My name is Jo Phimister. I grew up in Glasgow, Scotland, in a flat on the fourth floor with thin walls and thinner patience — or at least, that’s what the neighbours would say. I was ten years old when my parents gave me a second-hand set of drums. They found it at a market on Sauchihall Street, missing one cymbal and with a crack in the bass drum. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

If you give a ten-year-old a drum kit, you don’t sleep for a month. My father knew this. He bought it anyway. I think he understood something about me before I understood it myself.

The first thing I played was not a song. It was just a beat. One note, repeated. Boom. Boom. Boom. I remember the feeling — the way the stick hit the skin and the sound filled the room. It was like finding a language I already knew.

Every afternoon, I set up in the living room and practised for two hours. The neighbours in the flat below knocked on the ceiling with a broom. The neighbours on the right played their television at full volume to drown me out. If I practise every day, I will get better. That was my logic. Simple. Absolute. I was ten.

My rehearsal space moved around the flat like a problem nobody could solve. Living room, then bedroom, then — when Mum finally said no — the garden shed. The shed was cold in winter and I wore gloves with the fingertips cut off. My drumsticks left marks on the wall. I didn’t care.

By the time I was thirteen, I had a proper rhythm and enough energy to start a small earthquake. I joined my first band — three boys from school, a second-hand electric guitar, a bass they didn’t know how to tune, and me on the drums. We practised in Danny’s garage on Saturday mornings. The amp smelled of burning and the floor was always damp. It was perfect.

Our first gig was at the school end-of-year assembly. We played three songs. We forgot the words to two of them. I didn’t forget a single beat. If we play well enough, the teachers will let us play again next year, Danny said before we went on. We played. They didn’t invite us back. But something had started, and there was no stopping it now.