But Midge's old mate and neighbour, Lance Adlam, defends him: "I never once heard him try to dodge his piano lessons."
Fellow West End School pupil Peggy George may have another version. Although Midge could play the piano, he hated the theory. So, in preference to toiling over music sheets, penciling in notes and learning "every good boy deserves fruit", he turned to gentle bribery.
"Peggy was a good piano player and she learnt it all, and to show you how bad I was - I never told my parents this - at school I'd pay her money or give her - I think she had a soft spot for me, I'm not sure - I used to give her sandwiches out of my lunch to do my theory. She would write all my theory out for me ... I could just never get the hang of actually reading music, it just took too long," he says.
Instead, Midge played by intuition and ear and learnt the piano pieces by heart.
Rap over the knuckles
His teacher caught him out every time. "Ms Carter was on to it. She knew. She would get the music and say…'right, start here', half way down page two. And I couldn't, because I'd learnt it from the start."
The outcome was always painful. "Ms Carter used to whack you over the fingers with a big pencil."
While he suffered no long-lasting effects from the corporal punishment, Midge wishes he had learnt his musical theory. "I regret it now."
Apart from the piano, Midge's life was touched by music in subtle ways that may, or may not have, drip-dripped into his subconscious.
His parents, Les and Elaine, made certain that once a week their five boys (Midge is the eldest) went to Sunday school at the Brethren church behind the New Plymouth Police Station.
"I remember enjoying singing as a kid, enjoying singing hymns and stuff, but it never really had a big influence on what I ended up doing, although I love gospel music."
Proud Parents: Les and Elaine Marsden supported Midge in his musical career.
But the music of Midge's heart came soaring across the Tasman Sea.
It wasn't soft ballads, or even blues - he found his true colours later. In the beginning, it was pure rock 'n' roll.
Lance Adlam says he owned a blue Morris Minor car with a big whip aerial. "It was pretty well-known," he grins. "I would be driving and Midge would be in the back with a girl."
They would park at the base of Paritutu and tune into AM radio. "After dark, 2UE in Sydney would come in very strong - we could hear songs that we had never heard."
Lance says those sounds were the history-making music of the late 1950s and early '60s.
Songs you couldn't hear on Taranaki's own frequency. "Our radio station here was pretty damn conservative."
Making No Waves: Men at work in the Radio Taranaki 2XP studio during the 1960s. Midge found the music too conservative.
There were other places the boys heard alternative music. In milk bars around New Plymouth there were jukeboxes stacked with boundary-pushing singles.
Seamen and singles
Midge reckons the one at Port Taranaki was among the best. "That's where I started hearing black music for the first time, because the seamen used to bring in records from overseas."
The sailors would give 45s to the café owners, who would put them on the play list. "So that was actually the coolest jukebox in town eventually, because it had different music in it," Midge says.
The port area, known as Tiger Town, was a regular hangout for the boys from Midge's Birdwood Ave neighbourhood.
"I have started writing a song about Tiger Town," he says.
"I used to love the activity going on in that port, because at any given time there'd be up to eight or ten ships from all around the world, you know?
"We used to love going on the ships - check out all the engine room and stuff," he says. Some of the sailors had records and the lads would listen avidly to music from exotic places.
They also saw exotic people: "It was the first time we'd ever seen black people, black sailors from Jamaica, from the Caribbean... or the West Indies - somewhere."
Whiff of sweet syrup, warm valves
The wharf area was like a senses' overload for Midge. Along with the sight of different cultures, the industrial sound of a working wharf and the beat of black music came a sweet, syrupy smell that floated on westerly winds to Birdwood Ave.
Stomping Ground: This detail from a Marianne Muggeridge painting focuses on Midge's neighbourhood, the port beyond and Paritutu, where the boys used to tune into Australia. Image: Marianne Muggeridge copyright.
"There used to be a smaller ship that would park on this side of the wharf and they'd pump molasses out of this ship and at night-time you could smell it. When they were pumping molasses on a cool summer's evening you'd go outside and you could smell it," Midge says, eyes closed sniffing a ghost of a scent.
There are other powerful smells that link back to his boyhood.
Way before Midge and Lance found the Sydney station, the Marsden family home was filled with the big-band sounds that Les loved, and whatever was on National Radio.
"I don't remember much about music as I was growing up, all I remember is hearing what was on the radio like everybody else, and the smell of the radio, the smell of the Columbus radio. They had a smell because the valves would heat up… I always associate that with sitting in there; in fact where the stereo is now," he points to the lounge.
DJs in the house
Midge points out the window, over the back to where his mate used to live. "He (Lance) would play 45s at night - you know like a DJ - he'd play all these records and do these announcements."
Lance laughs about what he must have served up. "We would put the microphone against the old gramophones and play a song and pretend we were announcing it like real radio announcers. My sisters learnt Highland dancing, so you can imagine some of the records in my mother's record collection. I remember Patti Page's Doggy In The Window."
Midge also had a spin at announcing songs. "It's funny because Midge ended up being on one of the first FM stations in Hamilton," Lance says.
In their early teens, the lads got hooked on buying 45s - small vinyl records that had a single on each side. On top of this, Lance had a portable record player.
Music to watch girls by
With the battery-powered record player and the latest singles, the boys thought they were the coolest in town.
"We'd go down the beach and take a stack of 45s and play them… to attract the girls you see. Pretty flash. A portable record player in those days was pretty good," Midge says.
The first 45 record he bought was Susie Darling, by Robin Luke. "I still have it."
Next came Richie Valance with La Bamba and a string of singles by Buddy Holly, Paul Anka, Neil Sedaka, The Coasters and Chuck Berry.
By then, it was the late 1950s and rock 'n' roll had begun to rev up young New Zealanders. "That's when music started to make a difference in our lives," Midge says.
"That's when it became more than just a passing hobby. I think it started to take a real hold and I remember I started seeking out music that was a bit different."
He didn't find those sounds at New Plymouth Boys' High School, but he did get to make a noise. "I was in the military band," he says. "You still had days you had to go to school wearing military khakis."
The students had to do marching and also learn to shoot at the rifle range at Waiwakaiho.
Midge's music role saw him on the beat. "It was first in first served - and that was all that was left in the cupboard, so I got the tenor drum. Music at school wasn't a big deal to me really."
Uncle's guitar gently weeps…
The first precious instrument Midge got his hands on belonged to his Uncle Mervyn. "He had a guitar, which I borrowed off him then lent it to someone and never got it back," he grimaces. "I'll never forget that - that was a bad one.
"I can remember him being pretty pissed off when it came to give it back," Midge says.
"I don't know who ever ended up with that. It was probably a valuable old one too. I couldn't play it, but I thought I could. I just wanted to look cool, having a guitar in those days was like, 'Yeah man, I look cool with this thing', and you have a bit of a strum away."
Midge had guitar lessons from a New Plymouth musician called Leo Davies. "He had a studio long before anyone else even knew what a studio was," says Midge. He was a bit of a pioneer that man."
The only other studio he knew of was the one in the 2XP radio building in central New Plymouth.
Next, Midge went to guitar player Johnny Williams. "He started giving me guitar lessons so I could learn more than three chords - and he was pretty successful because now I know four!"
Amateur and Appalling
Midge's first live performances didn't rate any headlines, or newspaper photographs (that's another story entirely).
Out at Fitzroy, in a church hall he can't remember the name of, Midge went to a youth club on either a Thursday or Friday night. Here, his memory gets as hazy as a pub dance floor before the smoke-free movement took hold.
"You've got to remember there was no music in pubs in those days; they all closed at 6o'clock. That's why all these little church halls around the country were a catalyst to bringing teenagers together to share the music of our youth."
The teens also played instruments, with Midge and three others on guitars plus one youngster on piano. "That was the first real taste of performance. It was very amateur - we sounded appalling actually."
Proud to be a groupie
As well as his early strummings, Midge mixed with musicians.
"I was a groupie," he says. "I started hanging around with friends who were musicians.
I was like their roadie, their mascot."
He names Colin Lambert, Alan Clarke, Murray Coplestone and Crawford Sweeney as the mates he looked up to. "I hung on every note, every move - I was the fifth non-member of the band."
When Midge comes home to New Plymouth and heads to the port, he sees the old church by Bayly Road and goes back in time. "When I drive past it, I think 'that was my first experience; that's where it all started'."
Just down the road, on the grassed area at Ngamotu Beach there was another happening place for young people.
"The Palladium," Midge nods. "Upstairs they used to have dances down there, mostly in the afternoons."
The two-storey building was erected by the Ngamotu Seaside Committee after World War I. In Bradbury's Illustrated Series featuring The Taranaki District, published in 1921, the building is described as "a splendid palladium in bungalow style, fitted with dressing rooms for both sexes, lavatories, showers, etc., while upstairs is a large tea and luncheon room capable of accommodating 150 guests".
In the late-1960s, the Palladium (which should be spelt Palladian) was pulled down.
Starring… MC Monty
The Spotswood United gym, found down a lane off Tukapa Street, used to be another entertainment venue with an astral name.
"I remember going to the Star Gym and hearing Colin King and the Harmonisers and then The Nite-Lites up at the Army Hall (where Spotlight is now)," Midge says.
"I remember Colin King because Monty Julian was the MC and Monty Julian ran the record store in town, where we got all our cool 45s from."
Other New Plymouth record shops at that time were Nimmos, Colliers, Newton King's Top Shop and Beggs.
But it was the star MC that led the boys to the Record Inn on Devon Street West. "Monty was, in our books, pretty damn cool. He was my mentor you know."
Monty, who in 2003 became an "OBE - Older than Bloody Eighty", remembers Midge coming into the store. "That was before he was even a teenager. He was a cheeky little chappy; nice cheeky like (Paul) Holmes," he says.
"I was very pleased some years later, when the Roger Fox Big Band was in town and Midge had a concert and he asked me to compere it. So that was a feather in my cap. I don't know how many people walked out, but I think there were still a few left at the end," jokes Monty.
Home Boy: Midge Marsden plays with the Rodger Fox band at the Westown Motor Hotel in 1993. Image: Taranaki Daily News
Other times, Monty popped along to Westown Hotel to see Midge perform.
"We were blown away to think he was a local product - you could see he was destined for fame."
Often, Lance Adlam would be watching as well. Even now he turns up to Midge's gigs, stands at the back to watch his old mate perform and then quietly slips away again. "I'm not the type to go up to the stage," he says.
But he's a hell of a proud of the boy he grew up with. "I've always claimed him as an old friend - too right. I take my hat off to him.
"He's a credit to his parents too. They have always been a real nice family. The Marsdens - they never got into fighting and that carry on. They would stand up for their rights, but they were not bully boys. They were the good guys of the neighbourhood."
There's a train a-comin'
Just in case you start thinking young Midge was a saint, just remember that he and Lance were the original boy racers.
And Midge himself raised a bit of hell, especially in the sandhills that used to flow from the port railway tracks down to the harbour.
"I always laugh when I hear his songs with the train coming because he got a write-up in the paper for helping the fire brigade put a fire out," Lance says.
The story goes that it was Midge who alerted firemen to a bush blaze in the dunes, lit either by sparks from a train chug-chugging over tracks or: "We said we saw some blokes playing with matches…"
Lance knows the truth. "I think it was 'the boys' playing with matches."
Later, Midge says his old mate is right. "Lighting that fire - I'll never forget that. We used to light things and put them out, but this time…"
That time it got out of control and swept through dry grass, lupins and everything in its path until the whole bank below the Belt Road Motor Camp was ablaze.
"It was the biggest bloody fire," he says.
Wracked with guilt and fear, Midge ran home to call the emergency services. But he never took the blame, fingering those fictitious pyromaniacs.
Appropriately, Midge Marsden's most successful single and album to date, has been his 1991 release, Burning Rain.
The whole rhythm and blues train is destined for another story. You can catch that one later…
Burning Rain: Midge's most popular song ever, fitted with mischief from his boyhood days.