The rocky road to becoming a guitarist 1 / 2

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Musician Chester Kamen’s tale

The shortest path to becoming yourself is rarely a straight line. Learning to get there can take a lifetime, as we find out in the new episode in Learner Tales which unfolds in the world of the music business. This instalment is about the music of pop, rock and, at the end, a little jazz.

The conversation here revolves around the making of music, but also the making of a musician, with our guide Chester Kamen, who talks about his unusual learning path.

His choice to become a rock guitarist was by no means an easy one. He is a self-taught musician who had to travel a road which was far from the formal training he could have received at a conservatoire or a university, and decades before the advent of the plethora of online tutorials for budding guitarists. A solid career has led him to play with such world-famous artists as Bryan Ferry, David Gilmour or Madonna.

But how did he get there? I had an inkling that this fervent believer in learning by trial and error, would have a lot to say in answer to that particular question as Chester and I have known each other for a while. In fact, we met at primary school when we were both 7 years old and then went through secondary school together.

In continuing this series of Learner Tales, I invited him to take a moment to share something of his rocky road to becoming a guitarist.

The generosity and openness of his testimony has made it necessary to present it in two parts in order to give space to everything. In Part 1, he talks about his first steps in learning right up to the point where he entered the world of music as a professional employed in a recording studio; in Part 2¹, come the phases which led him to the spotlight on the big stage.

Learning to be better

It is a typical grey winter’s day in England as we sit down at Chester’s to talk about learning. As soon as we begin our conversation, it is immediately clear that learning is something he likes, and likes to talk about.

CK – Absolutely. Learning to me is to do with achieving something. It’s about having a distant goal and having to learn something to reach that goal. It probably comes from looking at someone, maybe a hero, and thinking that if I can do that thing, I’ll be better than I am now.

What sort of pupil was he when he started school ?

CK – Competitive, definitely. Among the best in whatever class I was in. That might come from being in a big family, but I don’t know. Had I been an only child, I might have been exactly the same. I remember starting school late. School started in September and I didn’t show up till January, so the class was already formed. I was one step behind everyone and they knew what the drill was. So I was straight away playing catch-up. I had to come from behind, right from day one.

Chester grew up in Harlow, Essex, a new town of hope and dreams when the Kamen family moved there from Hackney, and the Kenny family from Ilford, in the early 1960s. He was born fifth in a family of eight children ² and says he always had his eye on his older brother, Ronald, who gave him something to follow.

CK – Ron was a year and a half older, so he would have been learning stuff before me. I would learn what he had learnt, and then try and better it. Whatever it was, I had to catch up and overtake !

One of the things he saw Ron do, was learn to draw.

CK – Our dad was very good at drawing. A naturalistic kind of artist rather than a creative one. He would copy things, make faithful re-creations of whatever it was he was drawing. So we were encouraged to do the same : my brother first, followed by me.

Rather than sitting down for an art lesson with Dad, it was a question of watching him do it, then trying for yourself.

CK – We used to see him copying from maybe a photograph of a person, because he used to draw portraits. He would copy from a photograph and we would go “That’s really good. How do you achieve that likeness ?” So the actual business of learning was instilled in me right from a very young age. And probably comes from drawing, I think.

At 11, the learning game changed when Chester finished primary school, where age was the only criterion for the composition of classes. At secondary school, pupils of the same age were streamed into ability groups labelled from A to E.

CK – Each class you were in, you were among your peers, and I enjoyed aiming for the top stream in all subjects. It was part of my make-up, in a way. I was not happy if I was in the B-stream. I do seem to remember always being in the A-stream for everything. But it was important. And then, within that stream, it was important to be somewhere near the top.

How did he know when he was near the top ? There was no weekly chart saying who was number one, but he was able to monitor his own position by his marks.

CK – In primary school your achievements were starred. There was a coloured star, a silver star and a gold star. I was always aiming for a gold star and was disappointed to get the silver star. At secondary school, something like a B+ was as low as I ever wanted to go. That would be my way of understanding where I stood in the class.

A love of performance

The performing arts have always been important for Chester. His first memory of performing as a musician dates from 1964-65 when he was 8 or 9 in primary school.

CK – We did a kind of mime to two Beatles’ songs with our guitars. One was I Want To Hold Your Hand. We didn’t actually play them, we just mimed along to them. Me, Kevin Macaire, Kevin Regan and possibly Michael Jordan. That is the first memory I have of standing there in a band in front of people pretending to perform two songs. I wonder who the teacher was who encouraged us to do that.

When it came to really playing an instrument, again it was Dad and Ron who got things rolling.

CK – I first picked up an instrument when I was fairly young. I’m not sure what age, but my dad used to have a ukelele, and he would occasionally strum it, so we would too. And then, as normal, it was my big brother coming home from school having learnt to play a tune on his guitar – I wouldn’t have had an instrument of my own at the time – and I would have watched him and thought “I shall learn to do this.”

From the age of 13 or 14, Chester began bringing a guitar to school most days and practising at lunchtime, answering requests for tunes we knew and that he could play. Not that he imagined or dreamed back then of becoming a professional musician. Far from it.

CK – I didn’t think, at that point, that there was any kind of future in it. I was still thinking of being an actor. Because, if a careers officer had asked me – maybe they did – what I wanted to be, I would have definitely said an actor.

The arrival of an English teacher called Mrs Fullerton led to productions of Shakespeare plays being put on at school every year. Chester took an active part in these, and performed particularly well as Puck in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

CK – It didn’t feel to me like a huge role, but it was. Even though I always felt like I was part of the supporting cast. But, yes, at that point, I wanted to be an actor.

Could he remember how he learnt his lines ?

CK – Learning lines was different to learning a skill. You’re committing something to memory so that you become it. It seemed a natural thing. It never led to a state of nervousness. When it came to going on stage, I was never quaking with fear like some people were. I’ve always been comfortable on stage. In fact, when performing music in later life, I would walk on stage and, when I turned to face the audience, I got the uncanny feeling that I was home in my living room. This is actually where I was most at home in the world. Almost like a physical recognition that I was home.

Learning to make difficult choices

At the age of 15, when he was chosen to play in a production of The Tempest, Chester had a conflict of interests to resolve. Play rehearsals were beginning to seriously take priority over playing time as a footballer at a local club, a sporting performance he had always enjoyed. So, although he revelled in acting, his team mates and the coach made it clear that he would have to choose between the team and The Tempest.

Finally, Chester turned down The Tempest and chose the team. At least, that was the official spin on why he said no to playing Ariel, the spirit in the story who serves the magician Prospero until he finally obtains his freedom. But, as he now explains, there was another reason for his refusal.

CK – I had to turn it down because we’d previously done A Midsummer Night’s Dream for which I was Puck, the mischievous fairy. For that part, I was painted green and wearing tights every night and ridiculed, absolutely ridiculed by everyone in my year – all the boys, that is ! You learn to live with ridicule. But then The Tempest came along. I was asked to play Ariel, a fairy again, and I said : “This time I shall not.“

All performers have to learn to say no sometimes. Around the same time as The Tempest, Chester also began to say no to mainstream academia as he discovered the desire to become a fine artist. How did that come about ?

CK – Only because I was good at art, and was told by teachers : “You should go and do this because you can.”

The head start he had been given in art at an early age made him seem, to people who saw him at work, like a natural artist able to draw and paint anything he chose. At the age of 16, he had the offer of a place to study fine art at Harlow College whenever he was ready. With all his potential in more orthodox academic subjects – particularly English – that meant breaking away from the world and the people he knew. And that wasn’t all. Art college was certainly the place he wanted to be, but school had a creative hold on him. He was a member of a small group of people who organised and ran a very successful Friday night discotheque on the school premises. Leaving school meant losing that.

CK – As part of the group who ran the disco, there was a whole social scene in school that I would have to be letting go of, so I was unhappy about doing that and moving into the unknown. There was a pressure within me to stay, just to be part of the scene. It was a creative thing and music was part of it – playing records, trying to convince my peers of the value of the music that I liked by putting on a record and saying : “Listen to this !”

Today, he and his parents would perhaps have been advised, even helped, to think again. Back then, he was simply told to leave – “booted out” is his expression. Push had come to shove. But, once at college, he would change his mind again. In fact, it only took a year of fine art class for him to make the decision to “change lanes and take up music seriously.” Something clearly happened.

CK – That year was when the Students’ Union brought bands to play at the College on a regular basis. Harlow Council also put on concerts in the Town Park. It became clear that music was what I wanted to do.

So he worked out a way to use studying art as a means to become a professional musician.

CK – I changed tack from fine art to graphic design so I could stay at college, continue receiving a grant, without being committed to art. It was utilitarian thing. I knew that, if I learnt how to be a graphic designer, I could make some kind of living doing that on the side while being a musician, whereas fine art would be all-encompassing.

Learning alone with method and madness

Making music and thinking about music became his life. He would “wake up thinking of music and go to bed thinking of music.” This meant learning how to play on his own, being creative and a little manic. But there was definitely method in his madness.

CK – I was learning in a completely haphazard manner. No formal training and no system. If I heard something I liked, I’d have to try and figure out how to play it by listening to a record. Lifting the needle off the record, putting the needle on the record a hundred times. No online tutorials !

Back then, self-teaching musicians were more like investigators. I remember going to London with a veritable Sherlock Kamen³ one Saturday as he tried to find a guitar pedal to get a particular sound from a Jeff Beck record. We went from shop to shop. He’d plug in a series of pedals, play, and then say : “No, that’s not it.” And we’d go to the next shop. It was like travelling with an investigator on a difficult case. He laughs when I remind him.

CK – Funnily enough, I did buy a pedal in 1972 for £15, specifically to get a sound that Jeff Beck, Jan Akkerman, and Marc Bolan were all getting. I still have that pedal and still use it. It hasn’t been superseded. It’s currently with the technician being repaired, but it’s still there.

Do today’s online videos on Jimi Hendrix pedals make for a world of better musicians ? As all professional musicians know, there comes a time when learning to play an instrument to the utmost of your ability also means learning the technical aspects which go with it. With or without the help of a tutorial, you need to know how to work things out for yourself.

CK – I wasn’t only learning to play an instrument, I was also learning to take it apart, see what its components were, how it functioned, how to keep it in good shape, repair it. Which is interesting, because I see my own children not doing this : not being aware that an instrument will fall into decline if you leave it in a corner, that its strings will get rusty so it doesn’t seem to play as well. Whereas I was always at it, pulling it apart, cleaning it, restringing it, messing with a soldering iron even – taking it apart and fixing things.

Inevitably, driven by the necessity to learn all and anything connected to music through trial and error, things occasionally went wrong.

CK – I do remember using a soldering iron on my record player and it exploding in my face when I tried to solder the wrong terminal ! The learning of all this stuff was not smooth and progressive. It was stops and starts, hit and miss. There were lots of mistakes.

But it seems nothing could deter him. Fortunately, he struck lucky when he bought a tape recorder.

CK – I was at junior school when I acquired a tape recorder for a couple of quid, which started the whole business of learning how to record something, and what to do with the result. And that went hand in hand with playing an instrument. In order to hear yourself and see if you were making progress, it helped to have a tape recorder and listen back to hear how bad you were – or good !

Recording is a key subject for Chester, even today. He has agreed to let me record our conversation for this article, so my phone is on the table between us and he nods towards it as he speaks.

CK – Today, it’s possible to start recording on your phone without understanding what the process is. You press the red button and accept whatever quality you get. Back then, you had things to learn about the actual piece of plastic tape, the VU meter and the maintenance of the machine, which of course you don’t have to do now. And as my learning of the recording process became ever more complex, when I was 11 or 12, I could put together a whole multi-track of music. I would have one machine, record to it, then play back that machine to another machine, while playing something else on top. Multi-tracking in my bedroom, overcoming the limitations.

Learning to play, recording a performance, complexifying it and judging the result were all part of the same continuum.

CK – I was not needing to perform on an instrument and then look to someone else to record it. It all became part of the same palette for me.

Did he say palette ? The fine artist is still there, guiding the musician.

New places to play, new challenges

As he approached 18, Chester had made a space for himself in the Harlow scene, playing at the College and in the occasional pub. Harlow had loads of pubs but few were musical, and the town was too new to have live music clubs for budding musicians. Just as a learner needs new challenges, a musician who has grown locally needs to start looking further afield. That meant trying his luck 10 miles away in the next town, Bishop’s Stortford, where there was an active music scene.⁴

He remembers going to watch the cream of local musicians at two places in particular. One was The Rhodes Centre⁵ where 1963-67 had been a glory period when it welcomed such names as Gene Vincent, The Yardbirds, Pink Floyd, The Who, Cream and many more.⁶ By the 70s, the owners changed policy and decided to adapt to the new teen market for disco evenings with fewer concerts, although these were still eventful with even the occasional punchup. The other place for live music was Triad, which had seen different arts-related activities over the years and was running jazz and blues nights in the mid-70s. A few years later, it would change again into a punk rock club hiring new bands. ⁷

CK – Seeing all that gave me something to aim for. Just going up a notch to the next town. London was a long way off at that point, but going to Bishop’s Stortford showed me my limitations, because there were people who were definitely much better than myself.

While trips to Bishop’s Stortford may have been inspiring and motivating, he was still living at home in Harlow. He had to find ways of playing in London.

CK – One way was trying to get a gig for the band I was in. This meant going to an event at a place which hired bands, then trying to speak to the manager to convince them to give us a support slot on one of their nights. And another way was to go to a recording studio, like the one in Ilford that I’d heard of, present myself at the door and say : “I can do stuff. Please let me come and work for you !”

Welcome to the recording studio

The second approach worked first, and Chester was hired to operate the tape machines and monitor the sessions. Ilford wasn’t technically in London, but it was close enough – and he was learning how to be a sound engineer.

CK – I was in the business and earning money from it ! And that was the start of another learning curve : not only learning how to record, but also how to run a session, how to run the studio. From Ilford, I moved up the road to Stage One Studio at Forest Gate where I became a producer, so to speak. A producer with the uncanny ability to miss what was then the zeitgeist – electronic music ! I was in the studio with musicians trying to record in what I thought were innovative ways and, between my sessions, there would be other people coming in with makeshift electronic devices who later went on to great success. People like Soft Cell who became huge, and Depeche Mode who are still pretty big today. And I would miss them completely !

With hindsight, we may wonder how a producer can possibly miss out picking up on the next wave in music. But it’s easily done when you’re looking for something else. Remember the people at Decca Records who turned down The Beatles in 1962 saying that guitar groups were on the way out.

CK – I was too much of a musician at the time. In a way I was a snob, because I was looking down on these electronic groups and saying : “You guys aren’t playing. I can see what you’re doing ! Although it sounds good, you aren’t playing.” So I missed out on that. Of course, they went on to be huge.

What now?

How will Chester make out during his studio years? And what happened to his ambitions of becoming a professional musician? In his own words, he’s too much of a musician to stay in production and so…

The second part of this learner portrait tells all.

Until then, here’s a teaser for you to see. It’s an extract from a documentary telling the story of the 1985 Live Aid concert organised by Bob Geldof with a cast of thousands. Click here and see if you can find Chester Kamen wearing white pants, a black t-shirt and a huge smile next to Bryan Ferry.

To find out how that came about, you’ll need to read Part 2 … Now available here!

1. If you are so inclined, you can fast-track to Part 2 immediately and read Part 1 later. ↩︎
2. Chester is not the only member of his to have enjoyed a public artistic career. You may well be familiar with the work of his younger brothers, Nick and Barry. ↩︎
3. He seemed to have shape-shifted into a Conan Doyle character. ↩︎
4. For more on the 1970s music scene in Bishop’s Stortford, look here. ↩︎
5. Following pressure from Black Lives Matter, the Rhodes Centre, named after Cecil Rhodes, the founder of Rhodesia born in Bishop’s Stortford became the South Mills Arts Centre in 2020. ↩︎
6. The list of those who played at Triad in the glory days is a long one. ↩︎
7. For a taste of Triad history and the atmosphere on concert nights, have a look at this write-up of a gig by Siouxsie and the Banshees from 1978. ↩︎