Tonight I got the terrible news that one of my oldest friends had died. Spanter, whose strange nickname he just made up with some mates one day to see who could come up with the oddest name to call each other, had become seriously ill with lung cancer in recent years. He was a year older than me, went to a different school and I didn’t meet him till I was 17. I met him in the Pensby hotel, a pub close to the block of flats I lived in in Thingwall on the Wirral, 20 minutes from Liverpool city centre. The reason we went to different schools but ended up hanging out in the same pub, halfway between our houses, was that I lived right on the border of a different, I don’t know, parish? This meant everyone from my side went to Woodchurch Sec. and everyone on his side went to Pensby Sec (others went to grammar schools, Park High on my side, Caldy on his side where Julian Lennon went). Mine was the last house, and across the line was considered enemy territory for a Woodchurch attendee. It was the skinhead days and they were enough trouble for us who wore loon pants and scoop neck T Shirts - the patchouli oil soaked underground music lovers, so it was even worse if they were classed as enemies on two fronts.
I don’t know why, but I started to go to the Pensby hotel by myself, I had a motorbike, I was underage but I managed to get served somehow. One day, one of a group of young people sitting in the corner (I think it was Spant) came up and said “Come and join us” They’d seen me in there before and thought I might need some company - and I had a bike, a Honda 125. It was Spant, Roy and Gail, Nipper and Liz and Jock. Spant had an amazing fringed leather jacket but no bike, Roy had a Ducati 350, Nipper’s girlfriend Liz had a Singer Chamois. I remember her being good looking and posh and when I look back on it, it seemed like the same scene that Jarvis Cocker was writing about in Common People.
We became fast friends and we drank together, rode our bikes and went to Spant’s or Nipper’s house to take drugs and listen to records - acid at Nipper’s, Hendrix at Spant’s. I remember his room was painted black and he had tons of Hendrix bootlegs. I knew his mum and Dad. His dad was a bus driver and his brother Phil, who was in the army, ended up letting us stay in his spare room on the estate on Thingwall corner when I was in town to see Paul McCartney. He sadly died a few years ago at around the same age.
We were both interested in playing guitar but I suppose I was the one that put the work in, and one of the last times I saw him he told me that he remembered me leaving the pub early often because I told him I had to go home and practice - I have no memory at all of this. We were always at the pub talking and drinking, it seemed like it was nearly every night, not getting super drunk or anything because we couldn’t afford to - I remember I used to drink two bottles of Mackeson stout in a pint glass and sometimes a brown over bitter. I can’t remember what everyone did for work, I suppose I was working for Henry Hosegood’s, the grain company, in the office at the Spillers mill in Birkenhead.
Other friends joined our circle, Arthur with the Honda 750/4, Chris with the Triumph Trident, Danny with the 500 cc trial bike, Steve with the super long hair, and friends who lived in Penny Lane in Liverpool, whose names have suddenly escaped me, and I can no longer ask Spant to remind me. This was the friend who first started to call me Marty and it stuck. So there were some motorbikes and music in common but I think it was Spanter and I that went to the concerts in Liverpool more than the others, although I can’t remember which ones. Spant always had that great leather jacket but he never managed to actually get a bike.
At some point I got a Ducati Desmo 250 and found myself with a stylish bike but with a burning desire to get out into the world. After an accident I had in Liverpool, that bike got put in the garden shed and I started my hitchhiking teenage years in Europe that eventually led to me moving to London, meeting Lucy and going to Australia. (This is of course the edited version). Whilst all this was happening to me, Spant got a job on the production line for Vauxhall cars in Ellesmere Port on The Wirral, where he stayed for 35 years until he retired.
I spoke to him quite regularly but as I’d been in America for two months I hadn’t been in touch for a bit. Another old friend, Gary, sent me the message with the bad news. He is a year younger than me, lives in Switzerland and went to the same school. I’m not sure how, but he was also friends with Spant, but not part of our teenage crew as I remember. He told me that the cancer had spread to his brain and that got him fast.
Spanter didn’t have an evil bone in his body. At one point he had been in a serious road accident where Jock and the driver had been killed, Spant thrown out of the back window after a head on collision on a bad bend next to the Woodchurch Estate where I went to school, awful. He just loved music and we talked and talked about records and turntables, he also had a Linn Sondek and I used to send him vinyl copies of my records whenever I made them if I could beat him to ordering them.
Music today has been The Strawbs - Dragonfly (1970) their second album. He would have loved this album, anything like this, anything beautiful, anything with guitars, anything seventies. I lost a friend today and although with his cancer it was inevitable, it never feels right or fair when it actually happens, especially to a man with such a beautiful soul. Rest in Peace, Spant, anyone that knew you, loved you and misses you already.
Sorry for your loss, I lost my brother just about a year ago too. I know thepain of the loss of a good friend, and the discussions about anything and everything.
So sorry about Spanter.
(LOL I also had a Honda 125!)