My dad was one of the reason I became a musician - he and my mum sent me to keyboard lessons aged five. I hated it. I had more lessons during different stages of my childhood and hated them all, except for the out of school lessons I got from the school music teacher because I liked her. Still, I was always ready to learn but not often ready to be taught. Something my dad suffers from himself but didn't allow for in me. ;) Thus we were at loggerheads some of the time, because he pushed me very hard.
These days I'm a better singer than a musician, but that was one area in which he didn't encourage or push me. Unlike my mother, he didn't actively discourage me from singing either, but I think it has taken til now for him to get the idea that I am probably quite good at it. If he ever comes to a gig (as he says he will) we will find out. But I hope he would be pleased that the stuff I like singing is the stuff he first introduced me to.
I could pick a ton of songs that remind me of him - "Hotel California" by The Eagles, "The Boys are Back in Town" by Thin Lizzy, "Cavatina" (Theme from The Deer Hunter), but the song that most sticks in my mind is "She's Leaving Home" by the Beatles.
This is because when I left home (aged twentyish) to live with my no account ex husband (back in the days when he was merely my boyfriend and I hadn't realised he was a no account), my Dad played me this song in the car on the way to the train station. He wasn't happy about me leaving home at all and had made that quite clear via a range of emotional speeches ever since the idea was discussed, I was unhappy that he had made that quite clear and was crying because he was still making it quite clear even at that late juncture, and my mum was telling him off for continuing to upset everyone by playing the song. It was all a bit traumatic. Family life - it's a cracker and no mistaking. ;) It still makes me cry even though this was all seventeen years ago and the family I left behind then doesn't exist anymore.
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