Punk Rockers Also Die

The Clash's tour manager Johnny Green and Brian James of the Damned, closely followed by Clem Burke, drummer and heartbeat of Blondie, whose obituaries

There was a time in the late '80s and early '90s when rarely a week went by without picking up the paper and finding one of those old movie stars you remembered from black and white films, and later in life shuffling onto the Parkinson show for an interview, had died, James Cagney in ‘86, Robert Mitchum and Burt Lancaster a decade or so later.

Into the early 2000s, and it was yeah yeah pop stars, those who had survived the excesses of the 1960s, but failed to find a second career in glorified tribute bands - to themselves - playing out of season in holiday camps, who began to check out. Now it’s the turn of the punk generation; the Clash’s tour manager and amanuensis Johnny Green, and Brian James of the Damned in the same week. Fot those of us who love reading obituaries they’re, er, getting closer to home but are still the best thing in the newspaper…..

I am sure I am not alone among that dwindling band of people who buy a morning newspaper in turning to the obituaries before reading any of the other content. It's the only place to find the more-or-less complete story of someone's life.

Elsewhere in the newspaper you might read of Charlie Farnsbarns (52), who lives in East Farleigh, near Maidstone, with his wife and two children in a £650,000 house, and has been taken to court for building an extension not approved by the council, and will now have to knock it down, but that tells you little of the essence of Farnsbarns.

If there's a picture of the Farnsbarnses in happier times, we may deduce that he has a wife younger and more attractive than him, and if Mr and Mrs F are standing in front of the offending residence, you might find yourself exclaiming '650 thousand pounds doesn't get you much in the Maidstone area,' but beyond that nothing.

In contrast we learn from the Times obituary of Brian James, guitarist with the punk band The Damned, who has died at the age of 70, that after he'd hung up his black leather studded biker waistcoat and black gothic punk mesh pants (Don't ask me!) post-Damned he lived in the French beach resort of Arcachon, near Bordeaux, 'where Grand Cru and oysters from the bay rather than rock 'n' roll were the order of the day.'

This was of particular interest to me because a few years ago we had a family holiday in Arcachon, and enjoyed some of those local oysters. Delicious.

I didn't know at the time I was enjoying the toothsome bivalves possibly in the very same shack recently patronised by guitar royalty, because Brian James was still very much a going concern back then, and not someone occupying many - or indeed any - of my daytime thoughts, but if you had told me I should have found it incongruous to say the least.

Arcachon, you see, is really not the kind of place you'd expect to find one of the key progenitors of punk rock (The Damned played their first gig in 1976, six weeks before the Sex Pistols). With its sand dunes, sailing boats, and an old-style carousel on the front, the resort is more Johnny Hallyday than Johnny Rotten.

Johnny Who? I guess some of you are asking. Well, back in the 1960s we used to think of him as France's Cliff Richard, although in truth he was edgier than Cliff - so was the entire Top Of The Pops roster, as it turns out, with the possible exception of the Singing Nun. Johnny's leisure time pursuits, meanwhile, tended to lean towards something very much racier than a chaste kiss with Una Stubbs on the top deck of a London bus, and with a frequency to put Transport For London to shame.

As it happens, when I embarked on this piece I was not quite sure whether Le Johnny's name was spelt Halliday or Hallyday so I did a Google search - research, research, always research - and blow me if the first result was marked 'Johnny Hallyday, Max Clifford,' and was one of mine!

The connection between the disgraced showbiz agent and the Francophone popster was simply that they both died the same week in 2017, and had been obituarised in my so-called Piss Poor Podcast of blessed memory, not altogether reverentially.

For Johnny the story was simply that, like bushy armpits, escargots, and any film of Jacques Tati's that isn't Monsieur Hulot's Holiday, nobody outside France gets it.

On Max Clifford, who died in prison because of his appalling crimes, I was happy to add to his catalogue of transgressions in a minor way, having met him a number of times. Among the many unreliable tales he told was how he helped the Beatles to fame in their early days. The truth was he may have written the odd record company press release, but nowhere in the vast library of Beatles-related literature on my shelves, not in one single index, is his name mentioned.

I mean, you wouldn't abandon him to eternal damnation for that untruth alone - there were many more - but it's the completeness of obits I am a fan of.

It should all be in there - everything - and I'm happy for that rule to be followed when it's time for mine (although don't believe half the things my wife tells you).