Interview with Martin Fitzgibbon

Hello Poetry Lovers

Welcome back to the Talk Show Studio!

(Rapturous applause).

Yes, you should be excited, PL’s because I’m thrilled to introduce our very special guest talented musician Martin Fitzgibbon!

(Standing ovation. Dobby scowls)

Our esteemed guest glides on elegantly

Thank you, num, don’t mind if I do!

It’s my pleasure to be here.
Home was a council estate on the outskirts of London where I enjoyed a throughly happy childhood.

I left school at fifteen to pursue my musical ambitions and took a job in an engineering factory, whilst waiting for fame and fortune to arrive. Still waiting !

Well, she er – looks ready to pounce!

I can’t remember a time when music wasn’t in my life. My Mum had a fine singing voice and when I was thirty something, I discovered that she could also play the piano.

I’d booked a hotel as a wedding anniversary present for my parents and in the lounge was a grand piano. Unprompted, Mum sat down and started to play ! Who knew ? Certainly not me, it was astonishing.

Singing was something we did around the house and at family gatherings. I sang solo in church and school choirs, then later in bands, I still do.

Singing is joyous and I’d encourage anyone at any level of ability, to join a choir. My Dad (who couldn’t sing a note bless him) loved music and had been a semi professional dance band drummer just after the war. I never saw him play, but we had some old drums in the cupboard under the stairs. I would dig them out and most likely annoy the neighbours by making a horrendous noise.

I started having drum lessons from the age of eight, practised hard and gradually got better, although the improved quality of my playing was probably lost on my long suffering neighbours.

I was at school in the sixties and like most kids of my age it was The Beatles in particular, who changed the landscape, not just of music but fashion and lifestyle too.

I was lucky to already be playing drums and consequently in a good place to take advantage of the musical explosion that followed.

Over the years I’ve been influenced by many people of excellence in different musical genres, but if I had to single out one band or artist it would have to be The Beatles.

To understand their impact you had to experience what had gone before and to know how monochrome that post war world was, not only in music, but in every aspect of teenage life.

I played drums in the original Rocky Horror Show at The Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square in 1973 with Tim Curry, Richard O’Brien and some other amazing people.

I stayed with the show for eighteen months or so while it journeyed from an experimental production seating sixty three people, to the beginning of a worldwide phenomenon.

2023 was the fiftieth anniversary of the show which I thought worthy of noting in some form. Everybody in mainstream media told me it was a great idea, but typically nothing from them materialised, so before the deadline passed I decided it was down to me.

For years, close friends had tried to persuade me to write a memoir and finally I did, with Rocky Horror taking as it were, centre stage. It was a tight deadline and I wrote at every opportunity but managed to deliver a manuscript on time.

I had no intention of writing a novel, but when I was publicising the memoir, people in the industry were very persuasive and I was encouraged to do it.

They all said I should get writing and thanks to events outside of my control I now have time to do that.

I’m not sure if I will ever play live again, but I’m still recording music and have a charity single released on September 21st to coincide with world Alzheimer’s day.

I’m trying to raise awareness and funds and have released “Everybody’s Hero” for World Alzheimer’s Day on September 21st. This is a very personal song about friendship. All money raised from downloads will go to The Alzheimer’s Society UK.

Dementia touches everyone’s lives in some form or other. We all know someone who’s been lost to this disease or is perhaps suffering at the moment.

Best is certainly not a question of size. Some of my all time favourite gigs have been in small venues. I guess it’s a two way thing, where the closeness to the stage has the band feeding off the audience and vice versa.

The flip side to that is I’ve been more nervous playing to a small indifferent crowd….you can see the whites of their eyes….than a large festival gig of fifty to eighty thousand people.

Luckily there have been so many fun times and places it’s impossible to narrow it down to just one.  

The worst is also a tough question to answer, but it would have been early in my career when I took anything to earn money and try to get a foot in the door.

When I started out, testosterone fuelled fights were frequent and sometimes spilled over onto the stage which wasn’t fun.

I played a series of scary night clubs in London, where the clientele were mainly large besuited men with scars and very broken noses. I made sure not to knock over anyone’s drink, or stare at their young “daughters” for fear of my health.

There were others, but the winner has to be a brief residency I played at a strip club in Soho. It was just me and a guy on a keyboard.

As a young male it was interesting, but even so I was relieved when we were replaced by the cheaper option of a tape recording. The girls were generally great and looked after this baby faced kid, but musically it was beyond dire.

And you’ll be surprised to learn that nobody was there to listen to the music.

Our esteemed guest shuffles awkwardly over the baklava. Dobby is hovering by.

Well, actually, Heather. Dobby and I are going for a jam session and er ……

Our esteemed guest legs it with Dobby. Fast.

Wasn’t Martin Fitzgibbon a wonderful and fascinating guest, PL’s?!

(Cheers and standing ovation)

Do treat yourselves to Martin’s excellent first hand account of that phenomenon The Rocky Horror Show. A marvellous absorbing book, and available on Amazon now!

Also look out for Martin’s single Everybody’s Hero. A beautifully put together song and for a wonderful cause. Released on Bandcamp, please click the link below

https://martinfitzgibbon.bandcamp.com/track/everybodys-hero?fbclid=IwdGRjcAM6R8VleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHq8IdS61yEdJATPz4lN2ncMWEuxXzT_Kg9R6Yo8DIEk_vy8eQmPnuxJOB0kg_aem_oplycVd8L899zFy0cDdksw

If you’re able to share this song, someone will benefit. It may be someone you know, or who once knew you.

Dobby runs a bit wild in those jam sessions! I hope Martin can take her on!

Thanks for visiting the Talk Show, Poetry Lovers. We’ll be back with more poetry action real soon….