Beckett's Masterpiece Showed That Simplicity Triumphs – It Gave Me Courage.

Until I was twelve years old, I was educated in the French educational framework, where theatre meant Molière, Corneille, Racine. Attending a play usually meant shows such as The Sound of Music or My Fair Lady. Then, it was decided that I would switch to an English school. So, at thirteen, I started at Westminster School. It was the late sixties, and my horizons expanded.

I attended a student performance of Waiting for Godot in French in a small room with a modest platform, and I was sitting at the back. Musically, I was pretty sophisticated – I already knew all the psychedelic music that had been happening. I’d experienced the Mothers of Invention. I’d watched numerous performances. But I was unaware there was material of this kind. I suddenly became aware that, just like in music, there was a completely different realm out there.

I don’t know how good the French was, but it really didn’t matter what they were saying. It was just so conceptual and lively, with a sort of pent-up tension. And then, of course, it erupts with Pozzo and Lucky’s arrival. The show was put on by senior students, including a talented actor as Lucky. He was a commanding figure on stage. And he has to deliver that highly elaborate speech. In French. It was astonishing.

I was captivated by the notion that nothing really had to happen, you know? That an event took place and then it continues endlessly and then you have the little boy at the end explaining that Godot is not arriving today. It spoke about temporality and activity and narrative. Or their absence.

We had been instructed all these rules about what drama was, but none of them applied here. I was absolutely fascinated by the minimal action. Much later when I was producing music, I would try to turn them into something similar. When a fresh sound came in, I’d pull out other instruments and deliberately isolate them. So you clearly perceived that piano or that guitar or whichever element. That sense of less is more … I learned that with Godot.

And yet it possesses a narrative. It truly does. I mean, they are well-developed personas. They are vibrant, the two protagonists, in their love for each other, like an long-term partners. I don’t know how my life would have turned out if I hadn’t gone that performance. To that school and that play then. It just awakened something in me.

We were let out on Saturday afternoons, and I started going afternoon shows at the Royal Court every time there was a fresh staging. So you would see Pinter, John Osborne, Simon Gray plays. But the gateway to all of this was Godot.

I have minimal memory of the actual show, except I know that it was never boring – it had me at the edge of my seat. What I took away is that there don’t have to be any rules. It certainly shaped how I collaborated with the artists that I signed to my label. I even had the Waitresses compose a track around that famous phrase. I just instructed them: “I want a song with this title.”

I think it made me more fearless, too, because you should not fret about setbacks if you embrace the playwright’s philosophy.