Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Music and Mental Health
02:44 The Early Influence of Music
12:50 The Songs That Saved Dave
19:11 The Clash and Personal Connection
25:29 Nick Cave and the Struggles of Addiction
30:43 The Impact of Music on Mental Health
36:15 Personal Struggles and Professional Challenges
41:24 Overcoming Addiction and Anxiety
46:51 The Creative Process and Its Frustrations
49:28 The Healing Power of Music
52:45 Finding Hope and Support in Recovery

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Welcome to the Music and Trauma podcast where Chris and Teri Potter are asking artists, musicians and guests what are the 'Three Songs that Saved You?' and exploring what matters to them about music and mental health.

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Okay, so I'm going to begin. I want to say how lucky we are to have the wonderful man here, Dave Norgrove. That's for a lot of different reasons, which will unfold as we're talking, I know for sure, because Dave's had such an interesting and colourful life and has plenty to say around the topic of mental health. I'm sure you probably know by now that I'm Teri and that's Chris over there. And this is Dave. And then I'm going to hand over to you, Mr P. to give Dave.

a wonderful introduction. Yeah I've got a little introduction here. I first met Dave many moons ago when we were both in different bands playing in around the Guildford area. He was in a band called The Body Politic who played hundreds of shows, had a couple of successful releases.

Aside from the music, Dave's had a long and rewarding career in the NHS, mostly in and around mental health. In more recent years, he's come back to the music and has been writing, recording, playing shows again. So welcome, Dave, and thanks for coming down. Thanks very much. Yeah, it's great to be here. It's really good. Amongst very good friends. Good to have you. Lovely to have you here. I mean, I have to do this thing because it's become quite bog standard for our Music and Trauma podcast, Dave, so bear with us. Yeah.

I go around and I ask everybody for an emotion word just to see how we're all feeling. I'm going to be straight up with you and I'm going to go first to set the scene. I'm actually quite anxious in a good way though, because you have so much experience around mental health and you've had so much experience in the workplace around mental health, but also your own story and some of which you'll share today. The anxiety is positive, but it's definitely present. Chris, do you want to go before Dave goes? Yeah, I'm relaxed actually, more relaxed than I have been.

previous podcasts actually. Yeah. Yeah, I feel pretty comfortable. Wonderful. And Dave? Well I'm surprisingly relaxed which is quite unusual for me but we'll see how we get on. At the moment I'm feeling good, you know, happy and relaxed to be here and not particularly anxious at all really. That's great. Good.

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And I'm sure I won't be in a few moments as we get into it all. Part of that is, is my tummy going to rumble again? There might be some of that from there. That's a theme, isn't it? It is a theme. Breakfast, then tummy rumbling. Thank you, Dave, because when we asked you to do this, you were so quick to respond yes. You know, you've been on our list for a very long time and we're really looking forward to this episode and this excavation, so to speak. We're going to kick off with some pretty easy questions. And it is we do have a first question that we ask everyone and that...

is when did music first become important to you? Well, I had my first guitar when I was nine years old. Even round about that time, I was already singing in the church choir in West London where we used to live near Hounsler. So I was singing in the church choir and I didn't like school so I used to look forward to choir practice and I used to look forward, believe it or not, to singing in church and weddings and things like that. So that type of music was an important part of my life.

Even at that age, nine, 10 years old. And then I suppose as I got into my early teens, I started to discover that there was more going on. Songs I heard on the radio. The earliest memory for me is hearing Bob Dylan for the first time and thinking, hello, this man is singing poetry. And that's gotta be something special. And listening to him, we were talking earlier and you were talking about poetry and how much that mattered to you at school.

You know, how you would go to your teachers and discuss. Yeah, I used to take these poetry books down from my father's bookshelf and open it up and start to read it. Not necessarily to be able to understand what I was reading, but like the sound and the feel of the words. that's something that's always been the most important thing to me. Yeah. I don't struggle too much to understand exactly what they're saying, because I think a lot of the time they didn't know what they were saying. It's all open to interpretation anyway. Yeah. Your lyrics are so powerful in every single one of your songs. So it's obviously been a major...

driving force behind your music I would say. I've always enjoyed particularly poetry I've never been a great one for reading novels I read a lot of biographies but I still will actually go and buy anthologies or particular books of poetry that have been recommended to me an actual physical book it's nice to have. Yeah take it off the page. So music and poetry have always been very important to me.

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So going back to those years, like nine years old and the school choir, being able to sing in those moments, you went to your teenage years. I'm just wondering what would you cite as your major influences? You mentioned Bob Dylan, but... Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? I got to about the age of 14 or so and there were bands like... will relate to this, the first time I heard Black Sabbath, first time I heard Machine Head by Deep Purple. Now you're talking my language. Now you are talking his language.

those two albums. And then Thin Lizzy, I became a Thin Lizzy fanatic for about two years. What was it about that genre of music? Well, do you know what? And I've only thought about this in recent years. So Phil Lynott who was the Thin Lizzy man, I mean, he was a real poet. He was, wasn't he? Irishman, you know. And when I used to sit down and listen to Thin Lizzy, I could imagine the situation that he was singing about, you know, he puts yourself in that little three and a half, four minute segment of what he's talking about, you know, that sort of folk.

There's Gaelic sort of background, like Whiskey in the Jar, you know what mean? It's quite folky, lot of the early Thin Lizzy stuff. I think I've always been a bit of a folky at heart, unfortunately. Well, it's all about the stories as well, isn't it? Of course, like you say, you get into a narrative in that kind of music, don't you? Yeah, so that was definitely my earlier stuff. Bob Dylan, Thin Lizzy, listening to Deep Purple, listening to... yeah, gosh, having to listen to Meatloaf that my sister was constantly playing.

Still remembering virtually every word from Bat Out Of Hell. I must admit I used think, wow, this guy can sing. But I didn't really particularly like it, but I thought his voice was phenomenal. I just used to sometimes think, that's a bit too corny for my liking. Or maybe it's just because it wasn't British enough. But mind you, Bob Dylan's not British, so that's probably got nothing to do with it.

I love that. Force fed bat out of hell. brilliant. At what point did it become the right time for you to pick up the guitar and start creating? Yeah, well, I suppose I was tinkering around with the guitar very poorly, about three or four, five chords from the age of about 10, 11. And then my parents got me a couple of guitar lessons and this guy came in and I learnt a few sort of blue grassy type, fingerstyle type things. But I think after about three or four lessons, I decided to jack all that in and just go it alone, which is typical of me.

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But then it was suddenly, just before punk, was the pub rock scene, bands like Dr. Feelgood, Eddie and the Hot Rods, and I was thinking, wow, I could do that. It's not that difficult. I Wilco Johnson to me, the first time I heard Wilco Johnson, I thought, how does he do that? You know, and watching footage of him play with Dr. Feelgood just blew me away totally. Not technically that hard, what he's doing. Well, it is, but he just had a couple of things he could do really, really well, but he could just like do it. And his stage presence.

It's a very physical thing for him. and how he used that guitar as a weapon. Yeah. I was just totally in love with Wilco Johnson. When he died, I was absolutely gutted. He was a very, very brave man the way he faced up to his illness and that and how he kept going for as long as he could. But Wilco Johnson was my first hero, really, my first guitar hero. Was he? Because I thought, well, I can do that. I don't want to stand on stage and play half our guitar solos. I just want to be able to communicate something with the guitar rather than... But interestingly, and going back to what you were saying a little while ago,

you had the confidence immediately to say, can do that. So that's really interesting to me. Well, some of my generation, particularly the age that I am, punk came out, a lot of it was rubbish, let's face it, looking back to it now, but some of it was really good, but not technically difficult. And so for an aspiring guitar player, singer, after perhaps listening to, you know, early Zeppelin and stuff like that, and listening to someone like Jimmy Page and thinking, well, I mean, I'll never be able to...

Yeah, how are you ever going to get there? How are you going to get there? But then suddenly hearing Steve Jones with the Sex Pistols just nail it all the time. Perfect timing, know. So Wilco Johnson, Steve Jones. Yeah. I just thought they were just, you know, phenomenal. That whole thing was a of a myth about the punk thing being you didn't need to be able to play. In a sense, it was true. But for instance, there's some amazing playing on that Sex Pistols record. there is. It's the timing, isn't it? Yeah, is.

It's the feel and the timing. It's feel and the timing. Yeah, which is just phenomenal. So what did you start writing about? So then the Buzzcocks came along, OK? All of a sudden, here was punk rock, but with lyrics about love and girls. Suddenly it wasn't about politics or the establishment. It was about feelings that you've got about people. And I suddenly thought, well, this is right up my street. OK. Here's a band that playing fast guitars and talking about...

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unrequited love at the same time or heartache and things like that right up my street. So I thought, well, if they can do it, I can do it. So I started writing little ditties about girlfriends and just feelings as a lot of teenage boys and girls do. But I think it was hearing Pete Shelley for the first time and thinking, well, if he can do it and get on top of the pops singing a song about how he shouldn't have fallen in love with somebody, then it's got to be all right, isn't it? You know, to do that.

But it's all part of the learning process, isn't it? By this stage I was like 17. Yeah, probably did my first gig when I was 18, 19. Which must have been about how old you were when I first met you. I think we must been around that time. Because was a little bit older than you. Yeah, not much. No.

changing the subject. I guess you guys were introduced through Ian right? Yeah that's right. So I've met Steve, this is Steve from The Body Politic am I going on a subject here? You carry on, this is perfect. So I met Steve, used to be a music shop in Epsom, I can't remember the name of and I remember going in there one Saturday to buy some guitar strings or look at a guitar and there was a beautifully written notice on the notice board.

and it was Steve talking about one of the former band and being very precise about the influences and he listed about six or seven bands, five of which I was into particularly at the time. So Steve and I met. Yeah. And then my mum bought some guitar strings for me from Andertons in Guildford and I told her to keep an eye out on the notice board if there were any drummers there and she came back with this tiny torn off piece of paper and it said drummer available and a phone number. No name.

It was a torn off piece of paper. So I phoned this number up and lady answered the phone. I said, I'm calling about the drummer that's available. And she said, that's Ian. I said, is that your husband? She said, no, that's my son. And that was Ian. So I must have said to him, how do we come and sort of meet up or what have you? And he said, I'm doing a gig at Ripley Village Hall with my band, Life Under One's Son. And it's the last concert we're ever going to do. Come and have a look. So Steve.

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and Steve's girlfriend at the time, Kate and I, went to see Life Under One Sun and Chris was playing bass that night. So you formed The Body Politic at that point? Yes, I remember Steve and I saying when we got in the car afterwards, well, basically what we said, well, he's a lot better than us, isn't he? But Steve and I had already started to put a few song ideas together and I had a couple of song ideas from the very first band I was in. And so we had a sort of set of about four or five songs and

I think the first time we rehearsed was in Steve's living room over near Leatherhead in Surrey. And I think Ian probably thought, yeah, they're not great musicians, but I really like their songs. So we started rehearsing and playing in village halls and that, and we were learning on the job, you see. Yeah. And that was in the January, February time. And by July, we'd started gigging. We really sort of like were thrown in at the deep end because we were playing in a club that was pretty busy and they were getting some really good bands in there.

And the guy who ran it liked us actually and used to give us loads of support supporting some really, really good bands like Doctor and the Medics, Cardiacs. I don't think we have actually supported the House Martins. So no, we played with lot of bands and we got reasonably good. And if the song wasn't any good, you know, because it doesn't go down well, so you ditch that one and try something better. So that was the beginnings of The Body Politic question. I would just like to interject for a moment because if Paul Heaton happens to be listening to this podcast, we'd love to have you on.

It's just one of my heroes. Some writing heroes. you know, why not ask? So moving on to the music and drama inquiry, the three songs that saved you. Yeah. Just one at a time. Give us a song that has helped you at some point of difficulty in the past. So, you know, when I was first asked about this, I struggled because I thought, well, there's so many different songs that I could choose from. then I thought, well, don't worry about it being cool.

just think about the songs that you actually remember from a particular time that helped you, which was exactly the remit that you gave me. And rather unusually, the first thing that came to mind was Fall to Cry by the Rolling Stones. And it was a struggle actually between that and something by Bruce Springsteen from round about the River era, because that was another time. But I decided to go with the Stones one because I have very vivid memories of how that song helped during times of anxiety and...

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sadness and confusion and all the other sorts of things that were happening to any 15, 16 year old at that time. I would have been about 15 when that record came out. I just remember falling in love with actually the whole album, which now when I listen to it, I'm not too sure about, but that particular track has for me stood the test of time.

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Unfortunately, right now we haven't been able to clear the license to play this song. When that happens, we'll update this episode to include it. In the meantime, please click on the link in the show notes to hear the song in full.

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track there's something about his voice on that track it just sucks you in. can remember sort of buying that album just on a whim yeah with my little bit of money that I used to have enough money to go and buy records you know because it's an important thing to go and buy records for me. was, me too. I couldn't do it that often but when I did I thought yeah they're really cool look at that they look so cool putting it on and thinking wow this is all a bit of mishmash of different styles that I'm not necessarily into you know having sort of recently just listened to things like

Dylan and Zeppelin and this was really my introduction to the Rolling Stones actually. I haven't really been interested in them at all up until then. It was Jagger's voice. I just thought, wow, this guy, this is a white middle-class man and he's sounding like that. That's There's a lot of vulnerability. I've never heard that before. And the vulnerability, yeah, like you say, Teri and his voice, putting that emotion across. And for me, as a teenager from that generation, feeling sad and perhaps somebody

saying to you, you know you're a crybaby, know, or laughing at you for looking upset about something. And then somebody who you are gradually becoming to sort of idolise is suddenly saying, you know, you're a fool to cry, you know, they're telling him that he's a fool to cry, and here's this amazing guy. So it's actually pretty cool to cry if you want it to be. So you know, why can't it be cool to be a fool?

So if I was feeling down about anything or had a bad day at school or those teenage emotions I put that on and I'd feel empowered and enlivened by it's just a simple message isn't it for me It's a real pick-me-up that was that song I loved it. It's okay to feel and it's okay to cry Yeah, when you hear that song now, how does it make you feel? Exactly the same as it did all those years ago exactly the same I played it two or three times coming here this morning

and it made me feel exactly the same as it always did way back then. That's the power of music, isn't it? And a lot of that is manufactured in my own mind, I know. If I heard that song for the first time today, I might just think, that's, you know, that's a reasonably good Rolling Stones record. I like that. There's a nice key change there. But I think it's just tying in with all those memories the first time I heard it and what it meant for me at the time. I think at that point, though, it's pivotal because you absorb the music. And how would you say that song's helped you?

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As that teenage boy at that time that I was, feeling upset about something that might have happened during the day or upset about something that somebody said to me or something that happened, just thinking, well, if Mick Jagger can sing it like that, to me, you know, that makes it all okay. I just found the whole thing sort of empowering. I was in my own little world. He's talking about crying for a start, which in 1975, as an English

boy living in Guildford, you know, probably shouldn't, you know, you shouldn't be crying. But if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me. And I don't care, I'm gonna wear it on my sleeve, you Yeah, it's poor permission, isn't it? Yeah. In a nutshell, well, not so, in a very large nutshell, coconut shell. That's what that song means to me. Yeah. It saved me from myself, I suppose. Cause you might go upstairs being full of self pity, but you come away thinking, I'm good to go and face the next day or I'm cool to go downstairs and...

finish that argument I was having with dad or something, you know. In your adolescence, when you're going through your teenage years, you feel everything so much more prolifically than you do any other time of your life. Well, maybe as a small child, but there's so much intensity around young people and trying to understand and trying to figure out who we are and what it's all about. So I see more and more in young people today the idea of how much music matters to them. And somebody said to me recently, they're not listening to music like we used to. And I'm like, you just don't hear it because they've got their headphones on.

but they're totally absorbing the music. It certainly helps our Eden. I'm sure that's universal and I'm sure it's something that will continue. Have you taken any creative inspiration from that song, do you think? Do think it's affected your writing in any way or maybe the way you deliver a song? I don't think as a writer maybe, but I think maybe almost even subconsciously it's the way Mick Jagger puts that emotion into his voice. an aspiring singer, you can't fail to be...

inspired by that. The way it comes out would probably be nothing like, you know, he's doing it. You get inspired in your own way and you channel it in your own way, don't you? It's that key moment in a way, isn't it? Teri says the connection between the singer and the song and the listener getting that across in the right way. Absolutely. So we've got this all asked about today. And it's all good. What's your song number two, Dave? Song number two. Well, here we go in a complete...

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change of genre. Along came The Clash, so they were one of the first punk bands. Their first album was probably a little bit, well I loved it but it was pretty shouty. But then all of a sudden they started to really develop as songwriters. And their front man was Joe Strummer, who's sadly no longer with us. A wonderful guy, went on after The Clash to do great things with the Mescaleros and stuff like that. So Mick Jones, who was not the front man but the other guitar player, he sings this song and he also wrote this song. And it's a true story.

about a friend of his who was on the wrong side of the law, unfortunately. And I remember hearing it at the time and just thinking, wow, I just love everything about this song. It's a feel thing again, you know? I mean, I was about as far removed from the situation that this song is singing about as I could ever be. A fairly middle-class boy living in Guildford in Surrey, and this song is written about kids living in South London in the mid-70s getting on the wrong side of the law. You know, I would never have mixed with people like that.

but it was probably a big romantic thing around the story of the song. I just used to get completely lost in this song with Mick Jones' voice, what he was singing, and then that message, stay free. know, stay free. Don't feel as if you're constrained in any way. Let's give it a listen. Yeah, stay free by the clash.

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Unfortunately, right now we haven't been able to clear the license to play this song. When that happens we'll update the episode to include it. In the meantime, please click on the link in the show notes to hear the song in full.

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Yeah, interesting. I got a different relationship with The Clash because I loved the first record. And then it came to the second record and it kind of, I don't know, somehow, I don't know, if I'm being totally honest at the time, it sort of went over my head and I came back to it later years, got into the later albums. But yeah, at the time I remember being madly disappointed that the second record wasn't exactly the same as the first one. The first album was very much of the time.

It was very much a punk record and it very much captured that sound. Whereas this record, I believe, was produced by a guy called Sandy Perlman, who was producing bands like Blue Oystercult and bands like that, he? And a lot of people said it was too sort of Americanized and too polished. But I actually love it. But I know a lot of people, they don't rate that second album, which is called Give Them Enough Rope. Yeah, I know what you're saying. And I like the first record as well, actually. But I like the second album.

in a different way. Sure. Because I think it shows them evolving as songwriters. Yeah, yeah, definitely. In fact, in fact, a real steep evolution of songwriters. I used think, how can they be that good? Yeah, it's almost a reinvention. I can remember putting that record on the turntable, putting the first track on, which was, was it English Civil War or Tommy Gunn or something like that? think, flipping it, they sound like a stadium band, which is why a lot of people didn't like it. Can you tell me why that song's particularly special? I think a year before that, I might have been sort of thinking that

Mick Jagger was the coolest guy on the planet and then all of a sudden punk came along. All of a sudden it was not cool to like the Rolling Stones anymore. It certainly wasn't cool according to these guys. Anyway, the clash, know, although apparently, you know, they never really meant it. I just remember thinking that Mick Jones was so cool. He was a really, really good guitar player, but not so good that I could never become as good as him. And also I thought I was, I thought I could probably sing that song better than he could. Which in a way made me like it even more.

How weird is that? There's that confidence thing again. All of a sudden you go from everything's not accessible, everything's too, wow, they can do this and I can't. To suddenly look, I'm involved, I'm a part of this, I can be this. Yeah. It's the story about two friends from school. Yeah. And so what happened apparently was that they used to hang around together, go to Streatham on the bus, things like that. Tell us about Streatham on the bus, because we know Yeah, yeah. So well, that's how much I was into this song. So I thought, well, I can live out.

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this lyric. I can go to Streatham on the bus even though I live in Guildford. So myself and a friend used to get the green line from Cobham on a Sunday night to a club called the Cats Whiskers in Streatham. Which was totally not something that I would dream of doing but for some reason we ended up going there and getting up on the dance floor and dancing with all these people that were totally different from us. So that's what we did. That's what you did. And then I thought I'm living that song by doing this. But what...

Did it make you feel, Dave, that song in particular? It was a total package to me. It was a song that I could aspire to wanting to write myself, sung by a bloke who I thought was incredibly cool, singing intelligent lyrics that made sense and were telling a story. And it was just so evocative of, for me anyway, it was just all about being young. So would you say it helped you? Yeah, how would you say it helped? I suppose in a way it made me feel like I belonged to something.

Right. It made me feel like this was my time. These were people who were perhaps three or four years older than me, perhaps at the time. So I was, what, 17. They were probably 20, 21. But, you know, I really felt I could belong to this Yeah, close enough in age you could relate to them. Youth in those days was a lot more tribalised than it is now, wasn't it? I was never really a proper punk rocker, you know, but I used to think I was. But it was more about the music to me than the clothes and stuff like that.

You found your tribe through that by the sounds of I definitely did. I just totally identified with it. And how does that reflect in your music? I'd say there's definitely elements of not what I'm doing now, but there's definitely elements of the clash in some of the stuff I used to do in bands like The Body politic. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I can hear that. Because it was that much later on. So doing this chronologically, you know, I was what, 17, 18 when that record came out, 17 maybe, and I was already starting to...

formulate my own songs maybe and I was carrying that into my own material. Okay well we're onto song number three I think. Yeah do you have a number three? Yeah well. Well I know you do. Leaping forward about two or three decades, 1996 I think the next song came from an album called The Boatman's Call by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I remember this time it was actually a very happy time for me but I was struggling a bit with addiction and I was sort of in denial about it really.

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And for me, I was still young enough for it to be just like, yeah, yeah, life's a party when you're not working. And I bought this record and this particular track, which is called Brompton Oratory. Brompton Oratory is a church in London next to the Victorian Almond Museum. And it's an incredible building. From the outside, it looks very ordinary. You go inside and it's grand Italia.

And I went in there once on a weekend afternoon after being to the V &A and there was a wedding going on but we were allowed to sit in the back. Yeah. And we watched this wedding, I think it was Polish or something. And the smell of incense and the flowers and the grand architecture, I suddenly saw what he was singing about. He used to go and score drugs. I can say this because he's spoken about it in his books and on his blog that he does. Yeah. He'd go and score drugs.

and then he'd go to church afterwards. And he said that the very act of going to church and taking part in a religious service, somehow, in his own twisted way, and that's what he says, made him feel that it was okay to have done what he'd just done. And there's a line in there, I should have written it down and had it in front of me for reference, there is a line in there about the communion, and it's almost as if he's making a reference to his own drug-taking and then to having that communion.

and connecting the two and how one cancels out the other and makes it all okay. When he talks about it now in his books, he says, you know, I was totally wrong to think like that, but for me at the time, that was my addictive mind's way of justifying that that's okay. Soothing himself. Yeah. I just remember thinking it was pure genius. Even at the time when I first heard that song and that album, it's also a breakup album. So at the time he was coming towards the end of his relationship with...

PJ Harvey. So I think there's actually references to the relationship within that song as well. OK. A lot of that album is pretty miserable, really. I remember the first time, I remember listening to it the first time and going to a band practice or something. And Steve was really scathing about it. He have you heard that dreadful rubbish they just brought out? And I said, I really love it. He's feeling sorry for himself. And I was thinking, yeah, well, that's OK. He's an artist and he's obviously going through a really bad time.

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And he's also struggling with addiction and all of those things. I can't say I fully identify with it. I just think it's beautiful and poignant. Very, very clever connection. And he's quite fixated with religion as well. And it's quite clever how he's melded the two, addiction and religion, together like that for me. And it still sounds great. Let's have a listen. hear it. Brompton Oratory.

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got a random Nick Cave story relating to absolutely nothing. I was walking along the Fulham Road and I looked up and walking towards me was Nick Cave and just as we were about to pass we were still about 10 feet from each other or something a car came out of an alleyway in between us and sort of stopped across the pavement so

We were sort of stuck, him on one side of this car, me on the other side of this car, and the car was waiting to pull out into the Fulham Road. We were just sort of stuck there, kind of staring at each other for about, I don't know, it felt like about an hour, but I'm sure it was only about like 20 seconds or something. It was just one of those weird experiences. Anyway, we can edit this out. Was there any conversation? No, there was nothing. No, there was just a kind of, what I say it was, it was like a mutual kind of smirking at the situation.

Yeah, yeah, no. Just imagine that. So you know they say never meet your heroes. So I think probably out of all musicians, he's probably the one who over the years I've bordered on the obsessive about. And more so in recent years. He lost his son about six or seven years ago and he started doing this thing called the Red Hand Files where people write into him like he's become an agony uncle, okay? And they'll write into him about anything and he'll then publish...

on this Red Hand Files blog, these questions and his answers, and he's written a whole book about it. And some of it is really poignant, and he's way off talking about things and sharing his own innermost feelings of grief. He's actually lost two sons in the last few years. We watched that documentary on that, we, where he's, like you say, he's extremely open and honest Yeah, so you've seen that. So this is what he puts into his writings. And I think it's for that reason more probably than his musical body of work that I admire him as a...

public figure, you know, how back in the 80s he was like this gothic Australian Iggy Pop, you know, but then he matured and developed over the years and especially after the death of his son Arthur, he's become incredibly honest. Obviously he's more mature, he's in his mid-60s now. I just idolized the bloke really and I have met him because I went to a book signing in Brighton and I chatted for about two minutes with him. I said to him, I didn't expect you to sound so Australian, I said.

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I said, what the... I said, I don't know. said, sorry, I'm all over the shop. said, mate, and he put his arm around me. And I said, you're very tanned as well. He said, yeah, I've just come out from holiday. And he said, well, what would you like me to write in your book then, Dave? And I said, can you write, Dave and Annie, you thirsty dogs? I said, that's a line from one of your songs. I said, you've probably forgotten it. He said, yeah, I know the song you mean. I said, I've got a dog called Thirsty Dog. He said, have you? I said, yeah, but it's not a real dog. I said, it's a stone one and it stands outside our front door. He looked at me, he said...

you've got a stoned dog called Thirsty Dog. I said, yeah. He says, Jesus Christ, he said. I thought you'd appreciate something so strange like that. He said, it's been a pleasure, But it was wonderful. And he was very tactile, very pleasant, and there a lot of eye contact. And I went away thinking, that was worth 20 quid. So what was it about that particular tune for you then? It's the honesty of it. He's kept what to me is something very stark and very beautiful.

It's not a perfect song, but there's a common theme here. There's a vulnerability in his voice. I used to get lost in this song. I was drinking quite heavily at the time myself. And not realizing I was going down a bit of a slippery slope. And I remember listening to it a few times, a really bad hangover. And it made me feel a bit better. It's a particular time in my life.

just before Annie and I got married, when I was caning it quite a bit really, I was working in a mental health unit in Woking and we had a particularly difficult clientele at the time. Right. And I was doing things when I was off duty to excess, to be honest with you. Okay. To try and of block that out, you know. Yeah. Because I was still what, in my, what, mid-30s. By this stage, I'd been in the prison service for a few years and I was trying to get a transfer to a more local...

establishment nearer to where I was living at the time, but I couldn't get out of London. So I saw a job with social services in Woking and I went for it. And it was a mental health hostel. at the time when I started, we had a group of clients, most of whom had been in Brookwood Hospital, which was a big old Victorian hospital.

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And was round about the time a lot of these places were closing down and these people were being placed into community settings. they were either being placed into what we call group homes, so managed settings where they'd be living on their own but under supervision. Or they'd be in hospitals that were fully staffed and it tended to be the more dependent patients that were in those places. So I was there in one of these places. As a mental health nurse? Yeah. Some of them were older people and...

their symptoms weren't that acute, they just needed managing. But as these people moved on or passed away, we started taking a newer client base, what I used to call real rock and roll nursing clients. These were real challenging people and it was really difficult not to bring your work home with you. What kind of challenges are we talking about? Well, we're talking about self-harm, we're talking about unexpected violent outbursts.

We're talking about a lot of young men who'd smoked the wrong type of cannabis with a young brain and it was proven that at the time it was doing a lot of damage and if you were sort of slightly susceptible to schizophrenia, this is the type of thing that was going to push you over the edge. So a lot of these young people, they didn't want to be there. And our remit was to try and rehabilitate these young people so that they could go out into the community. And we had a maximum of two years to do it. A lot of the time we were banging our heads on the wall.

and things could get a little bit hairy. It was challenging and we were short staffed. But you were only set up to be able to manage rather than rehabilitate by the sounds of it, is that true? Was there rehabilitation? Was there a possibility? Yeah, funnily enough actually, I brought music into this situation. I found out that a lot of them were into music. I remember saying to my manager, start some sort of like music. I said, I'm not a music therapist, obviously.

those that weren't well enough to go out into the community. were keeping in, we'd have structured meal times, structured times for leisure activities. We'd go to Woken Leisure Centre and play badminton and low swimming and stuff like that. I thought, well, there's got to be other things we can do. So I just introduced this. Of course, you'd seen this in the prison service, hadn't you? You mentioned to us earlier about Nordoff and Robbins coming in to...

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That was actually at Broadmoor, that was later. That was later, was it? Okay, right. I said to my manager, you've got couple of under a quid, I'll just buy myself a couple of cheap acoustic guitars and some tambourines. Yeah. And she said, yeah, no problem. And I just basically just used to sit around with a group of people and we just used to tinker around with the guitar and tambourines and sing a few songs. And I used think, well, it's not going to work, is it? But it did. Yeah. And it became really popular. Yeah. And I started off doing one half hour session a week.

And within a few months I was doing it like three afternoons a week. Amazing. We used to work closely with the local Mind. We used to go on like little outings together and they used to come over sometimes in the afternoon. They came over once when this group was going in and the guy who ran the local Mind, he came in and watched it. I used to then go up to Woking Mind in Maybury and do it. And just for anyone that's listening that isn't in the UK, Mind is a UK mental health charity that's quite prolific.

What was happening for you? Yeah, well for me, I was overdoing things a little bit sometimes when I was not at work to soften the, you know, the sort of feelings about the stress of work, you know, and it got a bit habitual really. I was just finding it really stressful at work at the time. And I found that the addiction was starting to rear its ugly head a little bit. At that time with me, it was obviously not doing me any good at all.

Right. And making the situation probably worse, you know. Yeah. And it was then I started to get quite bad anxiety, actually. OK. It was round about that time when the anxiety was kicking in. I remember driving to work one day for an afternoon shift and I got so anxious I just had to stop the car. I couldn't move. Right. I just couldn't move. I didn't know what to do. And I think I had to phone and say, can't, I can't come in. I'm sitting in the car and I'm not feeling very well. I don't even remember what happened then. said,

managed to turn the car around and drive home after a while. So that was the beginning of you noticing something that was going on for you that you couldn't ignore? Yeah, it was round about that time that I think I was finding work more of a challenge with people that were in not a very controlled environment. So in a small setting, like a small hostel, with clients that were quite acutely ill and exhibiting very challenging behaviour.

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Sometimes it just used to get too much for me. Yeah, you seem to So I used to use alcohol as a way of forgetting about it. I used to be sitting at work thinking, need another hour to go and I can start drinking. And I'm sure that tied in with my anxiety. You found yourself revisiting the old patterns of anxiety. Yeah, it only gets worse as it goes on. If you don't address it properly, it just gets worse really.

So can you talk a little bit about how you addressed it? know, what point did you... it took me quite a long time really. It wasn't until it became a problem to people around me as well. Right, okay. You know, to family and friends, particularly close family who said that this is affecting my abilities and you know, my daily functioning. So I decided to get some help for it and I went to CBT sessions around about that time. So that was pivotal for you, that was the time when you started to turn around. I had one group of sessions that didn't...

I don't know whether it was because I was resistant to it, but it didn't do anything for me. And then I had another block of sessions with a female therapist and something clicked and I was able to start addressing my anxiety and my addiction. When you said something clicked, can you expand on that a little bit? Is that with the person that you were talking to? She got a piece of paper out and she drew a circle on it and she said, no matter how bad you think something's getting, it's going to come back to when it wasn't bad. That's probably not exactly it, but it was something as simple as a circle. And I was thinking, yeah.

just got to get around that next bit of the circle and it'll be okay again. Yeah, sounds to me like she touched on something that you already knew. I think that's always the most Well, I think that's it, isn't it? Is you the client that does most of the talking, isn't it? In that container, like whether it's a therapist or a coach or a friend or a close person, whoever it is, as long as they're a safe person for you, if you get the opportunity to hear yourself, you know, might be a few carefully guided questions, but coming back...

You've got all the answers within you. Yeah, exactly. that little circle on that piece of paper met something inside you that went, of course, yeah. Sounds so simple, doesn't it? You can hear things a million different ways and then only one way will resonate. You might have heard it a hundred times, but something that's always been really helpful for me and I try to impart to Eden, our daughter, she's very open about the fact that she suffers with extreme social anxiety. Yeah. The idea that we have those bad days at the moment, she's experiencing a lot of dread.

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around going to college and it's interesting that you just brought that word, the idea of dread. It's so heavy and it's very real, that feeling. If you can actually latch on as it sounds like you did with that circle to the idea that, okay, today you feel dread, but it's ever moving. Feelings pass through you, they leave you, you can hold on. It's not gonna be the same. I think that's it, you know? Yeah, it's that transience of it, you know? It's not gonna go on forever.

And the 90 second rule is why, I cite this over and over again, the 90 second rule, there's no emotion that can stay in your system for longer than 90 seconds as long as you feel it. If you can experience it and get into it, give it your full attention, it's gone in 90 seconds. It's what we don't do because we push it down and we ignore it and we...

we focus on other You know what I always struggled with was that the fact that I was a professional and this was happening to me. I'm sure that must have been so I used to feel ashamed of it and I used to push it even further back. I used to say to myself, bloody, you're doing this job but you're acting like this. What's wrong with you? And the irony in that is the people that get into that kind of work are the people that understand they have empathy because they have their own version of it going on. I just had a question that came from what you were just saying, which is what is it that got you through that idea

that you were supposed to have the answers. I think it was finally dealing with the addiction problems because it was the drink that was clouded, my judgement actually. I was functioning quite well, know, but I think it was taking a bit of reality away. all the time I was doing that, there was that denial there, you know. So I finally dealt with that and I think that's pretty much the root.

I lot of my problems with this addiction side of things. And addiction stems from pain, right? Yeah, all we're ever doing is masking the pain. Even as a youngster, I used to do weird things like... I have a fascination with lighting matches in the toilet. I created my own controlled environment. I wasn't putting anyone at risk. But I did some weird things when I was a child. They've become coping strategies in order for us to remove the attention from the thing that's really causing us the most pain or the thing that we're most afraid of.

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create other things to focus on. Yeah, that's right. I think the thing is, is not to beat yourself up about things too much, you know. To cut a long story short, I just one day decided that I was going to, with the alcohol, I just thought, well, that's it, I'm going to stop. Yeah. And I stopped and I didn't drink for five years. Was it hard? Yeah, it was at first. I'm lucky now that I can enjoy an occasional glass of wine or an occasional beer, but I know that I'll always say to myself, mate, you're going to go to the pub tonight, you're just going to have...

two halves and then that's it. No questions asked. Don't try and argue yourself out of the situation because it ain't going to work. Just going back to Brompton Oratory, do you think that's had a creative inspiration at all? Definitely in my more recent solo stuff, particularly his lyricism and the simplicity of his lyricism. It hasn't always been simple, if you were to just read in that lyric now, it's not colourfully poetic.

It's just managing to say something in simple English that has an impact on people. And I think the ability to say something that's simple, that has impact and meaning is a wonderful art to aspire to. That's what I try and do now, is not being flowery. If you can make something concise and stark and meaningful, then I think that's something that all writers should aspire to. And I think the master of it, at its best, is someone like...

Nick Cave. Yeah. When you're in the midst of the creative process, when you're writing a song, what do you feel when you're in that process? Nine times out of ten, I feel complete frustration. Do you know, the creative moments are transient sometimes, but it's like a spark. You suddenly have an idea or feel inspired or whatever it is that happens.

Actually, you think to myself you better get this down mate because it's going to go shortly Don't put this off. Of course in these days is the wonder of a voice recorder. Yes So much stuff on here. If it's sounding good, you could feel quite excited because you think well I'm onto a winner here if it's something that you think should be good, but it's not it's frustration Yeah songwriting and I think any creative process you can't just sit there and wait for it to come along because it doesn't happen like that There's got to be quite a lot of effort. I think there's quite a lot of artistic people me being the classic

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lazy type of person. it's all right, know, something will come along when it's, you know, when it's ready, when it's ready to come. It's not about that. It's about sitting down and cracking on, rolling your sleeves up and getting on with it. And it might not happen. Don't worry that it's not going to happen then, because tomorrow when you sit down at the desk or pick the guitar up, something might happen then. But I think you have to be quite hard with yourself and push yourself sometimes to do things and not be disappointed when something doesn't happen. So it's all this mixture of things like,

very exciting or, yeah, well that was a waste of time or... And when it does all come together, it's a great feeling when you feel that you've created something that's reasonably good and you can come along to a place like this and you can put it down for perpetuity, you know, it's something that you've always got. Yeah, I love that. I love what you were saying about the divine spark as well, because I feel like as much as we were talking earlier about how it needs to be effortless, but you've got to also...

be disciplined to a point. That's come out in a few of these sessions, actually, hasn't it? That's right. You've got to show up for it. You might just be sitting there twiddling your thumbs for a couple of hours, verbally, but, you know, so be it. It's not wasted time. And there can be a guilt thing as well, actually, because sometimes you can think, God, I sat down here at 10 o'clock this morning. It's 2 o'clock now and I've actually achieved nothing. But it's been able to accept that that's all part of the creative process and it doesn't always happen.

Okay, well, yeah, one last overarching question. We're pretty much there, but I just wondered with regards to, you know, just that sentence, what matters to you about music and mental health overall? What would you like to say about that, anything? Well, the two are, for me, the two are intrinsically linked. The whole process of creating something, I think, is

extremely good for one's mental health. It's cathartic, isn't it? Yeah, it's a very, yeah, like I say, very cathartic process. Is there something about detaching from the outcome as well? Like you were talking about bringing that music into the hostels and just having people bang the tambourines and make a noise, you know, that alone is just so powerful for people, Do you know what? I remember when I started doing it, OK, we used to do a mean version of Drunken Sailor. Right. And they used to really go for it on the percussion with that one. And then the other one we used to do.

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was the REM song, Mott the Hoople and the Game of Life. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there used to be a guy that lived there at the time and he sung it brilliantly. And I had no idea this guy could sing. Just one day I thought, I've got the chords, I'll just sing this REM song. And this guy started singing it and I just...

Incredible. Man on the Moon, wasn't it? Yeah, sorry, Man on the Moon. There you go. song. His name, was an actor, wasn't it? Yes, we've forgotten his name, but you've got to watch that documentary about it. It's absolutely amazing with Jim Carrey. So music can be an incredibly powerful way. I've seen it not only with myself, but I've seen it help with other people who are in crisis. I've experienced, I remember beginning these sessions, OK, before, and it being quite tense, know, there's some...

somebody might not be feeling very well, or there might have been a disagreement between two people. And you sit down and start making a bit of noise. And a lot of the time, within five minutes, you could sense a good atmosphere and a safe and welcoming atmosphere. It's as if everyone's invited. people weren't afraid to make a bit of a fool of themselves. Yeah. And just express themselves. had a lady, a Sri Lankan lady, who's English was extremely poor. She just used to sit there with this tambourine with a big smile on her face for half an hour.

I remember her appetite was improving, her sleep would improve, but I just remember it made her happy. Just simple emotion. And that used to make it all worthwhile, all those sorts of things like that. I love that you've had the first-hand experience of that and actually seeing the difference it makes for people. I've seen the power that we can you've seen it, but it's lovely to hear you recite some of that stuff. So thank you for that. Is there anything else that you'd like to bring up today before we start to wrap up?

Well, I hope haven't waffled too much and sometimes it's quite difficult to express. If you've been through something that's quite painful and you're bit ashamed about it, it's quite difficult to talk about it. Yeah. Because you're sitting there thinking, how did I let that happen? You know? think it's when you're able to actually look back and say to yourself, OK, I've experienced these things. It's all part of the human experience and I've come out of it well. Yeah. If I was sitting at home listening to you now, feeling kind of isolated and tuning into this and...

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And hearing a little bit about your journey and your experiences, not just the people that you've helped, but the way that you've combated your own addictions and mental health issues, there'd be something in me that's going, so I can. So it's possible. So there's no end to how helpful that You've got to want to get better with me, the classic bury ahead in the sand routine. And I think drug and alcohol are terrible for that because you're taking yourself away from reality and

reasoning a lot of the time. Is there one thing you might say to somebody in that situation now? I would say to them, if you want to get better and stop this behaviour, you've got to want that more than anybody else. Yeah, it's got to come from you. Do you want that for yourself? I love that. people around you that love you as well, they're important, more important perhaps, or just as important as, but it's got to be a very conscious decision that you're making. I'd love to add something to that if I may. Something that I've learned in just very recent months in the last year.

is that whole thing about willpower. I always used to struggle with the idea of willpower, having willpower of my It became like a thing I needed to strive for until somebody said to me, what if you don't tell anybody? It's not about seeking validation by saying to somebody else, I'm gonna do this or I'm not gonna do that anymore. The more you do that, you're actually giving away your own power. What if you just held it for yourself? And what if you just checked in about what you really want? And if it really matters to you?

You don't need to tell anyone. You just start showing up because it matters to you, which is coming off what you were saying. Yeah, it's actually almost a selfish thing to want to get better. But well, that's maybe the wrong word. You've got to be determined. So thank you ever so much, Dave. my pleasure. So much information. been really good. It's been lovely having you. And I just one thing we want to do as well is talk a little bit about your music. We're going to play out with one of your tunes. Where can people find you? Where would you like people to go? Well, they can go on to any of the streaming platforms, Spotify, Amazon.

Tidal, YouTube and a lot of my work in fact most of it in the last few years has actually been recorded in this very space that we're in now. Which we love. So I love coming in here, it's a great place to come. And it's Dave Norgrove music. Yeah Dave Norgrove. Yeah it's just me on my own with a little bit of sometimes some percussive backing from my friend Ian, long-time musical collaborator. Wonderful.

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So yeah, thank you very much indeed. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you very much. And I'm just going to say to anybody that's listening, this is probably the last episode of our first series of six and we're going to float this. We're going to see if anyone's listening and then we're going to take a break over the summer. So yeah, everything that you need to know is in the show notes. It's been an absolute joy to have you here, Dave. And thank you very much for being our guest number six. So grateful for all that you've brought. My pleasure. Also, if you do find yourself enjoying any of these episodes.

Please consider making a small donation to the charities which we're supporting, which are Nordorff & Robbins Music Therapy or Youth Music UK. Links are on the show notes. What's the song we're playing out with? This is a song I wrote a few years ago. It's about adoption, actually, and it's a sort of personal discourse on my journey through attempting to trace my birth mother. It's called Baby.

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Here's the legal stuff. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. We are not licensed therapists and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, psychotherapist or other qualified professional. See you next time.