I'm Going Home
Side 2, Track 1
This is another in a series of stories drawn from the 1975 Chris de Burgh album, Spanish Train And Other Stories. I have endeavoured to be faithful to the spirit of the stories and in some cases include lyrics relevant to tell the tale. As with any fiction, there will also be cases where some license is taken to create and complete a story line.
I was nineteen when the Mods and Rockers tried to beat each other up at Margate. I was more of a Teddy myself but hell, I couldn't afford a scooter, a motorcycle, or an Italian suit so maybe I didn't fit anywhere.
Music was all I was interested in and I was going to make it my life.
After a few years of playing local gigs, doing covers and a few of my own songs, I started to hear about everything that had been going on across the pond in the US during the Summer of Love. A summer of music, of hippies, of young people celebrating what they called good vibrations. Stuck here in Kent, those events were a lifetime away.
Jilly meant the world to me and it took me weeks to work up the courage to tell her what I was thinking.
"Jilly, I may not be Sarstedt good yet but I'm just going to fade away here. And I have more to say than just getting caught up in who's better. The Mods? Rockers? Ton-up Boys? Teddy's? Who cares. I don't even think they care. Innit just them wanting to get in someone's face? I need to take my songs somewhere away from this place."
She didn't seem surprised.
"At last. The last time you played in the pub your heart wasn't in it. You're restless. Ya, you have lots to say and this little piece of England isn't much of a stage anymore. Go."
She leaned in and whispered in my ear, "Better days are ahead whether you are here or in London. I'll wait until you are ready for me to share them with you."
Within a few weeks I was standing in the rain at the train station. Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross" had been playing on the radio as she drove me, my bag, and my best guitar to the station. Even on the tinny radio of her little VW the brushing of the cymbals brought back the sound of waves on the beach where we spent so much time together. It was autumn now and a chilly wind stirred up the leaves as we drove through the countryside. I would miss it all.
Jilly still had the smile in her eye as we said goodbye but the smile wasn't as bright as it usually was. I was leaving my home and leaving my Jilly alone.
When I finally arrived at Charing Cross Station in London I still hung on to Jilly's smile and hoped I would never let it disappear. I caught the Tube to Piccadilly but as I stepped out into the street there were few smiles in sight and even fewer trees shedding their leaves to mark my arrival. It made me feel like I was late for one party but still ready to follow the die-hards on to another party. The Beatles were on the edge of packing it in as a group and Brian Jones was dead but we had been led into the Court of the Crimson King and Fairport Convention was asking us to walk a while with them as they brought the alien worlds of folk, rock, electric, and acoustic together for a new sound. That would be my new home.
I didn't have a lot of savings so the first thing to do was find a cheap squat, a street corner to busk, and a pub to play in.
I made it through the winter. Just.
Shortly after 1970 rolled in I had a regular slot in The Greyhound. Money wasn't great but I always got a bite to eat, a pint or two, and tips.
Jilly came every couple of months to visit.
"I still have a bed for two," she reminded me every time she walked into my cramped studio flat. "I mean it is cozy in here and all, but . . ." Her voice trailed off every time.
"How much of this do you smoke?" was often the next question as she picked up my stash.
Not that she minded and if there was a rolled joint handy she was quick to light up. She was crap at rolling her own. We'd smoke, have sex, and soon it would be time for her to head back to Kent. When she wasn't visiting, I tried to focus and follow a routine. Mornings were for writing songs and tweaking the ones I already had. Afternoons were for busking so people could hear what I had written.
It was frustrating. Oldham was managing the Stones, drove a Porsche, and never had to play outside waiting for coins to be thrown in a hat. He wasn't even thirty!
The only time I felt like I was headed in the same direction was when I was in a pub or club. The Greyhound was the best. It had three floors, each with a different stage. Usually, it would be a mix with jazz on one level, rockers on the top 'cos they were the loudest, and the folk experimenters like me somewhere in between. Sometimes it felt like I was back at home when fights broke out. They were like tribes. Rockers vs anyone who gave a two-fingered salute to their music.
Soon it was autumn again and I would be missing the golden colours of home and the warmth of Jilly. City nights were cold and it wasn't because I didn't have shillings for the heating. Once out of the warmth of wherever I had a gig, I was walking in the London that could be bleak in winter. Dense fog brought its own cold creepiness and deadened sounds around you. I would call Jilly on the telephone when I had some extra money just to hear her voice as she sat by the fire in her home that overlooked the channel. It took away the city chill. A chill that was wearing me down.
The winter came and went and it was back to busking. I had earned enough to record a couple of demo tapes. One a folk-rock cover, the other one of my own songs that pushed folk into the psychedelic. For weeks I spent my days going from producer to producer with no success. I had to go back to busking part of the day to earn money.
I still had a chance to play in the club where a man named Leaf was a barkeep. "Hey man, you need to try this. It's a real trip. Turns on a whole new path to your creative soul. This stuff is destined to melt the Cold War."
The 'stuff' was LSD. He held out a quarter inch square paper tab off a piece of blotting paper. The liquid drug was mixed with sugar and a perforated sheet of blotting paper printed with the dealer's logo was dipped in the mixture. This one was Blue Cheer. "Like the detergent", he grinned. He swore by the quality of his product.
I put the tab on my tongue and let it soften and dissolve. My music dissolved with it and was reborn in my head with more tones and colours than I ever knew existed. I was seeing the songs and hearing the colours. It took a full day before I started to come down from the first experience and Leaf told me to wait a few days before the next one.
My routine changed. A tab every week. I tried Unicorn and Horus, but Blue Cheer was the cleanest. And Leaf was ready to sell when I wanted to buy. Those weekly trips brought new life to my music but a new realization of the world around me. While my brain buzzed, the streets I was walking through were grimy and without a hint of the colours that resided in my head. Dick Wittington had gone to London because he thought the streets were paved with gold. The only gold for me was from the sunset I saw when busking along the river. Sun didn't come into the picture when you were in clubs and pubs. Another autumn was passing me by but there were no golden leaves like there would be at home right now. Unlike Dick Whittington, my fortunes weren't changing.
By the autumn of '73 I was hanging out with other musicians and artists disillusioned by London being ground down around us. I gave up my flat and moved into a squat in Camden. With jemmy bars in hand, we had carefully pried open the doors of a derelict old house. Derelict because a developer was buying up houses in the area for office buildings and evicting the existing tenants. Gone were the Mods, Rockers, and Teddys. We were part of a new sub-culture out to bring life back to the crumbling corners of the city. Though faded, the area was still home to colour. The signs over now closed shops still had life. Old flowerpots on stoops and balconies still bloomed with colour in the spring. There was a community garden maintained by the squatters and the few renters who were still hanging on to what they could. Artists had painted murals on empty building walls.
"Come on, give me a boost." Said a young woman holding a small can of paint and a brush. She was painting all the old streetlights around the square: green shades, red posts, and bright yellow bases. I helped her complete a dozen that still had bulbs and could be flicked on at night. There was a carnival in the spring as we emerged from a winter marked by unreliable heat and lukewarm tea by candlelight. The carnival was a re-awakening with more colour in the square than there was in the surrounding parts of the city where I had to busk and try to sell my songs. Leaf kept the acid supply bubbling.
Jilly quit coming to see me. She didn't judge my life but never embraced it either.
As another autumn approached the thought of another year surrounded by the greyness of London while my thoughts were a swirl of colours was more than I could bear.
I had been away from my home for too long and its pull was now too strong to ignore. Unlike what I tried to sing about, the colours and sounds of home were real. I found a call box and phoned Jilly.
I wasted no time when she answered because I needed to get on the road before I could change my mind.
"I'm coming home. I know the leaves are falling Jilly and the wind is calling me. I can hear the rhythm of the rain on your cottage right now. It's silly how much I miss that sound and how much I love you and your bed just right for two. I know I've left you alone and I hope I haven't made you cry. It's alright I'm on my way."
All I could hear on the other end of the line was the rain.
"Jilly? It's time I was going home. Hold on darling."
Oh Lord, how I have missed that country rain and it was plain to me that it was time to be at home.
"Jilly?"
Only the wind and the rain were left for me to hear.
Love the ending!