My song today is ‘I’ve Got A Rock and Roll Heart’. This was a single record by Eric Clapton from his album Money and Cigarettes’ which was released in 1983. The release was successful in the United States, peaking at Number 18 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’, and it reached Number 6 on the ‘Adult Contemporary Chart’ the same year.
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When this record was first released, I had recently been divorced from my first wife a few years earlier and I was making my way as a pioneering worker within the Probation Service. I had already founded ‘Anger Management’ during the early 1970s (a method of working with aggressive people which would mushroom around the English-speaking world, and which countless people have since benefited from). I was also one of the country’s leading exponents in Relaxation Training and was introducing my relaxation training programmes into hostels, probation offices, hospitals, community halls, educational institutions, training courses with the police, firemen, psychiatric nurses, and training psychologists. There were also, psychiatric ward patients, Lifers in prisons, church congregations, a wide range of charitable organisations and the community in general. Life was overtaking me at a hectic pace.
I recall my teenage romantic years when I was to discover that being among the best of dancers always opened the doors of a young woman’s heart for me. Rock and Roll was the rage at the time and bopping was the dance craze. Despite that being over 60 years ago, I have always loved rock and roll, and you could say that I’ve always had a rock and roll heart. One of the things I most miss today is attending the Batley Rock & Roll Club weekly, where Sheila and I used to attend before my cancers and deteriorating leg mobility led us to stop. I may have been obliged to stop dancing to rock and roll, but I will never stop listening to it, never stop enjoying it, or stop singing it until I die.
Love and peace Bill xxx