Richard played the guitar. He never won a Grammy. But he did achieve something which Bob Dylan didn’t, nor The Beatles, even Taylor Swift or Beyoncé. He won the talent contest at the Gants Hill Odeon, Saturday Morning Pictures, in about 1965.

Saturday morning pictures was method for unloading noisy, destructive children into institutional care for 3 hours every Saturday morning, for about 2 bob. That’s 10p for those who need to know. They showed old films, ‘cliff-hanger’ serials and really dire b-movies. Anything that about 500 kids could scream at. And they announced that there was to be a talent competition during the intermission, on such-and-such a date.

Rich by then had mastered playing 3 chords, as taught by his book. And fortunately, they were the perfect ones for the then massive hit, ‘If I had a hammer’. Richard’s best mate, known as ‘more Richard’, bought himself a little set of tom-tom drums. And our great friend and local psycho, Harvey, bought a guitar and proclaimed himself a singer. He couldn’t play the guitar, nor sing really, but he was insanely enthusiastic.

And on the day, ‘the band’ defeated all the other contestants. Even the tap dancers stood no chance. Nor the kid juggling. With one ball. Because back then, guitars were ‘exotic’ to kids. And to have two of them ‘right there!!!’ And ‘live!!!’, meant no-one else had a chance. Their photo appeared on the front page of the Ilford Recorder and somewhere in ‘the archive’ I have the copy my mum cut out. Richard was standing at the back. Near the shadows.

Music was a big part of his life. And this year we’ve had a lot of time to trawl the extremes of Alexa’s vast collection, seeing if they have a 1967 hit by Ten Year After, or ‘Split’ by the ‘Groundhogs’. Which, to her credit, she invariably does.

Two weeks ago I went to see Rich and said ‘I’ve found a new track’, and he said ‘so have I’. But in fact it was the same track. Not an old one we’d just remembered, just something new we’d found. At the same time. Now this may seem like its divinely inspired. More cynically, if two people are searching on Alexa, which was Rich, or on YouTube, as I was, for basically the same kind of music, their algorithms should find similar sorts of songs. Or maybe, whoever your Lord Above might be, HE uses the same algorithms as well.

But we both found ‘Carry on my wayward son’ by Kansas. That was a source for merriment in itself as we generally always called each other ‘Son’, for reasons of historical forgottenness. And it is a fantastic track. The words, which we only noticed a bit later, are, retrospectively, the most poignant imaginable.

Carry on my wayward son
there’ll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
don’t you cry no more.

And now I have the world’s biggest ever earworm. I hope it never leaves.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx