The idea is the most important thing, not the equipment you use to execute it. You can build something new or create your career with next to nothing.
“We may not have had two shirt buttons to rub together, but the one and a half we had, we put to good use.”
This is Jim Reid of the Jesus and Mary Chain, from the book Never Understood. This autobiographical tome is told in alternating paragraphs by Jim and his brother and bandmate William. Together, they tell a perceptive, wise and surprisingly amusing story of the band. Never Understood is also in part a wonderful story of resourcefulness, of making the most that could possibly be made from meagre resources.
Learning to make the most from very little is a subject close to my heart. I have always believed it is best to learn any craft through using the cheapest and most readily available materials or tools. If you want to be a writer, a cheap ballpoint pen and a basic notepad or the back of an envelope are a perfectly good way to get out what is in your head.
As a beginner in pretty much anything, having the most expensive equipment on the market will not help you to learn how to do the thing you wish to learn in the most effective way. Learning to work within and around limited parameters can be invaluable.
Whether as a beginner or as someone who has amassed experience and skill, having the most expensive equipment is no substitute for having a good idea and being able to execute it in a halfway effective manner. The phrase “all gear and no idea” is both real and wise.
What matters is the idea, the inspiration and the energy. Not the equipment with which you execute it.
Offensive, loud, screeching
A generous amount of Never Understood is devoted to the pre-Mary Chain days of the Brothers Reid, including their extended period of unemployment in early 1980s East Kilbride.
Before they ever made a note of music, William and Jim Reid had a clear and original idea of the music they wanted to make. Over the course of what might have felt to them like an aeon on the dole, they arrived at their idea of the ultimate band. Jim Reid describes this idea:
“The actual sound of the band was something me and William didn’t even need to talk about very much. We were both very much into sixties garage rock but also sixties pop, and we wondered why no one had ever previously tried to put the most offensive, loud, screeching guitars over the top of the bittersweet melodies of the Shangri-Las. We couldn’t understand why no one had done that before, but it gave us the opportunity – the thought was there between us was this a gap in the market, but we’d need the right technology to deliver on our vision.”
It is all very well to have a vision while on the dole in early 1980s East Kilbride. Making that idea a reality is something else again. Looking back, the Reid brothers can see that their younger selves must have seemed delusional in their unrelenting commitment to making their idea real. But make it real they somehow did.
The opportunity to obtain “the right technology” came when their father was made redundant from his job at Caterpillar. He gifted Jim and William £300 each, representing a large chunk of his redundancy cheque. Their father’s dream was that his unemployed sons might use these funds to learn to drive, purchase cars and generally invest in learning a traditional trade that might give rise to a traditional career.
However, as William Reid notes:
“Motors and driving lessons were the last thing on our minds. We bought a Portastudio – which did ultimately prove to be a very wise investment, although my da at that point could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.”
Their father was heartbroken at seeing they had spent a huge chunk of the money on what he saw as merely “a tape recorder” (which should in his view have only cost around £15).
This early model of the Portastudio was prone to frequent breakdowns, requiring costly repairs. But it could just about do what they needed it to do. They augmented this unreliable piece of tech with purchases from cash-strapped mates of a cheap second-hand electric guitar (a Gretsch Tennessean, procured for £20) and a very cheap guitar effects pedal (a Shin-ei Fuzz Wah pedal, which set them back a tenner).
Learning to work within the limitations of cheap and sometimes treacherous equipment will always teach you the most valuable lessons in finding a way to make your idea a reality against all odds.
The Reid brothers’ paltry selection of malfunctioning and/or second-hand equipment was both just enough to make their dream band a reality and exactly what they needed to begin what would become a (relatively) successful career as musicians.
I will now return to the full version of the Jim Reid quotation with which I opened this post, and from which I took its title:
“We’d essentially bought our career for thirty quid. We may not have had two shirt buttons to rub together, but the one and a half we had, we put to good use. The Gretsch Tennessean, the Shin-ei pedal and the Portastudio from my dad’s redundancy payment, that was our roadmap out of hell.”
The idea is all that you need. What do you truly need to help you execute your idea?
May you be nothing but kind today, to others and to yourself.
May today be nothing but kind to you and yours.
IMAGE
- The Jesus And Mary Chain Wave-Gotik-Treffen 2018 24 via Wikimedia Commons.
MJCarty 
