One Can Make a Difference (18 page)

The first song I ever wrote was called “I Lost My Little Girl.” I can't remember now why I wrote it. I used to play with my mates at first. Later, John and I got together. He asked me if I'd like to play with his group, The Quarrymen, and when I said I would he put me on lead guitar. It was a disaster. I just froze up and completely botched the whole thing. It was so awful I made a determination never to play lead again, and I only recently got the courage to! I played lead guitar on some recordings in the sixties, but never live until recently. If you play lead, you have a big responsibility. I switched to bass guitar!

I remember the first applause we got. We were playing at the Wilson Hall in Liverpool, this large church hall kind of place, a long room, lots of people had come to listen to the bands. We weren't the only band on that night; there were a few more than us. We didn't do badly. It was gratifying to have rehearsed, practice we called it, until you had it right.

John and I would try out songs on my dad. My dad always had a funny take on things. We played him “She Loves You,” and my dad said, “Son, it's very nice.” He really did like it. “But,” he said, “there's enough of these Americanisms around these days, can't you sing ‘Yes, yes, yes' instead of ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah?'” “No, dad!”

If you have talent, you can teach yourself. We all did. If you have a big enough passion for music you can always beg or borrow (don't steal!) an instrument from somewhere and get a basic chord book, if you are learning the guitar, it's all the tuition you need.You can do a lot with that. Listen to a record, take the words down, and practice. My bedroom was my practice room. If you teach yourself, you are less likely to be doing what everyone else does. Your personal taste will lead you. Lots of people who can't play the piano but who fool around on it come across something just plonking about. Someone will ask, “What chord is that?” And they'll say, “I don't know, but it sounds good. Let's make a song!” That's how we did it. No Beatle ever had a lesson, and almost none of the people in my field can even read music. If you put a sheet of music in front of me to this day, it doesn't mean anything to me. I don't associate the dots on the page with what I do!

I think music is a magical thing and learning it teaches you a lot about self-discovery. You can learn from your mistakes, and your passion for it can actually lead you down a path no one could have taken you to. Often John and I would be mucking about and we'd discover a chord quite by accident and build a whole song around it. It's very exciting to do that. The opening track on my new record has a bit like that in it. I don't know anything about the mandolin other than it's a lovely instrument.

It's not like a guitar, it's tuned like a violin, and so I had to go back to the basics like when I was sixteen again to learn to play it. I found a couple of chords I liked. One was off the Richter scale, probably the most interesting chord I've ever found. I've put that in this new song about dancing. When I was putting it together last Christmas, my little daughter Beatrice kept running into the room and dancing to it every time. I fell in love with that song because of her. That's two passions in one, music and this lovely little girl.

STELLA McCARTNEY

Creating with a Conscience

I am deeply fond of Stella McCartney because she is her mother's girl, kind
and caring. Now with children of her own, she imbues them with the values
she inherited from the woman known as “Angel for the Animals,” Linda
McCartney. But Stella is also a powerful force in the world of fashion. She
may have been born with a silver spoon in her mouth, but she has made
her own way, rising to the pinnacle of the fashion industry. What makes her
clothes special is not only her relaxed, natural style but her steadfast, ethical
decision never to use fur or leather in anything she designs, even shoes.
In 1997, just two years out of school, she was appointed creative director
of Chloe. Karl Lagerfeld greeted her appointment to his old position as an
affront to his trademark leather pants and his old-fashioned focus on fur.
Snarled Karl, “Let's hope she's as gifted as her father.”

“Unstoppable Stella,” as she's known in the fashion business, has proved
that she is indeed. In 2001, she launched her own label under her name and
the applause hasn't quieted yet. Her clothes are snatched up by those in the
public spotlight, from Scarlett Johansson and Kate Moss to Gwyneth Paltrow
and Madonna, who commissioned Stella to design some of her costumes for her
Reinvention Tour. And Stella has not only won a VH1/Vogue Designer of
the Year Award, but the line of clothing she designed for European mega-store
H&M sold out on the day it hit the racks. Similar gob-smackingly successful
collaborations have followed. The world loves Stella McCartney designs, and
I suspect you will love Stella.

I
t's funny really, but I've been drawn to fashion from the moment, when I was about three years old, that a pair of glittery platform boots mesmerized me from my mother's wardrobe. I remember sitting on the floor, staring at them in awe. I'm sure I tried to put them on! I designed my very first piece of clothing, a jacket, when I was twelve. It was an eighties-style, slightly blouson jacket; the sort of dirty pink I'm known for on the inside and a dark navy, touching on black, on the outside. I was really happy with the result, and the jacket felt good to wear. In fact, I still think of it fondly. I can't remember if anyone commented on what I had done, but no one threw rotten tomatoes at me when I wore it.

When I was thirteen-ish and at school in England, it came time to determine a course of study. Would I be more likely to end up selling mutual funds, dissecting beetles, or painting frescos? Should I choose courses in the arts and design or business? I was really afraid of getting to be thirty and not knowing what I wanted to do, so I decided then to become a designer. Once I set my mind, I stuck to it.When I was fifteen, I managed to get an internship with Christian Lacroix in Paris. That was really amazing! He was preparing his first couture show, and there I was, mostly making coffee, counting buttons, threading shoelaces, but I was in the thick of it. It was ridiculously glamorous. And I was able to attend lots of incredible shows.The whole thing was a life-changing experience. Later, after my studies at St. Martins College of Art & Design, I was asked to come back to Paris. Luckily, I already had the confidence that is inevitable for a person to gain when you've worked at that level of Parisian couture, if only as an intern.

I grew up with two of the most famous ethical vegetarians in the world. Both my parents have been active with PETA for years, so I've seen the films and photographs of what animals go through for the most frivolous reasons, which, of course, includes fashion. Being raised that way, knowing that cruelty to animals was something to actively avoid, had an impact on my career. Before accepting a job with Chloe, I was offered so many different labels to work with, but what I've seen done to cattle killed for their hides and to raccoons and mink and other animals, made me say no if not using fur and leather was an issue. In the beginning, I might have thought, “Oh, god, I would really like to work in that house. I wish I wasn't so stubborn,” but I knew I could never be happy selling out my integrity. I think I've said “no” more than I've said “yes” when faced with a chance to advance myself at the expense of my beliefs. I'm actually quite proud that I stuck to my decision never to touch the products of such outright cruelty. In fact, I sent the PETA video to every designer with an appeal to please stop using fur, at least. Karl Lagerfeld, rather predictably, felt he needed to return the video to me! Dolce & Gabbana were disgracefully rude about it, too. I frankly don't think most designers have the balls to watch animals writhing and being slaughtered; they don't want to admit they're responsible for such suffering.

What I find so bizarre is that some designers think they are so punk and rock when they use fur and leather, but there's nothing modern about it. In fact, most of the time, they are working furiously to make it all seem like something else. They take a beautiful fox and shave it and paint it pink and make it look like cotton corduroy. Or they take the skin that looked so amazing on the back of an animal and dye it green and make it look like plastic or some sort of print. How much saner to work with interesting technological creations if you want a modern look? You can mix linen and metal, for instance. There are a million fabulous fabrics: I can work with organic fibers in my collection; fabrics that can breathe, ones that let the heat out or hold it in; fabrics that move when your body moves, handwoven fibers. It's very exciting.

My designs are inspired by beautiful fabric, the amazing colors in a flower, a piece of music sometimes, a piece of embroidery. And me? I have been inspired by the goodness of my parents, I'm inspired by my husband and children, and I'm constantly inspired by the people I work with now. They're young and excited and cool and I admire them a lot. My rule in fashion is to have no rule in fashion. My rules in life are to be confident, be true to yourself, work hard, don't take yourself too seriously, and, most importantly, as my mother used to tell me when I was bullied at school or someone said I wasn't that great, “Don't let the turkeys get you down.”

MARK McGOWAN

Making Purposeful Laughter

What would make a man roll a nut with his nose to the British prime minister's
residence, walk around town in only his shorts and a snorkel, or wheel
himself to Scotland in a shopping cart? In the case of Mark McGowan, it
would be self-discovery and a desire to bring art to the masses.

I've always been drawn to people who engage others, who never forget that, no
matter how far from each other our jobs or circumstances draw us, a sense of community,
of being part of a bigger conversation, is important. That interest led me to
talk to Mark McGowan, to find out what made him tick. And his story doesn't
disappoint. Mark grew up in a rundown housing project in Peckham, England. As
a youngster, he says, he would walk by the Camberwell College of Arts and dream
of being a student there. It was a dream he didn't think would ever come true.After
all, he was slipping into homelessness and would eventually end up “living rough”
on the streets in any hole he could find.The slide was long, but thanks to a strange
twist, not only did Mark McGowan end up at Camberwell College of Arts, he
also now teaches a fine arts course there. I chose him to be part of this book because
his story relates not only how Mark was spurred to overcome powerful odds, but
how he used a cheeky style, and a tongue stuck firmly in his cheek, to inspire
others to think about social issues that had often been invisible to them.

M
y ordeal was like that of Sisyphus, pushing a boulder up a steep slope. Growing up, I found I had an addictive personality. So much so that I eventually became addicted to heavy drugs, alcohol, and anything else that was on offer.

I seemed to turn up at every insane party from London to Ibiza, and I didn't seem able to stop the downward slide. There was nothing to motivate me to pull myself up, so I didn't. I would wake up late at night sweating, having passed out somewhere, shivering in some hole in the wall in an alley. I would drag myself out and swallow whatever warm dregs I found in my beer bottle, then crawl to the nearest bus stop and look for cigarette butts. I'd extract whatever tobacco I could find and roll it into something to smoke then crawl back into my hole. That was my life. In the end, I just lost my mind.

That's how I wound up in a mental hospital. I stayed there for eight years. In the hospital, we were given art therapy. Art was a great help. It gradually woke me up to what I wanted to do, to be. It gave me that most important rope to pull me out of the well: a sense of purpose. Nothing beats that. Taking one small step at a time, I tried to express myself through painting.

I had to overcome the fears I had about myself, who I was, et cetera. Performance art seemed a good way to do that, to confront my own feelings. I discovered I was harboring a lot of shame, and that shame can give you anger. I didn't want to go around feeling angry, but with art, I learned, you can express that anger, go with it, and overcome it. Art works at all sorts of different levels. I now know I can't go out on the street thinking I'm going to change people with my ideas about discrimination, snobbism, waste, injustice, and so on. I have to open them up by opening myself up to them. My very first public performance consisted of taking my shirt off and walking across the street to buy a postage stamp. I was wearing swim shorts and a snorkel, so everyone stared. My body shape wasn't the best. I had a bit of a belly. But it was a breakthrough. I saw that people were embarrassed for me and that I was able to transfer what I was feeling about my appearance to them.

I've done all sorts of pieces since then, and been covered on the BBC and CNN and all over the world.There is a point to every piece. Part of it is how you set things up, getting the observers to think, to figure out what that point is. Engaging people, taking them out of themselves. It's an insane world with heavy issues pressing on us, so I try to find different ways to pose issues to people. I've stood for eight hours in the corner of an art gallery with a dunce's hat on and I've lain down in a doorway so that people had to use me as a doormat.You always get a reaction. Art is often insular, controlled, exclusive, but I can bring it to a far bigger audience, go out into the street and engage more than just those people who would feel comfortable or interested in going into a gallery.