Free Over the Moon by David Essex

to nurture it. He was hugely positive about what I could go on to do, and it was his fervent, profound belief in me that impressed Mum and Dad most of all.
    Over the years, people have occasionally asked me about my relationship with Derek and whether he might have been a Brian Epstein-like figure infatuated with his young charge, but there was never any hint of that kind of tension between us. In fact I never knew him to have a partner and had no idea about his sexuality. He was more than merely my manager and mentor, though: he gradually became the older brother that I never had.
    Derek’s personal circumstances were difficult. His mother and his sister were both schizophrenic and he was heavily involved in their care, spending all the time that he wasn’t looking after me looking after them. It was clear he was one of life’s caring people and he just wanted the best for me.
    My parents could sense that, and after he had left, the three of us sat up into the early hours worrying over exactly what I should do, before going to bed with no decisions reached. The next day, however, I had another of those invaluable epiphanies that help to write your life’s script, and everything became clearer.
    One drawback with Derek’s plan was that I was not even sure I wanted to be a singer, but alone in the flat the next morning, I put a blues album on as usual. Instead of concentrating on the drums, as was my habit, I focused on the singers. Immediately a whole new world opened up.
    It was Buddy Guy who got me. I played ‘The First Time I Met the Blues’ and suddenly there he was, at the heart of this vivid, incredible music, singing as if his voice was a wound and his passions an open book. He was singing of the inescapable pull of the blues and their hold over him: ‘
Blues, you know you’ve done me all the harm that you could
.’
    Yet it also sounded more universal than that: like all great blues singers, Buddy was lamenting life’s agonies, and cheating women, and good loving gone bad. It was powerful and human, and it moved me. Would I ever be able to convey a fraction of that emotion? Suddenly I knew that I wanted to try. I knew that I wanted to be a singer.
    When Mum and Dad came home from work that night, I told them as we ate tea that I had made my decision and wanted to throw in my lot with Derek. Despite their misgivings, they didn’t even quibble, but signed the contract there and then. The die had been cast.
    Derek was delighted that I had acquiesced to being his grand project and he was determined to hit the ground running. Over the next few weeks and months, he began honing my talents via a steep learning curve that didn’t have much to do with Mississippi blues but instead gave me an old-fashioned grounding in all aspects of light entertainment and show business.
    My first port of call was a church hall in Marylebone where an elderly black American named Buddy Bradley schooled me two evenings a week in the mysteries of – wait for it – tap dancing. It wasn’t something that I could imagine Lead Belly doing but it was fun and Buddy was the coolest guy I had ever met. He even declared that I was a natural. Maybe it was my drummer’s sense of rhythm.
    Derek would come to watch, as he did when I started singing lessons in Soho with a very correct chap named Eric Gilder who looked like a wise old owl. Before that, I had only sung into a microphone doing backing vocals with the Everons, using what I supposed was a generic blues voice that I had copycatted from American records.
    This was very different. Eric would play the piano while I sang standards and show tunes such as ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ and ‘Who Can I Turn To?’ He taught me classic techniques such as singing from the stomach and breath control and helped me to find my voice. We even ventured into opera, and some of the huge, resounding noises that I summoned up amazed me, not to mention Derek.
    Not content with turning me into a tap-dancing