Now, I admit that I did inadvertently book Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath for the Edgbaston Youth Club dance in the 1960s (not quite what was expected), but that was pretty much my only experience of rock until that point. The curious thing was, the one acceptable form of music was 60s rock. Virginia Ironside says in her terrific book on bereavement You'll Get Over It, "listen to music if you want to cry". No concerts, certainly no opera – there were too many memories and there would have been too many tears shed. That meant Radio 3 was now strictly off limits. I found myself filling time and, for the first time in my life, avoiding all the music that had been the background of our life. The early days after Peter's death were filled with more familiar music: evensong at New College, Oxford, choral communion at Christ Church, and a rumbustious funeral in a packed church of gorgeous readings, Handel sung and played by family, and invigoratingly noisy hymns.Īnd then it was over. There was something particular about the clanging density of the best of the Stones that made me feel, for the first time in months that, pain and loss notwithstanding, there might be more fun lurking about if I kept my eyes open for it. In my view, there was more to it than just a desire for youth.
So I drove through France blasting out Keith Richards' Talk is Cheap, which I found in an Oxfam shop, feeling a cathartic release. But when my husband Peter died, I realised the last thing I wanted was "emotionally neutral" – what I needed, in fact, was the exact opposite.
He makes a pretty good case for the therapeutic impact of "emotionally neutral" ambient music, music that is as " ignorable as it is interesting". I agreed with Brian Eno that baby boomers only "return to rock music again and again … to feel like kids".
The truth is I've never been much of a rock chick. I have to admit that until it happened, I'd never thought of the Rolling Stones as bereavement music.