Memories: Rock & Roll Slippering

In 1957, Graham Nash (later of the Hollies and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young fame) skipped school for the day to queue to buy tickets for a Bill Haley concert. He was spotted by a teacher and the inevitable happened ... as he recalls in his autobiography.

The next day at school, after morning announcements, I got called to the principal’s office. Something was up, and I knew I was fucked. You never got called to the principal’s office for praise. E. G. Simons was a tough son of a bitch and students did everything to stay out of his way. While I was standing there, one of my teachers, Mr. Lewis, came in, and he wasn’t looking happy to see me. Turns out Lewis had ratted me out to Mr. Simms.

“Mr. Nash, you weren’t out sick yesterday, were you?” Simms growled. It dawned on me right away. They knew. Better not lie. “No,” I mumbled.

“You were in the queue, waiting for concert tickets.”

“Uh-huh.”

As it happened Mr. Lewis had also been in Manchester on some personal business and saw me outside the Odeon. And of course that prick just had to report me.

Mr. Simms fixed me with one of his most ferocious stares. “You know what happens now, don’t you?”

So I got slippered, which was a plimsoll on your ass while you were bent over the desk. The fucker hit me ten times. I’d been slippered before, it was no big deal, but this time I got madder than hell. The so-called crime didn’t deserve this kind of punishment, and each hit made me angrier and angrier. I hadn’t talked back or disrupted class, or cheated on an exam. I didn’t murder anybody for fuck’s sake. All I did was follow a passion I had. Why didn’t they recognize that? Why were they making such an example of me?

Afterwards I staggered back to class, where everybody knew I’d been slippered by Simms. Kids were whispering, giggling. I was embarrassed, sure, but sitting there I started to seethe with resentment. The injustice of it all! They had dismissed my passion as if it were something offensive.

Extracted from Wild Tales, a Rock & Roll Life by Graham Nash (Penguin, 2014).

 Picture credit: Darrien.

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