My dad gave up his job as an engraver to form the Ian Campbell Folk Group and sort of spearheaded the Scottish Folk revival. He spent a lot of time touring round Europe – he was a communist and wasn’t allowed into America – so we didn’t see much of him. Most of the time it was just me, my three older brothers, Duncan, Robin and David, and my mum.
My dad’s dad was the patriarch of the family, David Gunn Campbell. There’s a plaque to him in Aberdeen. He was a big trade union leader. He’d moved down from Shetland to Aberdeen and then he got in some sort of trouble with the unions and had to relocate to Birmingham so I grew up in a staunchly communist, trade unionist household. My mum and dad had middle-class aspirations, even though they’d be horrified to hear me say that. They were very proud of being working class.
There were always musicians at our house. Dave Swarbrick, who later became part of Fairport Convention, was in my dad’s band, as was Dave Pegg the bass player who later joined Jethro Tull. Billy Connolly used to play my dad’s club, the Jug of Punch, and we had Paul Simon at our house once. Dad loved holding court but we always clashed musically. Before I got into reggae, I was crazy about the Jackson Five but my dad found a 13-year-old boy singing love songs abhorrent. He detested Michael Jackson and thought reggae was gibberish until a friend of his convinced him that Bob Marley was worth listening to.
Bringing up four boys must have been very tough for my mum. There were four of us under the age of eight at one point and in front of her we were impeccably behaved. When we were outdoors it was a very different matter. Balsall Heath was a sort of ghetto area, so we picked up bad habits. My wonderful bigger brother Robin, who was 12 at the time, taught me how to inhale cigarettes at eight. Another time, when I was eight, I got done for burglary when I broke into a builders’ hut with a couple of friends. My dad, who had no clue what we were up to, was away, so my grandad came down and sorted things out with the police.
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