Now there’s a question.  Yes, of course, there are plenty of songs that can make me break down and cry.  Ironically, David Bowie’s Sorrow is one.  But it’s not necessarily because they’re sad songs.  Oh I dunno.  It’s like, take Carroll Thompson’s Hopelessly In Love.  It’s a lovely, lovely record.  The best British lovers rock record.  Full stop.  It’s gorgeous in its simplicity and well I guess innocence in a sense.  Just sweet reggae rhythms.  Universal love themes.  One minute up.  One minute down.  ‘Cause life is a merry-go-round.  And Carroll’s words say more about life in London in the early ‘80s than a million conscious DJs.

So Hopelessly In Love is anything but a sad record, if you see what I mean, but it makes me infinitely sad.  Everytime I look at the cover.  It’s got thee best London cover ever.  Carroll reclining on the cover of car.  Braids in her hair.  A smile in her eyes.  Fur jacket and jeans.  And the car.  I’m not clever enough to know the make.  I know nothing about cars now of course.  But I remember the names from back then.  Cortina.  Capri.  Granada.  Ghia.  Escort.  Avenger.  And the row of terraced houses.  Looking out onto a planted verge.  You can almost see the kids kicking a ball about in the street.  You can almost smell the cooking.  You can almost hear Earth, Wind & Fire playing in the background.  Or John Holt.

And that’s it.  The houses.  London streets.  Looks like where my granddad lived.  Briefly.  Oddly.  Sadly.  That’s what makes me well up.  I look at that sleeve.  Listen to that record.  And think of my granddad.  Think how I hardly knew him.  But loved what I knew of him.  Loved listening to him.  Loved watching him.  Loved copying him.  It’s always said that out of his hordes of grandchildren, he only told tales to me.  Were they true?  Were they rooted in truth?  Somewhere?  Did it matter?  So what if he didn’t play in goal for Leeds or cook in the Australian army during WW1?  Maybe he did.  Maybe he didn’t.  Maybe he was related to Marie Lloyd.  Maybe he wasn’t.  That’s the point of stories.  I think he knew I knew. 

The last few years of his life.  He moved to a house.  Well downstairs at least.  Near Crofton Park.  Away from the flats where they’d lived so long.  The ground floor flat where he loved to sit looking out the window.  Watching the world go by.  Immersed in his rituals.  The ones that would fascinate me.  The battered attache case.  Like a minister’s dispatch box.  Or whatever the thing is that’s not allowed out of his sight.  The small brown careworn case where my granddad would keep all his pools papers, which he would pour over so methodically over, each week, promising he’d buy us a house of our own when he won, which of course he never did. 

He got a house of his own in the end.  Moved away from Brockley.  The home of lovers rock funnily enough.  Still for us the same great long bus ride.  The 122 all the way.  But not all the way to Crystal Palace.  And its dinosaurs.  Away from the flats.  The flats which are now gone.  His beloved wife gone by then.  I can’t even begin to imagine what they’d gone through.  Bringing up such a large family.  All the kids a credit to them.  Evacuated to South Wales during the war.  Scattered far and wide now.  Woking.  Harlow.  Here.  There without her.  Still taking particular pride in his appearance.  Stocky and stout like the great gangsters.  Hand made boots.  Specially ordered.  Specially polished.  A fantastic head of hair.  Could still turn a head. 

It makes me sad I never knew what he was thinking.  But I know he’d never let on.  I never saw him with a book but he was bright.  The way he made sure his kids could read and spell showed he had standards.  A dandy in a hard world.  Ahead of his time.  He grew all his own veg in the war.  Kept chickens.  Caught the first train to work.  It was cheaper.  Perhaps.  Used to sit in the churchyard.  Contemplating.  Perhaps.  I wouldn’t know.  He wouldn’t let on.  But he’d tell me stories.  About how he used to play in goal for Leeds.  With a twinkle in his eye.

I remember buying Vic Godard’s Stamp Of A Vamp on the day my granddad died.  It’s another record that makes me cry.  The only time I got to speak to Vic he was talking about music hall, and I said my granddad was related to Marie Lloyd.  That felt good.  It wasn’t what I had meant to say to Vic.  I regret that.  I regret never buying a paperback edition of Colin MacInnes’ Sweet Saturday Night I once saw dead cheap.  I wonder if Vic’s read that account of the music halls and popular song?  I probably listened to Vic Godard on the day of my granddad’s funeral.  I didn’t go.  Had to go to school.  There was a train strike anyway and London was gridlocked.  My mum and my brother walked from Shooters Hill in the snow or something stupid.  My granddad was a stickler for tradition and protocol.  He ‘ad standards.  Hard but fair.

So, you see, as strange as it sounds, that’s why Carroll Thompson makes me cry.  I don’t know if that makes any sense.  But I look at that cover and there’s my granddad off to get the evening paper.  To check the football.  See what’s on TV.  He would have … oh hell I think I’m getting maudlin which is crazy because those two Carroll Thompson LPs from the early ‘80s are as life affirming as anything.  Lovers rock.  The Great British independent invention.  Sweet sweet music.  “Without music in our lives this world will be a lonely place”.  The second LP, by the way, that had a Neville Brody cover and was altogether more sophisticated and classy, but there’s something about the photo on Hopelessly In Love …

© 2007 John Carney