Music Of Love

Radio Kent broadcaster and producer Andy Garland looks back to his early days of courtship to unravel the mystery: what is love?

- Andy Garland

I want to know what love is... At least I did when I was 15; then, my knowledge of this elusive Valentine’s emotion was sketchy at best. I knew it had something to do with how I felt when Melanie gently blew in my ear in a darkened corner of the village hall disco.

But mostly, what I knew about what my seemingly ancient relatives all called courting, was gleaned from a rather natty Telstar compilation LP with the grandiose title of The Love Album.

Heavily publicised on TV, the cover featured a man and a woman silhouetted in dark blue, with their faces revealed in soft-focus colour. He looking like a middle-aged George Michael minus the beard, she looking like an older Cheryl Ladd.

Why I ever purchased this is lost in the mists of time, other albums I could have bought that year included The Smiths’ Meat is Murder, Talking Heads, Little Creatures or Tears for Fears’ Songs from the Big Chair.