Maybe I’m Amazed

Obsessed with music as a child – listening to everything he could lay his hands on, going to gigs, starting a band, and then pursuing a career in music journalism – John Harris had no idea that he was in fact preparing himself for the greatest challenge of his life. But so it transpired. When his son James was born, and three years later diagnosed with autism, music became their main form of communication, a hugely shared passion and – it is no exaggeration to say – the sound that saved them.

Opening with Paul McCartney’s magical little pre-Glastonbury gig last summer in Frome, where John and James live, and taking in the high-tech pyrotechnics of a 3D Kraftwerk extravaganza, the simple chords of a Velvet Underground song, some Funkadelic, Clash and many other tunes along the way, James returns to the Beatles again and again like a refrain. The songs seem woven into the very fabric of his being, an essential part of who he is.

In this extraordinary memoir, John Harris tells the story of how music has opened up the world to James, one song at a time. It takes us through the travails of raising an autistic child in a prejudiced world and investigates why it is that a large proportion of the million-odd neurodiverse people in the UK have perfect pitch and a particular aptitude for music. In considering the intense and transcendent way that James absorbs and connects with music, Maybe I’m Amazed has lessons in living and listening for us all.

‘The noise begins: a chord, a cymbal-crash, and the low thrum of his bass. And there it all is, once again: magic, joy and wonder, and the sound that saved our lives.’