am particularly open to emotional involvement, so separation is always going to hit me hard.
In my infancy it was Uncle Willie Billington: my father’s best friend and my favourite uncle. My favourite storytelling war hero of an uncle. Willie had received the equivalent of a George Cross in Greece, had founded a motorcycle display team and was a Regimental Sergeant Major in the Commandos. Aged forty-two he had come home to his mother’s house to die. It was all in the air: not quite spoken and not quite clear, yet I knew something hushed and momentous was going on. When he died he was laid out in his mother’s bay-fronted net-curtained front room in Ruskin Road and there was something important to see but they wouldn’t let me see him. Even though I was on my father’s shoulders. His was the biggest military funeral held in Crewe.
I was three years old.
It was shortly after this that my mother collapsed. Twelve years later she died. Three years after that Bert Bellamy suddenly died. His was the first death associated with the musical side of my life; there were to be many more.
In my twenties my father became ill coincidentally with having his teeth out. Feeling awful he sought medical opinion and was sent for radiotherapy at Christie’s. His terminal illness – diagnosed as cancer of the chest cavity – lasted for nine months, though he was originally given three months. I accompanied him when he went for treatment and me and my stepmother Vera looked after him at home. I was his youngest son but I had to be the man. I became his father though he was too proud to allow me to nurse him. Vera did that but I administered his medicine in the last few weeks of his life. While my father was dying we became extremely close and he divulged things he wouldn’t have said; I’m more emotional about it now than I was then. He who had such a strong constitution became a frail little thing with everything drawn in and a grey skeletal face. My father died in my arms; I was helping him to breathe and get his medication down when the terrible guttural struggle suddenly stopped.
“He’s gone – thankfully,” I said.
I regret not giving him more morphine in the last days. His final two and a half weeks were spent in a coma. In fact, if I’d known more and been stronger he’d have died two months earlier.
Mother had died unseen in a hospital; I’d been prevented from seeing my uncle laid out in a front room. But this death was in my arms. I felt it; I heard it; I was strong enough to deal with it because I had to be. I didn’t want to see my father again but I went to the mortuary for Vera’s sake. Like with my mother, they’d done a face job but his ‘smile’ was more of a grimace – well there hadn’t been much in his life to make him smile.
My mother’s death left me an angry teenager; my father’s death left me grown-up. I was official and controlled at his funeral; I had to be because everyone else was crying on my shoulder. Wearing his suit, I found myself in his role. Like my father I have found myself in situations where I had to take responsibility for what was happening, where people were relying on me to sort things out.
My father hadn’t lived to see the ultimate success of my business. He had been really upset when I opened a music shop instead of carrying on with a career in management consultancy or sport – my music still meant nothing to him. But before he died I had already begun to make serious money. Partly for his sake, I bought a Volvo 3 litre – almost a Rolls Royce to Norman Johnson and a very posh car in its day – and I took him all over the place in it. He must have realised that I had made a success of something.
The death of my father in 1972 marked the end of an era that had seen the establishment of a viable and growing sound system business called Custom Amplification with branches in Crewe and Hanley, an embryonic business in vintage guitars, the purchase of a house in
In my infancy it was Uncle Willie Billington: my father’s best friend and my favourite uncle. My favourite storytelling war hero of an uncle. Willie had received the equivalent of a George Cross in Greece, had founded a motorcycle display team and was a Regimental Sergeant Major in the Commandos. Aged forty-two he had come home to his mother’s house to die. It was all in the air: not quite spoken and not quite clear, yet I knew something hushed and momentous was going on. When he died he was laid out in his mother’s bay-fronted net-curtained front room in Ruskin Road and there was something important to see but they wouldn’t let me see him. Even though I was on my father’s shoulders. His was the biggest military funeral held in Crewe.
I was three years old.
It was shortly after this that my mother collapsed. Twelve years later she died. Three years after that Bert Bellamy suddenly died. His was the first death associated with the musical side of my life; there were to be many more.
In my twenties my father became ill coincidentally with having his teeth out. Feeling awful he sought medical opinion and was sent for radiotherapy at Christie’s. His terminal illness – diagnosed as cancer of the chest cavity – lasted for nine months, though he was originally given three months. I accompanied him when he went for treatment and me and my stepmother Vera looked after him at home. I was his youngest son but I had to be the man. I became his father though he was too proud to allow me to nurse him. Vera did that but I administered his medicine in the last few weeks of his life. While my father was dying we became extremely close and he divulged things he wouldn’t have said; I’m more emotional about it now than I was then. He who had such a strong constitution became a frail little thing with everything drawn in and a grey skeletal face. My father died in my arms; I was helping him to breathe and get his medication down when the terrible guttural struggle suddenly stopped.
“He’s gone – thankfully,” I said.
I regret not giving him more morphine in the last days. His final two and a half weeks were spent in a coma. In fact, if I’d known more and been stronger he’d have died two months earlier.
Mother had died unseen in a hospital; I’d been prevented from seeing my uncle laid out in a front room. But this death was in my arms. I felt it; I heard it; I was strong enough to deal with it because I had to be. I didn’t want to see my father again but I went to the mortuary for Vera’s sake. Like with my mother, they’d done a face job but his ‘smile’ was more of a grimace – well there hadn’t been much in his life to make him smile.
My mother’s death left me an angry teenager; my father’s death left me grown-up. I was official and controlled at his funeral; I had to be because everyone else was crying on my shoulder. Wearing his suit, I found myself in his role. Like my father I have found myself in situations where I had to take responsibility for what was happening, where people were relying on me to sort things out.
My father hadn’t lived to see the ultimate success of my business. He had been really upset when I opened a music shop instead of carrying on with a career in management consultancy or sport – my music still meant nothing to him. But before he died I had already begun to make serious money. Partly for his sake, I bought a Volvo 3 litre – almost a Rolls Royce to Norman Johnson and a very posh car in its day – and I took him all over the place in it. He must have realised that I had made a success of something.
The death of my father in 1972 marked the end of an era that had seen the establishment of a viable and growing sound system business called Custom Amplification with branches in Crewe and Hanley, an embryonic business in vintage guitars, the purchase of a house in
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