f28 S Nic & Julia Jones
ber a thing about the accident, likes to make light of it. “My left hand side isn’t too bad but my right side was completely busted. Everything. Eyes. Ears. Arms. Elbow was smashed to bits. Wrist too. Everything had to be replaced. But I had some good nurses. They saved my life.”
A Did the accident make you feel more spiritual, Nic?
“Not really. They say about God but to me God is a consciousness, an idea. It’s what’s in your brain. I don’t think of God as someone who flies through the sky looking down on you, it’s all in your head. Good and evil are the same. God and The Devil are part of the same thing. If God exists it’s as an idea which you either believe in or you don’t.”
Do you believe in the afterlife?
“We’re all made up of atoms and when we go the atoms make up some- thing else. Millions of atoms which become bits of different things. I’ll proba- bly be reincarnated as a spider or a flower. The problem is, the earth has become over-populated. We’re committing suicide slowly anyway and eventually there will be some disease that gets rid of us all and something else will become the dominant creature – a fish or something.”
Did the accident make you feel differ-
ent? “Yes.” How? “I’ve changed.” In what way? “I’m different.” How? “I’ve got a metal arse. I’ve got a false eye. I’ve got false teeth. Everything is false. I’m an illusion…”
And he laughs so infectiously that it’s impossible not to laugh with him. There is not a trace of self-pity about Nic Jones… or any of the other members of this remarkable family.
So that’s the story and you’d imagine
that’s the end of it. Except that 30 years later something else is happening.
Accompanied by his son Joe on guitar and Belinda O’Hooley on keyboards, Nic Jones returns to the stage to play full sets at four folk festivals this summer (Wade- bridge, Warwick, Cambridge and Tow- ersey). And on September 22 he’ll be
nd then, driving home to East Anglia after a gig in Glossop in February 1982, his car had an argument with a brick lorry. Nic, who doesn’t remem-
appearing again at another day in his hon- our at London’s Cecil Sharp House when, among other things, he’ll be presented with the English Folk Dance & Song Soci- ety’s highest honour, the gold badge, there will be discussions and a reunion of sorts of his first group The Halliard. Not that it’s a comeback, of course. Heavens forbid, definitely not.
“As long as they don’t jeer me off it’ll be fine,” says Nic, more concerned with challenging his inquisitor to a game of chess. “It should be fun – I enjoy singing. Cambridge used to be quite a big festival, didn’t it?”
Yeah well, it’s still quite big, Nic… “I remember playing there before. I was rub- bish. I was sandwiched between a couple of really good groups. Steeleye Span and Pentangle, I think. I hated it. But this should be fun. I won’t be doing any of the old standard ballads. I don’t want to do the old stuff – that’s boring. Now I prefer modern songs…”
The seeds of these appearances were planted at Sidmouth Folk Week in 2010 when a tribute concert was held in his hon- our in the Ham marquee featuring many of those directly or indirectly influenced by him – Martin Simpson, Jim Moray, Jackie Oates, Nancy Kerr, James Fagan, Sam Carter and Ruth Notman among them. Also invited to appear, Pete Coe suggested that in addition to being guest of honour at the event, Nic should get up and sing a couple of songs with him. The end result was three songs with Pete and Chris Coe, Paul Sartin and Jon Loomes in what was billed as a Bandoggs reunion.
Singing only in the choruses, Nic didn’t take his eyes off Pete Coe during the whole spot and it was impossible to gauge artistic merit, but the sheer emotion of seeing him on stage in front of a mic again was sufficient to send us all home in floods of grateful tears. Joan Crump, the driving force behind it, then floated the idea of taking the Sidmouth event a step further and hey ho, the Nic Jones songbook was explored again at London’s Queen Eliza- beth Hall last May, with some memorable interpretations of his material by the likes of Anaïs Mitchell, Jim Moray, Jackie Oates, Damien Barber and Tony Hall, Blair Dun- lop, Ashley Hutchings and Martin Carthy.
itting in a semi-circle on stage, they took it in turns to per- form, visibly conscious of the beaming figure in the middle of them, apparently without a care in the world. And then, still grin- ning, he rose and came to the front of the stage. A mostly unrecognised guy with a red Mohican who’d been sitting quietly and patiently if somewhat for- lornly minding his own business in the semi-circle throughout the proceedings, also rose, guitar in hand, to join him, while a more familiar figure discreetly sidled over to the piano. And suddenly they were away – Nic Jones singing, his son Joe on guitar and vocals and Belinda O’Hooley playing piano.
Jaws hit the floor, eyes watered and breaths were held as Nic’s voice – inevitably more frail and timid than of old but nevertheless instantly recognisable and hitting the right spots – delivered Oh Dear Rue The Day. With visibly mounting confidence, he and Joe started getting into their stride with Rick Lee’s Thanks - giving, the fragility in Nic’s voice perfectly suiting both this and Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees before ending with one of Nic’s own classics, 10,000 Miles. It was a remarkable performance but, we were reliably informed, purely a one-off that would never be repeated.
But Joan Crump can be very persua- sive… and the QE Hall show had whetted Nic’s appetite and boosted his confidence to the point that he felt he could deliver a full set. He was up for a couple of festi- val appearances… if Joe agreed to do it with him. And this, it transpires, was quite a big if…
“I don’t know if you’ll get more sense out of me or me dad,” says Joe Jones when I catch up with him – sans red Mohican – in Skipton. The family had left Essex and moved to York following the accident, partly at the behest of another East Anglian exile ensconced in Yorkshire, the late Peter Bellamy. Nic, Julia and daughter Helen have since moved on to Devon, but Joe stayed in the north, where he has a respectable day job, a young son and an occasional band who like to dress up in bizarre outfits and play spoof heavy metal, with Joe sometimes found masquerading as bass guitarist ‘Troy Lovehammer’. The band, Electric Fuzz, even hatched a plan to dress in t-shirts and camping shorts at this summer’s folk festivals to carry Nic Jones on stage in a sedan chair, but that ruse has sadly been shelved.
Joe, who’s 35, readily admits he had to think long and hard before agreeing to play this summer’s festivals with his dad, remembering only too well the mounting terror as he and his red Mohican sat frozen to his seat on stage waiting for their turn at the Queen Elizabeth Hall show.
“Three songs before I was due to play my hands went completely cold and I couldn’t feel a thing. I was sitting there watching all these wonderful performers imagining them all thinking ‘who’s the joker in the Mohican?’”
“I enjoyed 10,000 Miles most because I
didn’t have to sing on that. It was one of the first of me dad’s songs that I learned to play so I could just watch him and that’s quite a thing to be up there with him. Even though he’s me dad, it’s a special thing to see and I really enjoyed it. I was pleased when it was over, though. Had quite a few beers after…”
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