This Website Is Dedicated To The Memory Of Steve Cooper.
The following was originally written as a blog entry for the Groovy Uncle My Space in August 2007:
Long, long ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I left school and got a job working for the local council. It was while employed there that I met Steve Cooper. I was 16 and Steve must have been about 29. I had seen him hanging around local second hand record stores and collectors fares so he was clearly a music fan. I heard through the grapevine at work that he played guitar and had been in a band and, though we were only really on nodding terms at that point I decided to ask him. “You play guitar dont you? Will you teach me?” I asked. “Yeah, alright” he answered, barely looking at me.
We became friends. Steve scored a lot of firsts. The first person I ever knew who played guitar. The first person not to smirk when I said I had written some songs. The first person to encourage me to join a band. “But I only know three chords” I’d say. “That’s all you need” he’d say. “But I only play rhythm”. “That’s all John Lennon did!” Steve was very much of the “three chords and the truth” school of music, thankfully! The first song he ever taught me to play was Elvis Presley’s “Love Me”. He introduced me to a lot of cool music too. Anything and everything from Django Rheinhardt to The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band and all points in between. We jammed a lot and I learned a tremendous amount from him. Steve was a shy man who often would play with his back to the audience. He could do all the showman tricks-playing guitar behind his back or with his “teeth”, all the Hendrix-style moves-yet he hated showing off.
Eventually I did form that band and Steve was there at the front of the crowd (actually it was probably at the back!) at our first gig heckling at the end of each number. “Average!” I could hear him shouting among the applause and cheering. That was Steve all over and every gig he came to thereafter, at some point during the course of the gig I would hear that heckle. “Average!” Steve even sat in on drums(he started out as a drummer) at a couple of Offbeats gigs at a festival in Ghent, Belgium in 1986. One rehearsal and he was spot on-this was kids stuff for Mr Cooper!
The last conversation I had with Steve was on the telephone late in 2003. He was a bit downcast I thought but what got to me the most was he started to talk as though I was the boss-”how do you write all those songs?”….”how do you remember all those chords?” ..all that kind of thing. My mentor seemed to be looking up to me and I really wasn’t happy about it. “It’s been ages-let’s go out for a beer” I suggested. “Nah” he said (for an old rocker Steve wasn’t a great drinker) “Well I’ll pop round then, yeah?” “O.K” he replied.
I never saw him again.
Early in 2004 I received the news that Steve had taken his own life. I needed a very stiff drink so I went into my studio and poured myself a large whiskey. But it wasn’t enough. It was too quiet. So I switched on the radio to hear-and I swear this is true-”Love Me” by Elvis. That’s when the tears came. The man who had taught me everything, the best guitarist I have ever been in the same room with, was gone. He was still only in his early 50′s.
Don’t remember much about the funeral apart from it being a hot and sunny day and someone’s bloody mobile phone going off during the service. I really wanted to call out “It’s for you, Steve”. That’s the sort of thing that would have made him laugh. Very soon afterwards I found myself writing a song for him and I knew I wanted to keep it an upbeat song-it’s only sad if you listen to the lyrics closely-that you can dance to. Well…if you like a bit of Dad Dancing that is! The song is called “Now Your Pain Is Over (And Mine Has Just Begun) and you can hear it in full on this site.
I hope you like it and, if there is an afterlife, I’ll be chuffed to think that Steve is in the room right now shouting “Average!”
