A memoirBook One1952 – 1986

The Adventures of Robert, Bob, Rob, Ropp, Lobaato & Robby

by RP Monk

He was a lab technician, a guitarist, a salesman and a holiday-resort entertainer. All before he turned thirty-five.

Book One follows Robert Monk from a council house on the edge of Wolverhampton to a coral island in the Indian Ocean, by way of six Birmingham bands, a single on Logo Records and more curry than is strictly sensible.

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The story

Why would anyone keep starting again?

Robert Patrick Monk was born on St Patrick's Day, 1952, the second son of a Wolverhampton family. He was eleven when a classmate's transistor radio played The Beatles, and not much older when the same boy brought a guitar into school. After that there was only ever going to be one constant in his life.

Everything else kept changing. Book One takes him out of a house run by a strict and often frightening father, through a dropped-out year at polytechnic and five years in a university research lab, and onto Birmingham's pub-rock circuit at night. There is a record deal that comes very close, a marriage that lasts a year, and at thirty-three a telegram from Paris that sends him to Greece, and then somewhere he has to look up in an atlas.

It is told the way it happened: funny, frank, and crowded with voices from Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Glasgow and Paris. By the last page you will have your own theory about what kept him moving. He admits he is still puzzled himself.

Here in Book 1 of the duology, we will meet the initial four versions of ‘me’. Please forgive them all!

From the Foreword

More about the book

Dramatis personae

The first four of eight

I

The Lab Technician

University of Birmingham, from 1971

Research technician in the Life Sciences. Long wavy hair, a hippy beard, and a smile that gets him out of trouble when he is late for work. Which is too often.
II

The Guitarist

Six Birmingham bands, 1972 – 1980

Lead guitar and vocals in pubs, clubs, universities and theatres. Changes his look with every band, and reckons a solo in front of five hundred fans beats almost anything.
III

The Sales Guy

Sterilin, then MSE centrifuges, from 1977

Technical sales rep in a dark-grey Marks & Spencer suit, working hospitals and university labs across the Midlands. Football, cricket, guitarists and hot curries.
IV

The Holiday Resort Entertainer

Club Med, Greece and the Maldives, 1985 – 1986

Boat trips, beach games, stage shows and the late-night disco, and still up at 2 am to sing the welcome song for new arrivals.

Four more are waiting in Book Two.

years, from Wolverhampton to the Maldives: 34
Birmingham bands in ten years: 6
the chart peak of a single on Logo Records: No. 83
Club Med seasons, seven days a week: 2

The journey

From Wednesfield to Farukolufushi

Thirty-four years on the map, from the Black Country to an atoll in the Indian Ocean. Choose a stop to see where it sits in the story.

England, 1952 – 1985

An insignificant birth

Born upstairs in a small house on St Patrick's Day, hence the middle name. Two weeks later, a new council house facing a playing field, a canal and a little grass-runway airport.
Two defining moments

A classmate's red-and-cream transistor radio plays a new group from Liverpool. A few weeks later the same boy brings a guitar into school. By his next birthday Robert has one of his own.
"I'm Bob," he blurted

Trent Poly, a course he never really wanted, and a stranger on the train in matching moccasins. He meant to say Rob. The name Bob sticks for years.
The dishwashing summer

Three schoolfriends on the conveyor-belt dishwashers, and the "Rob W technique" that makes one of them a legend of the kitchens.
Lab coat by day, Stratocaster by night

A research lab at the University, then a sales job with a company car. After dark: six bands, Saturday nights at The Railway, Barbarella's, and the 4 am curry after every gig.
First flight, first time abroad

A rear-engined BAC 1-11, a week with the band's singer and friends, and a Spanish waiter who needs watching.
Knocking on fame's door

Two days in a basement studio in Clerkenwell, champagne in Marylebone and a contract with Logo Records. Then the wait to hear what Radio 1 makes of it.
A kiss before hello

A lads' week by the sea with his friend Steve, a packed disco, and a Scottish voice asking whether they should not have introduced themselves first.
Almost settled

A house of his own between two good pubs, Sunday cricket at Springhill, the 1983 Wolverhampton Marathon and a brand-new Ford Sierra. For a while, anyway.
One suggestion

A holiday with Steve, a borrowed guitar in the resort bar, and a rep who tells them they should do this for a living.
Telegrams from Place de la Bourse

An audition in London, a contract in French, and the headquarters of Club Méditerranée, where "Steve et Bob, Bob et Steve" collect their papers.
The only British G.O.s

Pareos, the welcome song at 3 am, a bouzouki, hand-to-hand acrobatics on the beach, and one French word they learn to dread.
"Where is that?"

An island six hundred metres long in Malé Atoll. Dhonis, dolphins, Aussie divers, Japanese honeymooners, and fifteen minutes he would rather forget.

Read the landing at Malé

Liner notes

What the book is about

Eight themes run through Book One. Some are loud, some are quiet, and one of them is his mom's laugh.

Side A

A1

Music

The Shadows, The Beatles, Rory Gallagher. Every chapter has a soundtrack, and he will tell you what was in the charts that year, what was brilliant and what was, in his words, mush.
A2

Starting again

Eight versions of one man, and what it takes to walk away from a decent life and become the next one.
A3

Friends

John, JJ, Rob W, and Steve, the snooker partner who ends up beside him on a Greek stage in a flowery shirt.
A4

Mom

Margaret, "Maggie Monk" to his friends, whose laugh runs through the whole book and who is in the crowd on the biggest night of his musical life.

Side B

B1

Changing times

Mods and rockers, flower power, glam, punks spitting at Bogart's, the new romantics. Britain from 1952 to 1986 through eyes that witnessed it all.
B2

Near misses

A single that stalls at number 83, an E-Type at 130 mph, a head-on crash, a stonefish. The book is full of how close things come.
B3

Love

School sweethearts, a band romance, a marriage that lasts a year. He has a type, knows it, and keeps meaning to change it.
B4

Far-off places

Paris, Evia, Malé Atoll, and the people who live and work there: French chefs, Aussie divers, Sri Lankan barmen and Maldivian crews.

Why read it

What you'll find inside

This isn't a celebrity memoir. It's a life that began in the Black Country and kept refusing to stay ordinary, and it's written by the man who lived it.

01
Birmingham's music scene, from the stage

The late-seventies Birmingham pubs and clubs where Duran Duran, Dexys Midnight Runners and UB40 were starting out, seen by a guitarist playing the same rooms.
02
Four working lives, from the inside

Crystallising muscle protein in a university lab, selling centrifuges to hospitals, recording in a London studio, and carrying stage podiums over walls in 35-degree heat.
03
What a Club Med season was really like

Seven days a week, early morning to late night, smiling the whole time. The fun is real, and so is the exhaustion.
04
Voices you can hear

Black Country, Brummie, Glaswegian and French-accented English, set down the way people actually talked.
05
A post-war childhood without the rose tint

The Coronation on one of the first TVs in the street, the eleven-plus, the cane, and a difficult father, told honestly.
Thirty-four years. Ten chapters. One man who couldn't stay put.
Read an excerpt

From the book

Arrival in Paradise

Chapter 10 · Whisked to Paradise! · November 1985

Bob and his friend Steve are flying out for their second season as Club Med entertainers. A few weeks earlier, neither of them could have found the Maldives on a map.

Continue the journey

RP Monk · Book One

The first thing that hits you when approaching the Maldives is how the colour of the ocean starts to change from a continuous expanse of monotone green-blue to more distinctive areas of pure green, turquoise and blue, due to the great variation in seabed depth. This is essentially an underwater mountain range, with peaks that are not far from the surface.

Gradually, we could make out shining rings of land lying on the surface looking like jewels on the sea.

These are formed by the growth of coral from the mountain peaks which, over thousands, even millions, of years, break the surface of the sea to form a coral atoll. An atoll is normally a distinctive circle of islands surrounding beautiful lagoons, each containing beds of coral in every colour of the rainbow.

As we flew lower on our landing approach, we realised that these were the shining jewels we could see from higher in the air.

Lower still, we began to make out small huts on stilts stretching out into the lagoons from pure white sand beaches. These huts looked to have palm-leaf roofs. Each island was ringed with white sand, with a mass of coconut trees standing tall and erect across the whole space.

We gazed out from the aircraft windows, mesmerized.

Lower still, the landing wheels came down.

“I don’t see any sign of any friggin’ airport!” a slightly nervous-sounding Steve uttered.

Lower still, the shadow of the aircraft was clearly beneath us, bouncing along the top of the rippling waves.

“Shouldn’t we be seeing some kind of airport perimeter, roads or something resembling the edge of an airport!?” I, too, was now getting alarmed.

Lower still, the main wheels seemed about to touch down in the water, when suddenly tarmac appeared under the wheels and, with a gentle bump, the big Douglas DC-10 hit the runway.

There was a huge outcry of ‘Holy sheeet!’, ‘Oh my God!’, ‘Mein Gott!’, ‘Mon Dieu!’, ‘Phew!’, ‘Uwaaa!’, ‘Eeeee!’, ‘Friggin’ ’ell!’ and various other swear words in various languages as 250 people released the air that they had been holding in for over a minute.

It was just then that Alain, the French chef, who had flown with us all the way from Paris and had slept the entire way, woke up and enquired:

“Nous sommes arrivés?”

The tension was broken.

The author

Meet RP Monk

Robert Patrick Monk has been a research technician, a rock guitarist and singer, a scientific salesman, a Club Med entertainer, a national sales and marketing manager, an English school owner and teacher in Japan, and a full-time musician in Spain. He has been Robert, Bob, Rob, Ropp, Lobaato, Robby and even Rabb. Book One is the first half of how that happened.

Born Wednesfield, Wolverhampton, 1952
First guitar His twelfth birthday, 1964
Bands Six in Birmingham, 1972 – 1980
Today A full-time musician in Spain

Meet the author

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