In summer 1985, at the age of 18, following a snap decision made the night before at Willy’s Wine Bar in Cleethorpes, I hopped a National Express coach with my friend Mark, bound for London and whatever might come next.
A few weeks before that, I made this film in downtown Grimsby with Paul and Jane. It was shot on standard 8mm using an old Bell & Howell three-turret camera—already a relic in 1985—and once developed, it sat, forgotten, in various boxes in various homes from the North of England to parts of Canada, finally coming to rest in my brother’s basement in Calgary.
Last year Russ digitized our home movies from the ‘80s and among them, to my astonishment, was this. I threw it into iMovie to make some sort of narrative (lol) out of the three-minutes of raw footage he’d excavated. I put it on YouTube, sent it to Mark—with whom I’d reconnected the year before—and he sent it to Paul, who responded with a lovely message. So, here was a movie almost 40 years in the making. Like Hard to Be a God x 3.
Paul and I played together very briefly in a band called J. Alfred, which did a single show at the Cleethorpes Winter Gardens in support of the Miners during the 1984-85 strike. The headliner was a great act called 96 Tears, led by a local legend named (what else?) Mick Taylor. Also on the bill was a poet, Ranting Sex Dwarf, who was small but not really a dwarf, and the Expanding Wallets, a bunch of arch-lefties whose members included Bill Brewster, author of Last Night a DJ Saved My Life.
Around this time, my friends and I were publishing a zine called Kinky Boots, and Bill, who I admired very much, had praised my adolescent pretend-NME writing, specifically an unkind review of a Spear of Destiny concert—something that surprised and elated me at the time and still on occasion makes a vivid cameo in my head. My wife Annie speaks of “wizards” who enter your life briefly to change its direction, and Bill, at the risk of grandiosity, was one of mine. I wanted to be told that I could write.
I recall that J. Alfred had one original number, “Fatneck”, and that we covered (among other things) “What’s Happening?!?!” by the Byrds, “Father’s Name is Dad” by the Fire, Donovan’s “Season of the Witch”, and the Chocolate Watchband’s version of “Milkcow Blues.” We were drunk on ‘60s pop culture and Paul, who was a little older, was another figure highly regarded by me and my best mate Simon (guitar), largely on account of his pristine collection of paisley shirts and his taste in music. The show was just a few days after my 18th birthday.
I think the movie was related to Paul’s side gig as an “alternative comedian”. We were thinking of the Monkees, Help!, “The Running, Jumping & Standing Still Film”, maybe a little bit of John Waters. We made it up as we went along, such as it is. We spent a morning in and around the outdoor mall known as the Precinct, or Freshney Place, which of course looks very different in 2024. You can see the first McDonalds to arrive in Grimsby on Victoria Street, and the sequence with the puke and the girl and the flower was all done in St. James Square, which looks the same.
Jane was closer to Paul and Mark, but we knew each other inside a small but lively group of people from across Cleethorpes and Grimsby who mingled regularly at a nightclub called Gullivers. Mark’s brother was the deejay on Thursday nights. He’d play Sisters of Mercy, Velvet Underground, the Smiths, the Cramps, and whatever else was exciting in the moment. We were the “alternative” people forming bands, putting on shows, producing zines, making 8mm films and calling ourselves artists. For the rest of the week, “Gullies” was filled with twats with wedge haircuts dancing to Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet. We called these people Dressers, which might be a derivation of Tossers.
Jane existed above these tribal youth divisions. She floated through the Gullivers scene in an untouchable dimension of her own. Her raven hair was always pulled back, she dressed glamorously, she was rarely seen without bright red lipstick. From a distance I saw her as Audrey Hepburn. And then at some point she took a shine to me and we became, briefly, friends. We went on a big adventure together to see the Long Ryders at Leeds Warehouse in April 1985, Jane largely indulging my interest in the band, and we slept in the freezing train station after the show.
I was intimidated and too immature to sustain a friendship with Jane, I said some stupid things, but she only treated me with patience and affection. I don’t know where exactly the film sits inside this timeline but she looks happy and I know that her enthusiasm was important to us. My clearest memory of the day was instructing Paul to slowly shove the flower into Jane’s face. The very best part of this 39-year-old footage is seeing her crack up when he does it.
In 2022, Mark tracked me down after 20-plus years and I learned that Jane is no longer with us. There’s no way of counting the people from that time who I’ve forgotten, from four decades ago, but I never stopped wondering about Jane. That’s the truth. Putting this little video together quickly became a haunting enterprise. Writing about it too.