Heads, you win

He's familiar to Northern listeners as a super-smooth middle of the road DJ. But in his misspent youth as a guitarist, Gerry Anderson lived a life of rock and roll abandon.

Jason O'Toole, 11 Dec 2008

Gerry Anderson, the Northern Ireland BBC DJ, has been doing a lot of reminiscing lately about his former life as a musician as he puts the finishing touches to a new memoir, entitled Heads. And the Derry-born guitarist has an unusual bit of advice for parents whose kids are considering dropping out of college to join a rock band – let them do it!

“When people ask me if I’d do anything different with my life, I reply, ‘No. I just wish I could do it again!’,” he laughs. “I meet all kinds of people and somebody might say to me, ‘My son’s going to university to study accountancy and he’s 18 and he really wants to join a rock ‘n’ roll band!’ I’ll say, ‘Let him go! He has to do it now. He can’t join the band when he’s 25 – he has to do it now. He can be an accountant when he’s 25. Let him go and get it out of his system!’”

In hindsight, he’s concluded that the life of a musician is as close to perfect as you can get. “There we were, like 23 or 24 years old, and our job was to travel the country, drink and smoke, play music, and go with women. That was our job! Do you know what I mean? What a wonderful life that is…”

By all accounts, Anderson got a lot out of his own system during his rock ‘n’ roll days – both on the road in Ireland and the US with Ronnie Hawkins and The Hawks.

“There was a lot of sex,” he reveals about his formative years. “I was interested in women, but I wouldn’t really describe myself as a ladies’ man. It’s a terrible thing to say, but I didn’t have much confidence. But when you look back you’re kind of better looking than you thought you were (laughs)! Sometimes I look back at photographs and I think, ‘If I had known then that I was not too bad looking, I would’ve had more confidence!’

Indeed, if you were in a band getting laid was as easy as falling off a cliff, he says. “You didn’t need a line in a band. It was very much taken as given that you’d have a woman. It was no big deal. There would have been a few groupies. Quite a few of those but – you know? – it’s all very easy and all very, kind of, no big deal. It was just what you did! You have to remember that when you are 22 or 23 you’re testosterone levels are high. You were interested in women 24 hours a day, that’s just the way you were. You would try to get as many women as you could. That’s the way it was. And being in a band helped. Everybody in a band could get women, you know? It was just the quantity depended on your charisma! And I was never greedy!”

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