Recent research has shown that many children who play the recorder at school are put off music for life. The dangerous conclusion drawn from this is that the recorder is to blame. The suggestion is that children would be more inclined to develop an interest in music if they were given guitars to strum.

My own experience is that children are not drawn to music because they play an instrument. It works the other way around. A tiny minority of children are drawn to play an instrument because they’ve been struck by a particular piece of music. Hearing the music makes them want to play. At the beginning, it doesn’t matter if it’s a record or not. But more of that later.

Very few children like music at all. Music plays no part in the thinking of the many thousands of kids who recently stuffed the Odyssey for what seemed like weeks to see Westlife. Granted, most of them would be almost game to attempt a few elementary chords on the guitar but only because they figure it might give them a fighting chance when they finally get into the Big Brother House.

For most young men, in particular, guitars are for attracting women. The music is an after-thought. I should know. Music took 20 years out of my life and I don’t regret a day of it. During formative years, when I should have been at university growing prematurely old by studying law or accountancy, I was travelling around the world in a stupor having a great time. I became a musician because of one piece of music.

The very first time I heard the guitar solo on a record called ‘Shakin’ All Over’, by Johnny Kydd and the Pirates, I was a lost soul. I’ll never forget that feeling of the hairs rising on the back of my neck when that solo came on. It was like contracting an incurable virus. Something similar happens to all musicians. It’s out of their hands.

I recently met, for the first time, the man who played the guitar solo on ‘Shakin’ All Over’. His name is Mick Green and he was one of Bryan Ferry’s backing musicians during his recent appearance at Belfast Castle. I nervously went up to him at the bar and told him what his solo had meant to me. I poured my heart out to him. God bless him, he didn’t give two hoots. He grunted and turned his back on me to talk to the other guys in the band. But that’s showbusiness. I wasn’t surprised or even hurt. That’s how I used to treat people who came up and talked to me at the bar in the middle of gigs. But I liked music even before I heard Johnny Kydd and the Pirates.

When I was 10 years old, I joined St Eugene’s Cathedral Choir in Stroke City. Perched in the loft, the great Cathedral organ towered above me. The organist and choirmaster was German, Mister Clement Haan, and a fine musician. One Sunday he played “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” from Bach’s B Minor Mass. I had never heard anything so beautiful in my life. You guessed it, the hairs rose on the back of my neck.

So taken by the music was I and so ignorant as to protocol that I boldly left my seat and crept over to the organist’s bench. He looked at me dully. I whispered: “That was really nice. Could you play that again?” He smiled softly and looked down at his feet: “I don’t do requests,” he replied. But he played it for me again after the service when everyone else had gone home.

I borrowed a leaf out of his book when I unaccountably found myself on the radio. I don’t do requests either. The point of all this? Don’t teach all children to play musical instruments at school. Just let them hear the best music you can find and then send them away. Only encourage the ones who come back.

Originally published in The Belfast Telegraph