John Lennon is Dead

 

It was a wet and miserable December morning, the time was about 6.55am. I was in Colomendy estate in Denbigh on my paper round. I had been doing it for about a year & Xmas was coming, normally for a paperboy the advent of Yuletide meant a big pay-day as the tips for your year long slog with scant reward would start flowing. This, sadly was not the case, my round cover the most affluent part of Denbigh, nice houses, nice cars, no tips. The other paperboys who did the council estates returned loaded with 50p's and pound notes, although there was little money within the households they served. There was plenty of cash flow, perhaps the phrase; 'the rich get richer while the poor get poorer' stemmed from the generosity extended to the paperboy at Xmas.

My BMX bike weaved its way along the dark pavements, door to door, delivering the Telegraph, the Guardian, and the Times. For company, tied to the handlebars I had an Action Man radio, a waterproof birthday present which could transmit Morse code should I ever get lost in the depths of Denbigh. Radio One, as ever, poured out drab pap music, but it kept my 14-year-old mind on the job in hand.

The 7 o'clock headlines rang out across the sleepy housing estate:

'John Lennon has been shot dead outside his home in New York.'

I pulled the brakes on my bike, took the heavy paper sack off my shoulder and dropped it onto the wet pavement. A state of complete shock came over me, but I didn't know why, John Lennon had never consciously meant anything to me, particularly during my musical awareness years where the likes of Sham 69, Sex Pistols, The Damned, Clash etc. were my idols.

Leaving the sack in a puddle where it fell, I solemnly made the long climb up Vale Street and home to my sleeping family. I awoke my mother:

'Mum, John Lennon's dead.'

We lived in Ruthin in the late sixties as did John & Cynthia Lennon, and my parents would attend the various parties held by the neighbours.

My mother didn't get out of bed that day.

Dad’s account of this day (written in 2009) goes like this…

It was my day off. I dragged myself out of bed mid morning, turned the kettle on and then the radio.

The kettle boiled dry.

Shocked by the news, I never got my morning cuppa. I sat all day, stunned, as a crackly medium wave Radio City struggled to reach over the Welsh mountains. They played Beatles tracks all day back-to-back.

John Lennon had been shot.

The following day I was back at work for the Evening Leader newspaper. Myself and feature-writer Carol James were the only newspaper people John’s ex wife Cynthia would talk to at that sad time. We interviewed and photographed her at her home in Castle Street, Ruthin, whilst the photographers from the Nationals were dropping mind-blowingly huge cheques through her letterbox desperate for exclusive pictures and an interview. She tore them all up.

We got through the door because we were journos she could trust to be sensitive and not sensationalise how she felt about John’s death, having previously done a feature about her charity work a few months earlier and prior to that a promotional piece about her book A Twist of Lennon.

For me, the whole thing was made far more poignant since I’d been part of the 60s/70s music scene myself.

My band, The Executioners, had graduated from the local village hall dances, through the Chester and Deeside working-mens clubs, to earn our place on the Mersey Beat scene. We played the Cavern, The Iron Door, Tower Ballroom New Brighton and many other Merseyside Clubs, alongside the likes of the Searchers, The Big Three, Freddie Starr and the Midnighters, The Black Abbots, and the Undertakers.

Sadly, we were never on the same bill as The Beatles, so I never got to meet John Lennon.

It was spooky when some time later, I photographed Julian Lennon as a young man because at that time he was just like his father during the Cavern years.

Today, 29 years after his untimely death, John’s music is as fresh and meaningful as back then. It will live on forever. But I often wonder what he would be doing now had December 8th 1980 never happened.

GIG 0003 - Billy Joel at Deeside Leisure Centre

I was 13 and there purely by accident because I happened to be staying at my dad’s that night and he was the local press photographer. Not exactly the rebellious rock-and-roll origin story you’d brag about in the playground. In fact, I told absolutely nobody. My carefully curated Punk Cred™ would have evaporated overnight.

From what I remember, the show was… fine. Competent. Polished. A bit self-indulgent. The sort of performance that probably felt transcendent if you loved Billy Joel, and like a very long piano lesson if you didn’t.

The real highlight came afterwards. While my dad was busy photographing the star dramatically pretending to play a pinball machine, I was in the bar chatting to the band’s American guitarist. He confided that he loved punk and only played this “stuff” because it paid well and came with travel perks. Even at 13, I recognised the purity of that sentiment: sell out, see the world, complain about it in the bar afterwards.

That night marked my third and final visit to Deeside Leisure Centre as a venue. A fitting farewell, really, because I also proudly refused the chance to see Adam & The Ants and Blondie around the same time. I declared myself “too punk rock” to attend. My sisters went instead.

Naturally, they had a brilliant time. I have spent the intervening decades perfecting the fine art of regret.

GIG 0002 - The Clash / Mikey Dread / Jiving Daleks at Deeside Leisure Centre

Crass taught me more about life, idealism, and social awareness than my parents or any schoolteacher ever did. I didn’t agree with everything they said, but I knew every word of every song—and still do. What set them apart was that they rarely told you what to do; they just told you what it was about. They laid the world bare and left you to make up your own mind.

And they did it without fleecing the kids. “Pay no more than 45p” was printed on some singles. Stations of the Crass, a double album, cost just £3.25. They were against profiteering, and it worked. Records flew out by the truckload because kids could actually afford them. That principle stuck with me, and it’s a policy I carry on to this day with my own music. I sell at a price that covers the costs. Seldom do I break even, let alone make a profit. If I wanted to make money out of music, I’d have joined a fucking covers band.

The irony was that the ultra-low prices meant Crass records weren’t eligible for the official charts. But sales-wise, they were still beating the big boys. When ABBA sat at No.1 with Super Trouper, Crass’s single Bloody Revolutions actually shifted more copies. That blew my teenage mind.

I learned more about the world by sitting in my bedroom with a record spinning and the lyric sheet in my hands than I ever did from the pompous lectures of school. That was my education—raw, noisy, and a hell of a lot more useful.

“They said that we were trash, well the name is Crass not Clash, they can stuff their punk credentials ‘cos it’s them that take the cash.” (White Punks On Hope – Crass, from Stations Of The Crass, 1979).

See? I said I didn’t agree with everything Crass preached. Decades later, Steve Ignorant even expressed regret for writing that line. Crass certainly had their detractors—The Exploited, Special Duties, Garry Bushell—but I liked The Exploited, never really paid attention to Special Duties or their Bullshit Crass single, and once I realised what a cock Garry Bushell was (and still is), I was firmly on the Crass side of the divide.

But before I’d even heard of Crass, let’s rewind a couple of years…

I was back at Deeside Leisure Centre, watching The Clash. I had just turned thirteen, and Dad had scored me two press-pass tickets for their 16 Tons Tour—they always gave their tours names, which made them sound important. It was 26th January 1980. Punk rock was becoming a staple of my life, but I was also trying to impress my new girlfriend, Lynda. We perched on the balcony with the “dignitaries” while thousands of punks swayed on the covered ice rink below.

The Clash were already huge by 1980, and just seeing the size of the crowd was breathtaking. The pre-gig PA droned on with endless reggae, which seemed to stretch on forever and bored a lot of the audience. Then Problems by the Pistols kicked in, and the energy shifted instantly. The crowd pogoed in unison, the tension snapping into raw, kinetic excitement.

Deeside Leisure Centre was, at the time, the sixth-largest indoor venue in the UK. That sounded impressive on paper, but in reality it was a freezing concrete cavern that felt more like an aircraft hangar than a concert hall. It was vast, echoing, and probably the grottiest place I’d ever been to see a gig. 

The local support were Chester’s own Jiving Daleks. They kicked things off with raw enthusiasm and the sort of scrappy confidence only small bands seem to have when suddenly faced with a huge crowd. Their singer, Mazz, looked out over the sea of pogoing punks and shouted into the microphone, “Stop spitting at me—I’ll catch hepatitis!” The place erupted. It was brilliant. Their song Two Faced Bitch still rattles around somewhere in my head decades later—rough, loud and gloriously unpolished, just like the band themselves.

Next on the bill was Mikey Dread, the reggae toaster who would later collaborate with The Clash and inspire their track Bankrobber. Unfortunately for him, the crowd that night had been raised on Anarchy in the U.K. and New Rose. Laid-back reggae rhythms weren’t what they’d come for. Within minutes the front rows turned into a spit-launching artillery line, gob after gob flying toward the stage and glinting under the lights.

To his credit, Mikey Dread carried on performing, but you could see the moment he realised he wasn’t winning this crowd over. Then members of The Clash wandered onto the stage wearing long coats and dark sunglasses, skanking beside him in solidarity. They started spitting back at the crowd, turning the whole unpleasant spectacle into something that felt more like a standoff than heckling.

When their own set finally began, the atmosphere changed instantly. They were electric. They tore through songs from London Calling, which I barely knew at the time. I was only thirteen and too green to catch every lyric, but the sheer force of the performance hit like a shockwave. The details of the setlist have faded over the years, but the energy of it all burned itself into my memory.

When the gig finished the crowd drifted off into the night, but Lynda and I stayed in our seats waiting for my dad to finish talking in the bar. While we were hanging around we spotted Mazz and Sven from the Jiving Daleks milling about nearby. We asked if they knew where we could get a concert programme. Mazz grinned and said, “I can do better than that—I can get you backstage to meet the Clash.”

We followed her through a maze of corridors and past a line of fans who looked at us with obvious envy. A few turns later we were suddenly standing in the band’s dressing room. My little notebook was out immediately, my hand shaking slightly as I held out a pen. Paul Simonon signed first, smiling warmly. Mick Jones followed. Topper Headon was busy chatting up a groupie but still managed to scribble his autograph without really looking up.

Across the room, Mikey Dread stood quietly wiping spit off his coat, looking like he’d rather be absolutely anywhere else. Then there was Joe Strummer. Unlike the others, he didn’t just sign and move on. He leaned forward and asked where we were from. “Denbigh? That’s just up the road, innit?” I was stunned. Joe Strummer knew Denbigh. Looking back it probably wasn’t exactly obscure geography, but to a thirteen-year-old kid from North Wales it felt incredible.

Lynda, bold as ever, ended up perched on his knee while he signed her notebook. With a grin he added a couple of kisses after his autograph. For a brief second I considered squaring up to him for flirting with my girlfriend, but reality quickly intervened. I was a skinny kid and he was Joe Strummer. Some battles you simply don’t start.

Looking back now, that night felt magical: a grimy venue, a spit-soaked crowd, a punk band at the height of their power, and two kids from Denbigh suddenly standing in the dressing room with their heroes. I can’t remember every song they played, but I remember exactly how it felt. That’s the strange thing about memory—the details fade, but the feeling never does.

There’s a small detail that still makes me smile. On the album Sandinista!, the lyric sheet for The Crooked Beat credits Paul Simonon with singing the line “Class, class, you wanna learn to dance.” But every time I hear it, it sounds suspiciously like “Crass, Crass, you wanna learn to dance.” Maybe it’s just my ears playing tricks on me, or maybe it was a sly nod to Crass after they’d questioned the Clash’s punk credentials. Either way, that’s always how I’ve heard it.

As for Lynda and me, I honestly can’t remember exactly how long we were together. Our little school gang worked like a revolving door of teenage relationships—boyfriends and girlfriends swapped around regularly, like mixtapes being passed from hand to hand. If someone got “chucked,” things rarely stayed awkward for long. We were just kids. “Going out” usually meant sweaty hand-holding, snogging behind the bike sheds, and the occasional hickey worn proudly like a badge of honour.

The delicate balance of our little social universe nearly collapsed, though, when I briefly started seeing Claire—the mod. She had sharp clothes and pure Vespa energy, while I looked like I’d fallen head-first into a box of safety pins. How that combination ever worked I’ll never know. It didn’t last long. Just another blurry moment in the strange, chaotic orbit of teenage punk life.