My deafness and music

An iPhone pic from the Pink Floyd exhibition "Their Mortal Remains".
Philip McDonnell 2017

I am deaf.  There's no simpler way to put it.  For years I could claim to be profoundly deaf which means little or no useful hearing.  I have now gone past that to profanely deaf, perhaps.  Fortunately, 10 years ago, I was given a cochlear implant by our beleaguered but still fabulous NHS (Guys & St. Thomas' in London to give the name of the trust) that has given me considerable audio restoration.  The only thing is: cochlear implants are speech processors, not music processors and music was one of those creations of humanity that was very important to me.

I began going deaf when I was 27.  I actually noticed I couldn't hear birdsong.  I got tested at a local hospital and they told me I was losing high frequency audio.  My threshold of pain from loud noise was also dropping.  That was 1991.  It would be another 16 years of decline before I would undergo tests for being fitted with an implant.

The audiologists said it was noise damage and I have since recognised the cacophonous world I lived in.  From an early age, I helped my father in the garage repairing cars.  That often meant standing in front of revving engines whilst unwittingly playing with lengths of asbestos rope used to seal exhausts.  That's how we lived back then: carbon monoxide and asbestos - life on the edge.

As a teenager, I discovered 70s heavy rock, namely Black Sabbath, AC:DC, Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, Iron Maiden, Rush and later, less heavy, Kansas and Pink Floyd among others.  I also discovered motorbikes followed by motorbikes with almost straight through exhausts. There was nothing like the sound of a four-stroke roar as you belted through the Dartford Tunnel at illegal speeds.  Finally, to complete my noise map, I starting work in the construction industry which eventually decided that noise was bad for you.

But the damage was already done.

Slowly, insidiously, I started to lose the ability to hear high fret guitar work.  Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street has notes played on the 23rd fret.  Gone.  The solo on Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb with the harmonic D on the 8th fret; gone.  Jethro Tull's Broadsword; badly distorted.  The introductions to Iron Maiden's To Tame A Land and The Mission's Deliverance; gone.  Fleetwood Mac's I'm So Afraid and Lindsey Buckingham's soaring guitar solos; gone.  Kansas' intro to The Wall and Rush's violin component of Losing It; also gone.  And with every year, I could hear less and less...until the cochlear implant.

I was fitted with the Med-El device on 28th July 2008.  My head was bandaged like a turban and I had to wear that for a week or so.  It came off quick enough and a stupid plaster was put in its place that fell off just as the opening ceremony of the Chinese Olympics began.  How's that for a memory?

At the beginning of September, I finally received the external sound processor of the implant and was 'switched on'.  Everyone sounded like R2D2 having a conversation with a Dalek.  Bloody awful, Like Pinky & Perky on crack.  But within days I could hear noises I had never heard; the bleeping of ATM's as keys are pressed; the warning alarms on buses and trains before the doors close.  And sounds I had forgotten like birdsong.  But music was my goal.

I sat on the floor with my future wife one night listening to music I knew.  The audiologists said listen to stuff I knew well.  The only track they recommended I avoid was Baker Street.  That, they felt, was the Holy Grail to me at that time.

I remembered listening to Jethro Tull and saying: "I know that's the flute but it just sounds wrong."  Yet, I hadn't heard it for years so at least there was progress.  And quickly some semblance of musical appreciation returned.

When I had the final test before the implant surgery, I could here one in five words in each ear.  After the op and once accustomed, I rose to eight out of ten words. Yet music, especially synthesiser and guitar-based work remained difficult and even today I am limited to that music I had a good audio-memory of before I went deaf.

Pop music was the easiest to hear.  Savage Garden became a favourite of both of us.  I persisted with Jethro Tull as Broadsword and the Beast was and probably remains one of my favourite albums of all time.  I could listen to Placebo's Pure Morning, Andrea Bocelli's Canto della Terra, Muse's Hysteria and a lot more besides and enjoy them.  But it was Kansas' The Wall, Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb, and Gerry Raffety's Baker Street that formed the trinity of my salvation.

Eventually, I played them all with Baker Street being the last just before Christmas 2008. And there were notes played on the 23rd fret.  They weren't fabulous and they will never sound the way my audio memory and my dreams (yes, I dream songs sometimes) replay them but they were there and I cried.  The Grail was within reach.

Today, I still struggle with improvised, extended and live versions of songs I like because they do not match my memory.  However, last year I went to the Pink Floyd Their Mortal Remains Exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum and the last room I visited played the first and last tracks the core four members ever did:  See Emily Play and Comfortably Numb.  The latter blew me away.  I just stood and let the music swamp me and video footage mixed with the psychedelic projections left me in awe.  I stood there through two repeats and cried...again.

My hearing will never be fully-restored.  At 54, it never will be as perfect as it was when I was a teenager but maybe I could push 90% restoration rather than 80%.  There has been some progress using stem cell research in America and the Government here is hinting it may insist all previously single-implanted adults are to be double-implanted - something that has usually been reserved for babies and small children.  It may help but I'm not holding my breath.

I can hear a good amount of the music of my youth and enjoy it.  The rest?  Well, that is lost in my memory or just noise in my electronic hearing.  Maybe I will dream some of those lost tracks someday.

Another iPhone pic from the Pink Floyd exhibition "Their Mortal Remains".
(C) Philip McDonnell, 2017