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| Alex Gordon/brother Xanadu Information |
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| Alex Gordon |
Phone: 514 716 4120
URL: http://www.worldgig.com
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I WAS SUDDENLY THROWN - from an ultra-secure, middle-class London upbringing, at age 18 - to being a Quaker supply teacher at a school in one of the most remote regions of Africa. This opened my eyes. When you stand face to face with students who have never seen an electrical item, who have not heard of the sea, or ice, and who RUN 30 miles to get to and from the school each day - it will certainly question the validity of schoolboy years in 60s London, where no-one is ever without the basic necessities of life, and frivolity and decadence are all around.
The teaching spell only lasted six months, but I was never the same after this. I was looking at our area of the world with disillusioned, cynical eyes. It all seemed like theatre and facade.
Music appeared to be the answer. But after 15 years of strange encounters with extraordinary people and places all over the world, I was forced to finally admit something which I had secretly known all along - that the Africa experience had altered the game so radically that I was now uninterested in what everyone else seemed to be trying to get out of music and life ie - success, money, fashionable situations, women, drink and drugs, fast talking and fast cars. I had become allergic to all.
At this stage I found myself living in a van, without money or home, in Italy, with only a girlfriend, a dog and a guitar (not necessarily in that order!) I would drive from village to village and have to get a gig by the evening or not eat! It seemed like colourful hell at the time. And yet, today, looking back on it all, it seems like paradise.
It was the test of manhood I had been craving, without knowing, all these years. And it brought reality.
At this moment I began to write. Eventually, after a few more years, and a move to America, all of these experiences would provide the source material for this trilogy. |
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