornet" (which I later learned was flavored ice), and maybe buying something. Interestingly, I would much later learn that it was on the same approximate location that John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, gave his first sermon. The market was located at the bottom of the Dog's Leap Stairs which are commemorated on the debut Dire Straits album in the song, Down to the Waterline.

Sweet surrender on the Quayside

You remember we used to run and hide

In the shadow of the cargoes

I take you one at a time

And we're counting all the numbers

Down to the waterline

Near misses on the dog leap stairways

French kisses in the darkened doorways

A foghorn blowing out wild and cold

A policeman, he shines a light upon my shoulder

Up comes a coaster fast and silent in the night

Over my shoulder all you can see

Are the pilot lights

No money in our jackets and our jeans are torn

Your hands are cold but your lips are warm

She can see him on the jetty that

They used to know

She can feel him in the places where

The sailors go

When she's walking by the river

Or the railway line

She can still hear him whisper

Let's go down to the waterline, alright

Once we got to the Quayside, it was boring too, if you were 15, which I was, but it was loads better than being at home - cooped up without friends, no tv, and waiting for school the next day. I would
walk as slow as I could and feign interest in anything: anything to stay as long as possible, I remember once smelling some perfume that, later in the week, "Julie" who was a bit of a rough but attractive working-class girl wore. I remember that it was in our class of academic low performers that Julie and the dark-haired girl (third right, front row) that sat next to her talked about Rod Stewart's new album, Atlantic Crossing.

While I was all too familiar with Rod Stewart, and the Faces, somehow that image just seared into my mind. Patricia Cleghorn, who sat a row or two closer to the front of the class, had her sister's autograph book that one of my most favorites bands at the time, Bad Company had signed. I was definitely impressed!

5E5 Heaton School, 1975-76

 While I was all too familiar with Rod Stewart, and the Faces, somehow that image just seared into my mind. Patricia Cleghorn (2d left, front row), who sat a row or two closer to the front of the class, had her sister's autograph book that one of my most favorites bands at the time, Bad Company had signed. I was definitely impressed! (Can you figure out which one is me? 

Years later, I heard the song 'Debris' by the Faces. Sung by the band's bass player Ronnie Lane. For whatever reason, whenever I hear that song, I am back in the Toon, on the Quayside, living the most exciting year of my life. As you can see in the lyrics, the opening line beckon's the memory...

It was also during this era of pre-Thatcherism that coal mining strikes would grab the Northeast (see the movie, Billy Elliot). I can recall a news story reporting that youth in the area would never get jobs - that's how bad things were... reportedly.

As a kid, moving, was scary and, well, I just knew, it was going to be boring. And then there's David Wilson. (The guy was like a magnet. I'd hang around and eventually, some gal would spin-off and I'd make a play...which was a bit like a dog chasing cars: I had no idea what to do if I caught one but something told me it was going to be very cool...and very special. Which could bring us to the story of Karen and Sally but, well, then that would be talking out of turn).

Wilson dragged me around town like a cubbed dog - teaching me that pubs would serve you if you acted like you knew what you were doing, ('Uh, a pint of bitter please' was all I had to learn), the famed Brown Ale hospital ward - in case we drank too much of the famed powerful Northeast drink, concerts in the City Hall, but most importantly, how to talk to girls. (Which came in pretty handy in subsequent years). We'd walk miles from our house into the City Center to thumb through records stores, including up the stairs to the second floor to access the very cool, very new Virgin Record store (where my brother  Wes Galusha would buy a Harpo Marx button that looked mysteriously similar to my clearly not Jewish older brother) and romp around parts of the town which, years later, I would come to know were Sting's stomping grounds at about the same time.

It was an adventure that defined me - how I see the world and the song, Debris, brings it back. Years later, I would go see live music with a friend Geoff Schechter in Houston, Texas. One night, at a new place (Blythe Spirits), Geoff took me to see a band. (Geoff grew up in Austin and even then had a "cool cache" that came with his city of birth). As we leaned against the bar I noticed that a guy in a wheelchair was being wheeled past us. I remember thinking how cool it was that despite being confined to the chair - that guy was still getting out. As he wheeled by he smiled and, looking into his face, it was Ronnie Lane. Lane was suffering from MS and would eventually die due to the illness. We followed him out to the car where his friend was lifting the frail rock star and placing him into a well-beaten car. Lane could barely speak. We gushed respectfully and it seemed to make him happy.

I left you on the debris

At the Sunday morning market

You were sorting through the odds and ends

You was looking for a bargain

I heard your footsteps at the front door

And that old familiar love song

'Cause you knew you'd find me waiting there

At the top of the stairs

Ian McLagan, Ronnie Wood, Ronnie Lane, & Rod Stewart

I went there and back

Just to see how far it was

And you, you tried to tell me

But I had to learn for myself

There's more trouble at the depot

With the general workers union

And you said, "They'll never change a thing

Well, they won't fight and they're not working"

 

Oh, you was my hero

How you are my good friend

I've been there and back

And I know how far it is

But I left you on the debris

Now we both know you got no money

And I wonder what you would have done

Without me hanging around