THE FINAL BOW
Ian Mccann says goodbye, with the help of rock legends
Irealise this is heretical for many in my generation, but I’ve never much liked Pink Floyd. Their debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, is good fun, and enjoy the occasional handful, or perhaps Saucerful, of their records in the aftermath of Syd Barrett’s 1968 departure, such as Paintbox and Remember a Day.
I guess the last record they made I had time for was One of These Days, a grumbling electronic rocker from 1971’s Meddle. It reminds me of nights at the Green Man, Leytonstone, a lager and scampi-in-a basket Wheatley Tavern which my lovely friend Lesley called the Bogey Inn after an unfortunate incident when a grubby guy in a greatcoat tried to chat her up. The pub’s resident band, Deep Feeling, concocted a cover of the song as good as the original.
One of their albums is now almost as collectable as Pink Floyd’s own work. How things have changed. Bob Wheatley’s empire no longer runs the Green Man. It is now an O’neill’s, but the roundabout retains the original verdant name. And Pink Floyd are no longer an underground band.
A couple of miles east of the Green Man lies a massive cemetery, the City of London Cemetery and Crematorium, where we gathered on a drizzly mournful morning to say goodbye to Kevin, once no stranger to the Green Man. The music he chose for his funeral included Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. Though I don’t like the track, it felt poignant, and the service resonated strongly with me. I had the same feeling at Lesley’s funeral, another unconventional affair. She’d requested Jimmy Cliff’s I Can See Clearly Now, and we stood around her freshly dug grave attempting to sing it when the much-tested CD player brought to play the song had failed. Inevitably.
Anyway, I’d witnessed Kevin struggle with Parkinson’s, and watched my wife, also now a Parkinson’s sufferer, care for Lesley during her shockingly short and fierce fight with cancer. Now it’s my turn to care. I am retiring to look after my wife, Lesley’s sister, so this will be my final column for BOB. It has been an honour to write for you over the past decade, and I hope you wish I was here. Perhaps you’d care to give something to Parkinson’s UK in my honour, or simply to celebrate the fact I’m no longer rambling incoherently in your favourite mag. I like to think of us as friends, so please accept this as a fond farewell.