At 19, I was in the streets making money. I was surviving.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When I was 19, I made my first good week's pay as a club musician. It was enough money for me to quit my job at the factory and still pay the rent and buy some food. I freaked.
I quit my job in the bank when I was 19. I took a chance. I went to Milan to study opera and singing. My father really supported me economically.
At one stage, I didn't have any money, so I slept on the streets for a few nights. It wasn't uncommon in the 1950s, and it wasn't uncommon to be out of money. There wasn't anywhere to go to get money.
Certainly after '21' I was getting the opportunity to make a lot of money.
I did all kinds of things as a young person to try to make money. I had a chicken operation - I sold chickens. I can remember going to high school football games as a ten-year-old and gathering Coca-Cola bottles, 'cause you'd turn them in and get a nickel. I wanted not to remain idle.
I was 18 and making 150 quid a week, which was a lot of money to me. Then there was a bad winter and I got paid off. Then my firm, JW Henderson of Bowling Green Street, Leith, went bust. If they hadn't folded, I'd probably still be scaffolding and loving it.
My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.
For me, my 20s were all about reaching for the brass ring of work in theater, television, and film, surviving in between by waiting tables, painting houses, serving coffee, and temping.
At 17, I was working at Sprint in the Bronx so I could make money to fund my own music.
I ran my own business when I was 19, buying condos and renovating apartment buildings.