The Liverpudlian singer-songwriter pursued his creative dream against the odds of a Northern Council Estate. Sheer grit, determination and the unshakable belief that he’d make it have propelled him onto the UK music scene. But it’s still far from easy. Ahead of his new album, No Names – out July 3rd – Ian Prowse reflects on his life as a working-class musician.
“Where you are from and how you grew up bleeds into everything you do in later life. I’m from a council house cul-de-sac street in Little Sutton on the southern banks of the River Mersey. We were the first family to move into the house and my Mum & Dad both still live there. My life was so proletarian, so normal that it never occurred to me to think about it. I knew the people on the private housing estate across the A41 had more money than us and seemed to have better things but that just seemed the way it was.
I didn’t think about any of it until I saw The Jam at Liverpool Empire in 1978. Watching Weller’s righteous fury as he sang about my life changed everything, it’s never been unchanged either, the journey I’ve undertaken began that night.
After I saw The Jam and realised what my life path was I needed to learn the guitar but there were no musical instruments in our house, or our family. There was nowhere to go to begin my journey, it was all pretty dead end. You either go and work in the factories as unskilled labour like my mum and dad did or you have no money and therefore no car, no holidays, no quality of life.
But the Punk/New wave revolution was so inspiring that I chose to start a long and difficult relationship with the poverty line in order to pursue my dream, a dream I kept from my parents for fear they’d kibosh it (when they got home from the pub).
[I’m grateful for my working-class background and upbringing because] I was a direct beneficiary of the great gains working-class people had won for themselves after the war. Our council house was a wonderful place to be brought up, a Liverpool overspill street teeming with kids my age. An NHS to fix my broken bones, stitch me up, cure my viruses. A comprehensive education and never ending supply of new schoolmates, and girls everywhere!
Football, every last thing in our street was about football. The week of the derby a madness would enthrall us all until the game was finished, then whoever was defeated (red or blue) would basically go missing for a week to escape the torture of losing. [It was] that important.
My music is grounded in all that, those people, that sense of community, that hard reality. Violence lurks always, you instinctively learn how best to avoid it.
The reality of it for me was having a lovely little house with a garden provided for by the state and loads of other children my age to play with was the greatest gift my country ever did for me.
And it was a socialist gift, my entire politics are based around that everyone should have what we had, and more. [If I had a magic wand] I’d make private health and private education illegal at midnight tonight!
The challenges have been immense and often mentally debilitating. Having no money and struggling to get some whilst keeping your reason to be here on earth alive was like trudging through treacle for a long time.
To be honest I’ve no idea how I kept going, one knock back after another. I just believed in myself and put one foot in front of the other, often wincing through the pain of it all. You could reasonably call it being demented.
But it all came around and worked out for me, as I just knew it would. I can easily locate that sense of defiance if things get a bit tricky now.”
neunmagazine.com 