My love affair with pop music started early. My parents had some great 45s from the fifties and early sixties that I used to listen to on their record player when I was growing up – Buddy Holly, Elvis, Ricky Nelson, The Big O, The Everlys – and this coincided with the fifties revival that hit in the late seventies, so my first musical influences were mostly rock ‘n' roll. Then in December 1980 John Lennon was shot and it was all over the news and Beatles and Lennon songs were