photograph courtesy of George Plemper 
Feltham Made Me 
“Their words – our stories” An oral history, compiled and edited by Paolo Sedazzari

The poet Richard F. Burton likened the truth to a large mirror, shattered into millions upon millions of pieces. Each of us owns a piece of that mirror, believing our one piece to be the whole truth. But you only get to see the whole truth when we put all the pieces together.

This is the concept behind Feltham Made Me. It is the story of three lads growing up together in the suburbs of London, put together from the transcripts of many hours of interviews. Most of the material has come directly from the three men – Dermott Collins, Peter Wyatt and Jerry Zmuda. But I have also included interviews with their teachers, parents, friends, enemies, work-mates and chance acquaintances. 

As each character in Feltham Made Me takes over the narrative baton with their own individual spin, we hear differing, often conflicting, accounts of the same incident. Who is telling the truth? Neither? Or both? Often our own distortions and exaggerations reveal another truth about ourselves. So why choose these particular three men and put their lives under the microscope? I just felt compelled to do so. I first met these lads when their band played a rather eventful gig at my college – the Polytechnic of Central London (PCL) aka PC Hell, back in the eighties. Standing around in the cupboard-stroke-dressing room next to the stage, I witnessed a very agitated but highly amusing row kicking off between the three. I next set eyes on these boys a couple of years later as the smoke cleared on the dance floor at Queens, a Sunday afternoon club for the then nascent acid house scene. I was delighted to discover that the boys had sunk their differences and were now promoting clubs together. A few years later I decided I was going to chronicle their lives in Feltham Made Me. There was something about their coolness and idiocy that to me embodied the spirit of Britain’s ever evolving music and fashion scene. They are participators, protagonists – they don’t always succeed – but they have a go. I love that spirit.

Dermott, Jerry and Peter are not celebrities - they are everyday people with modest incomes like you and I.  But what I have done here is examine their lives in the same way the media would to a celebrity. Just ordinary boys living ordinary lives – and yet when you look closer they are fascinating.
 
And in telling their stories we are given a history of British cultural life from the seventies to the present day. I am sure many people born in Britain at around the same time while see a good many parallels with their own lives. But the cultural reference points in Feltham Made Me, be they Planet of the Apes, Subbuteo, Man About the House, Punk, John Peel, The Jam, 2-Tone, The Young Ones, The Smiths, Acid House are merely shifting scenery to the real story. A story about male friendship and the strains put upon it over the years. The transition from boyhood to manhood is never easy. In Feltham Made Me we chart every painful and significant step along the way – from screaming kids in a playground right through to bickering men in a boozer.  
The biggest job for me was deciding what to leave out, and how much to put in, and in doing so, try and identify the narrative thread. It’s in this way only that I claim authorship of this book. 
 But it will become immediately clear to anybody reading Feltham Made Me what this book is all about.   On the very first page Jerry’s mother expresses her strong disapproval of his new friend. The crux of the story in Feltham Made Me is here.

Wherever I can, I have let the people speak for themselves in their own words. But you will understand I have had to do some considerable editing, to avoid repetition and when their words have veered away from the point.   I did attempt to “correct” the grammar, and try and bring a level of uniformity to the use of past and present tense. A very frustrating exercise, because my interviewees, like most of us when we recount an anecdote, will switch between past tense and present tense at will. In trying to “correct” the grammar I often found myself violating the spirit of what was being said. So I reverted back to allowing the boys to speak in their own choice of words – with all their occasional glorious grammatical inconsistencies and eccentric speech patterns.  It reads better that way. But also gives a truer picture - and the truth this is what we are looking for in Feltham Made Me.
 
The book has a very broad appeal, but I suspect the people who will enjoy this book the most are those who have lived their lives similar to our heroes. For anyone who bunked off school to go and see their favourite band play a sound check, for anyone who were inspired to form a band with their friends, for anyone whose lives were changed in a sweaty basement after taking a pill, and for anyone who hit 30, looked at themselves in the mirror and thought “What the fuck do I do now?”
 
So that’s it from me – from here on in I’ll let the boys and their supporting characters tell the story for themselves.
 You see a place that’s bleak, But this is home to me, And I’m here to say - Feltham Made Me, What I am today. Lyrics courtesy of Jerry Zmuda Feltham Made Me is dedicated to Carl Young and Peter Wyatt. Paolo Sedazzari, July 2008, London To go to Primary School - click here 1_Primary_School_1973-75.htmlshapeimage_1_link_0

Feltham Made Made Me

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