Going back to school with rock master Findlay MacKinnon

Dec 31 2010 By Lorne Jackson

Lorne Jackson meets an English teacher with a sideline as a critically-acclaimed rock star and another as a photographer.

On entering King Edward VI High School for Girls in Edgbaston I’m confronted by a wall of pride.

The wall displays a list of former students who distinguished themselves academically.

It boasts of the achievements of Marion, Mabel, Agnes, Winifred and many others.

Hard working young ladies who progressed to the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London and Birmingham.

What you won’t find on the wall of pride is a list of girls who progressed to nose piercing and skinny leather trouser shimmying. There are no accolades for girls who mangled their hair in a mosh pit or fractured fingernails strumming a Fender Stratocaster.

That’s because King Edward’s is a place of privilege, prestige, scholarship and tradition. Where pupils are defined by school badges, not their most ornate tattoo.

So what exactly is Findlay Mackinnon doing here?

Teaching, is the short answer.

Findlay is proud to be on the staff of King Edward’s, where he has been an English master for over a decade. But he also has an alter ego. In his spare time he’s a rock star.

The forty-year-old bashes drums for The Butcher Boy, a critically acclaimed Scottish band.

“I was always passionate about music,” he tells me, sipping a cup of tea in his classroom during lunch break. “I always played in bands, always wanted to be part of the Glasgow scene and get involved with the groups up there.

“The jewel in the crown for me back in my teenage years would have been to get to play on Top Of The Pops. But I was a provincial guy from Ardrossan in Ayrshire. So even just playing a show in Glasgow felt like it would be amazing.

“There was a place in Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street called Nice n Sleazy. Getting on the stage there was a huge goal – that was my Wembley Stadium.”

What music did he listen to at the time?

“Teenage Fanclub were a massive influence.

“As were all the punk bands. I remember The Ramones playing Glasgow Barrowland. Then there was Stiff Little Fingers. And new wave bands like Dinosaur Jr...”

While Findlay enthuses about his favourite groups, I find myself musing that this is an unlikely conversation.

It’s certainly the first time I’ve exchanged words with a teacher and it hasn’t involved being ordered to tell the rest of the class exactly what I find so interesting outside the classroom window.

But Findlay, who lives in Stourbridge, isn’t your average teacher. Smacking bottoms with a cane was never an aspiration. Smacking drums was the goal.