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While I had occasionally listened to transistor radio in the pre-teen years which played rock music mostly from American singers or bands such as the Four Seasons and Elvis Presley and Dion and the Belmonts and more (acts that my older brother liked), it was the Beatles and the so-called ‘British Invasion’ beginning in 1964 that hooked me to rock music (same with all my friends and classmates). Yes, the American acts continued to make hit songs, but it was the Brit bands and singers that ‘owned’ rock radio stations and record sales starting in 1964.

It was around this time I created what would become my novel characters, boys and girls, teens, in a high school clique which evolved into a gang of sorts. At this time the characters were Americans; after all, I knew little about England, so how could these ‘kids’ be English? I watched movies set in what was 1950s and 1960s England (mostly London), but still… However, reading pop culture ‘fan’ magazines, including one from England I don’t remember the name of, helped me learn what being a teen in England was like (living in cities, not the rural areas…I myself lived near New York City, in the Long Island suburbs). Also, during the latter 60s England was going through economic turmoil, possibly joining what was called ‘the Common Market’ (consisting of France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg), and changing the currency somewhat (the value of the British Pound Sterling had been over five dollars per pound, but it devalued to about half of that over time as the US dollar gained value). Further, a politician named Enoch Powell was heading up a form of nationalism that wanted to end or curtail immigration from India and Pakistan (and his followers were called ‘Paki Bashers’). All this during the US incursion into the Vietnam War, which I hated! (I hate war, period!) This terrible war was another reason I decided to make my characters Brits-while the US was at war, Britain was not—and many songs from these Brit bands were antiwar.

So that characters would be English, but from what area of England? Being as antiwar as I was, I tended to support the political left-wing which was antiwar, whereas the more conservative folks tended to be pro-war. And what sector of the populations tend to be more left-wing? The working class—at least that’s what I figured considering (according to political pundits) workers tend to be more left-wing, belonging to unions and more. And what part of England tends to be more working class? The industrial north—Lancashire, Yorkshire and the northeast, coal pit mining country. The Beatles and other popular bands and singers were from these areas, so that helped. The Beatles are from Liverpool, a city with a weird accent called Scouse…interesting, but not quite what I wanted from the characters. More interesting are the Yorkshire and northeast accents where certain vowels are pronounced much differently that in, say, London. The ‘short u’ has a ‘oo’ sound or even a long U sound while (the further north you go) the long A sound almost sounds like a mix of long A and long E, and more…almost Scottish in a way.

But the strangest northern accent hails from Tyneside, called Geordie. The first time I heard it was from a band called the Animals, from Newcastle. They appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in fall of 1964 and when Sullivan was interviewing them, they spoke with the strangest English accent I had ever heard; some of what they said was barely understandable for me, and it had a Scottish ‘lilt’ to it. Which made sense, since Newcastle is not far from the Scottish border, and, historically, during the days of Rome’s conquest of most of England, the Romans had to build Hadrian’s Wall to keep ‘the Picts’ out. The Picts were the early inhabitants of what would become Scotland and they painted their faces (which is where the word ‘picture’ comes from) and were barbaric. In the Middle Ages after the ‘Braveheart’ days, Scotland actually controlled most of what the area north of Hadrian’s Wall stood, most of Northumberland (where the kingdom of Northumbria stood while the Vikings tried to take over this area—the historical TV show Vikings verifies this).

And speaking of history, I love researching history, and Tyneside is quite featured in England’s history, and not just Hadian’s Wall or Viking invasions. The city across from Newcastle, Gateshead, features a bird-like statue that is also considered angelic…which inspired my angelic Tooters statue. Near Gateshead on the south side of the river is a city called Jarrow, which featured a famous monastery where supposedly the “Doomsday Book” was composed by monks, or part of it anyway. Jarrow is also famous for the “Jarrow March” in 1926, a protest of coal pit miners and shipyard workers and more for better pay and more influence within the British government. Near Newcastle but north of the river is Wallsend, where Hadrian’s Wall ends (beginning in what is now Cumberland west of Northumberland). But according to a friend who was a bit familiar with the area’s history, the Nothrumbria kingdom also built walls to try to keep out the Vikings, with little success. Some of the walls were along the Tyne River. Since I’d never been to Newcastle or any other city there, I couldn’t just place my characters in any of those cities, so I invented the fictitious city called ‘Walltown,’ which is on the north side of the river and features an angelic statue I called the Tooters, built to try to keep out demons.

But the real reason I chose this area in northeast England was that, on the way to the Isle of Wight rock festival in 1970 staying in a parking lot near the ferry port to the island, our pick-up truck with camper in the back just so happened to be parked next to a van that had three college-age boys from Newcastle, and, as I spoke with them, I became fascinated by their accent, which was more understandable but still had that Scottish-sounding lilt to it. One of the guys had a much thicker accent but he went to bed in the van early. The other two were more understandable and one of them had a much thinner accent. Still, it was the Geordie accent that caused me to place my characters, now a rock band, in the Tyneside area, just in a fictional town where shipbuilding was key.

And when did I decide the characters would from a rock band? Around that same time that I visited England, the summer of 1970, a high school graduation gift from my parents, to learn more about England in the Sussex University ‘Interteach’ program.

Well, that was the beginning of my journey to writing these trilogy novels I began writing in the early 90s, but upon finding out how the ‘rulers of this world’ have planned to bring about one evil agenda after another in their so-called “new world order” (now called ‘the great reset’ or ‘agenda 2030’ or whatever), I realized I had to use my writing to expose this evil, and then later, use my writing for my ‘God-given mission’ to try to get readers into God’s ‘redemption agenda’ if you know what I mean.

Part Two of this series on ‘physical reality’ inspiration will be posted next week, about exposing just who or what controls this world for evil purposes and how my novel plays into that. Part Three relates more to the evil’s role in the music industry.

Use the menu above to read snippet posts of the novels, download the FREE PDF The Prodigal Band as well as the FREE PDF The Murder Rule, and more. Cheers!