From postie to pop star
THREE months ago postman Tim McCall was walking the streets of Sheffield, head down into the wind, delivering mail.
Then he got a phone call that would change his life for ever.
It was his friend and fellow Sheffield guitarist Richard Hawley asking if he wanted to audition for Jarvis Cocker's band.
Stunned and unsure of himself Tim hesitated at first, wondering if he could make the step up.
Then he looked at the letters in his hand, thought about his 4am starts and realised this was the chance he had been waiting all his life for.
That was in December.
Now with a European tour already behind him he's been promoted to lead guitar and looking forward to touring Australia, Canada and the USA with Jarvis on the back of the former Pulp frontman's successful first solo album..
Not bad for a part-time guitar man, former dishwasher, ambulance driver and tarmac layer who never learned to read music.
"I was delivering mail on Den Bank Crescent in Crosspool, I will always remember where I was when I got that call," said 34-year-old Tim from Hillsborough.
"Richard was working with Jarvis and he told me he needed a guitarist, said he had put my name forward and would I like to try out for it?
"I was a bit taken back and I told him I felt a bit insecure and that it seemed like a huge step. Then I thought I had been playing guitar for 20 years just wishing for something like this to happen. How could I refuse?"
He couldn't. He went for the audition, met Jarvis, and gave it a go.
"I had never heard the songs before and they gave me a tatty piece of paper with some chords scribbled on it. I tried to get the gist and strummed along with them." It worked. Fate was about to deliver for Tim.
"A couple of days later I was on my round on Riverdale Road at Ranmoor when the phone went. I couldn't answer because my hands were full of letters.
"It was Jarvis and he had left the longest message you've ever heard. He was chatting away and eventually asked me if I fancied doing the Jools Holland Show with him.
"I just couldn't believe it.
"I had a day and a half to get up to live standard. I had to post my last letter, run from work down to Richard Hawley's house to get the Jarvis album so I could start and learn the songs."
Daunting for most but no problem for a man whose love affair with the guitar began when he became obsessed with learning his Dad's Beatles collection on his first guitar as an 11-year-old.
"I learned the songs by ear like I used to when I was a kid. It came fairly easy having done that kind of thing so many times before. Jarvis's tour manager sent a car to pick me up and take me to London. I had a great laugh with Richard Hawley who was also playing with Jarvis at the time.
"When we did Jools Holland, there was me, a postman from Sheffield and Smokey Robinson walks by and says 'hello'. I thought 'bloody hell, he's talking to me!' Tony Bennett was singing about ten feet away from me, it just seemed crazy.
"Then a few days later Jarvis was on the Jonathan Ross show and I'm sat in the green room with Liz Smith from the Royle Family and the comedian Lee Evans. I was still doing the post round and for a while I was catching the last train home from London after programmes like Newsnight Review and getting up at 4am to do the round the next day.
"There was no way I could call in sick because they would have seen me on the telly! I would feel like crap all day but I didn't like to miss work and there was no guarantee that working with the band would last."
Former Yewlands school boy Tim has since taken over Richard Hawley's lead guitar role in the band as Richard is in Sheffield's Yellow Arch studios finishing off his own new album Lady's Bridge.
Tim has also taken a six month career break from the Royal Mail to see how his music career goes.
"The European tour came up and I knew I had to make a decision. From January 7. I went full-time with Jarvis and went on the European tour. It has been fantastic. Jarvis is a great bloke. Nothing flash about him. We ended up walking and talking together for about three hours and went for a drink together in Denmark. I get on well with him."
"Sometimes I just think how amazing is all this and other times I just think I'm taking it all in my stride.
"I feel really, really lucky to be in this position. I am having such a great time. Without Richard Hawley I wouldn't have done any of this. I owe him for throwing me a lifeline at the age of 34. It's great for me to be able to do what I really want and if working with Jarvis comes to an end hopefully I will have made enough contacts to stay in the music business.
"I am making good money but not enough to retire on like people might think. Hopefully I will be able to carry on and make a living. It's just great to not have to worry about getting up at 4am.
"Nothing is certain yet though, I might end up pushing letters through letter boxes again if things don't work out."'McCall was almost one of Sheffield's lost guitarists'
SHEFFIELD guitar legend Richard Hawley never had a moment's hesitation in recommending Tim McCall to Jarvis Cocker.
Richard, currently putting the finishing touches to his own album Lady's Bridge, had played lead guitar on the Jarvis album and when the band needed a new rythym guitarist he contacted Tim.
After impressing Jarvis at his audition at Sheffield's Yellow Arch studios Tim was drafted in.
"I have known Tim for a long time, he used to go out with my sister," said 40-year-old Hawley who will be replaced by Tim as lead guitarist in Jarvis's band on the Australian and American tours and in a gig in Bejing.
"I knew him when he was guitarist in Various Vegetables and he is a great player. He was almost one of Sheffield's lost guitarists. He never got the break he deserved.
"I always wanted to get him a gig somewhere but it was never really appropriate. Then when Jarvis wanted a guitar player and preferably someone from Sheffield Tim popped into my head.
"He is an affable kind of lad with a great sense of humour. I knew he would enjoy it and throw himself into it. I thought he would get on with Jarvis and the rest of the band. Playing is only 30 per cent of it when you are on tour. You have to be able to cope with the travelling and living on a bus with no sleep and not be a pain in the arse.
"He is used to working odd hours, being a postman. He is a talented player and he is very thorough in what he does. He will be able to take the parts that I played on the album, add something of his own to them and make them his own. He is the real deal and 100 per cent a genuine kid.
"He has been a close friend of mine for a long time. With me and Tim we always end up wetting ourselves laughing when we are together. He has become a very accomplished musician but he has not had a chance to shine. I think the lack of success in the early part of his career may have affected his confidence but the time is right for him now.
"I never had any doubts that he and Jarvis would get on, He is like the rest of us all, serious about what we do but we all share a Sheffield working-class sense of humour. If you can get through the savage life of touring and still laugh you are alright.
"People imagine life on the road is somehow glamorous but half the time you are trying to put contact lenses in using a cracked mirrror in the back of a van. There's no glamour in that."
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Thursday 09 February 2012
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