Around 1996 I started teaching music composition part time at South Tyneside College. Here I met poet, playwright and local historian Tom Kelly. Tom had written many songs too and over the next 3 years or so we exchanged stories and anecdotes in the staff room. I told Tom of my early days in a rock band whilst serving an apprenticeship at Consett Steel Works and how I "escaped".

Then one day passed me a note "Steel Town...a new musical..a young man dreams of escaping, to be a rock and roll star..."

Of course I was hooked and we embarked on what was to become quite and adventure for me.

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That's a picture of me to the right taken outside South Tyneside College just as the shows were to begin (Shields Gazette) but there was a long time and a lot of work before we got to that stage.

I had one or two songs already that seemed to fit the bill so those were tossed in. Tom began to work on the script. Now, me being me I didn't read the script thoroughly. I just skimmed through it and mapped out where the songs were to come and then gave Tom rough tapes. This was to create quite an interesting situation when I heard the first read through's of the work but more of that later.

The storyline was to mirror quite closely my story. Like most young men in my community I ended up in the Steelworks but I formed a rock band with some of my contemporaries and dreamed of escaping to another world. Time was compressed in the story because my escape came in 1973/4 yet the show was set in 1982 when the Steelworks were closing down and escapebecame even more imperative.

I returned to Consett to visit the Consett Mens Forum where my father had arranged that I record interviews with former steel workers. These recordings are all the more poignant for the fact that two of these men were my uncles who have since passes away. After the recordings I wandered through the town I had escaped from some 25 years earlier. I returned to a place that used to mesmerise me as a youngster because railway lines encircled the huge Houndsgill plate mill like a gigantic train set. I was shocked by what I saw. I called Tom on my mobile and said "Tom, it's all gone". From that discussion came the song "I Will Go Back"

I will go back some day,
When the lines are gone,
You'll find me there.

www.steeltown.co.uk
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