Another Goodbye to Gary

Another day, another article I'd rather not have to have written.

It was May half-term, 1989, and I had just turned 16. My second ever ‘proper’ music gig, and I was dropped off, just me, at Surrey University for this one. One of the beautiful things about music is the connections you make, both with the music and with other fans. As if to prove that, I was a very shy teenager, yet I got chatting to another solo attendee in the queue waiting for the venue to open. They were older than me and had proudly explained how they had attended the bands show in London a few nights earlier, and that they had managed to get themselves backstage and have a drink with the band. Older me would have been cynical, that this was a great and very tall story being used to impress me…

Fast forward half an hour, and we are stood in the college bar, when in walks the band in question. This was something I was quite unprepared for, was this usual, for the main band to casually come into the place where their fans were starting to gather?

It was also the moment of truth, was the story I had been spun, true or false? My new friend confidently strode up to the band, said “do you remember, I met you after the gig at the Astoria the other night?” Whether they actually did remember him or not, or were just being polite, became irrelevant as they gathered around me and my new friend. One of the band, the bass player, was going to get the drinks in and would I like one? Sure, I’ll have a pint please, conveniently not mentioning that I was two years below the limit.

They chatted with us for a good while, it felt like ages but was probably about 15-20 minutes; all I can really remember was their complaints about their record company and the like, before they had to disappear to watch their support act. Would we like to come back after the show? Oh my goodness, how could I deal with that? Wait, I don’t have a mobile phone to text my parents, because they haven’t been invented yet – I want to meet the band, but my dad is due to pick me up just after the set is due to finish. A scramble for a payphone (remember those) and a garbled conversation with my dad – I managed to push my collection time back a bit. Phew!

I did go back to meet them for a bit that night, I got my t-shirt signed (I sadly no longer have it) and I went on my way, perhaps thinking that every gig was like that. In this day and age, I would have gotten a selfie with the band, and then swapped numbers with my new friend and we might have become gig buddies, but that wasn’t a thing, and I don’t even remember his name.

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RIP Gary:

If you look at my widely varied music collection, there is one era and one location that possibly will stand out a bit. Liverpool in the 1980s. Out of the punk scene there came so many varied bands, across so many genres, seemingly all great at what they did and the backbone of my youth – Echo & The Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes / Julian Cope, Icicle Works, OMD, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Dead or Alive, Pete Wylie / Wah, China Crisis.

So, to lose two members of that special Liverpool music club in one week seems inordinately cruel. First there was Gary Dwyer, the drummer and driver of Teardrop Explodes, and then I wake up this morning to find out that Gary Johnson, bass player for four key China Crisis albums, has also died. He was the guy who bought me that beer and was such a lovely bloke, quite an experience for a wide-eyed sixteen year old fan.

Papua (audio only: the song that apparently got

Walter Becker interested in working with the band - which he ended up doing twice)

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Gary Johnson was born in Liverpool in 1964.

Gary at right with China Crisis around 1985

He joined the band around 1982, as they toured following the initial success of their first album and hit singles Christian and African & White, supporting Virgin label mates Simple Minds. He would go onto play on their run of four great 80s records – Working With Fire & Steel, Flaunt The Imperfection, What Price Paradise and Diary Of A Hollow Horse – adding a melodic groove and fluidity to the songs (largely using a fretless bass).

Just check out that recurring bass line on the title track of Working With Fire & Steel, or the busy burble on Papua, or the delightful interplay between him and Eddie Lundon’s guitar in In Northern Skies (it’s like they are having a conversation) and not forgetting that probably their best known song, King In A Catholic Style, would be nothing without his playing. He left after the 1989 Hollow Horse

tour, briefly returning in 1995 to play a part in sixth album Warped By Success.

Working With Fire & Steel (official music video)

***

Ian McNabb (Icicle Works) knew him from the earliest music days; “I am deeply saddened by the news of the passing of Gazza Johnson – former bassist with China Crisis, who I first met in 1980 when I auditioned for Hambi Harlambous at his home on Ullet Road. I most recently saw him performing with the late Cy Tucker at the Big House – a great Sunday tradition in Liverpool. Another gone too soon. Thoughts and prayers with

family and friend. Rock In Peace.”

In Northern Skies (audio only)

Liverpool born songwriter Pete Riley said, “So saddened to hear the passing of legendary Liverpool bass player Gary ‘Gazza’ Johnson (former China Crisis). I was lucky enough to record with Gary around 1989-90 at Liverpool Music House where he kindly played bass on a bunch of my songs along with John Leggett on drums… It was an absolute honour and privilege for a young Pete riley to be in a recording studio laying down tracks with such Liverpool Music Royalty. Something I will never forget, one of my lasting memories is when I would drop him off late at night after each session and us both getting a cheeky take out from his favourite chippy! R.I.P. Gazza.”

At the time of writing, I don't know what the circumstances of his death were, other than it appeared to have happened yesterday (12th August). Also, we are still waiting for any comments from Gary Daly and Eddie Lundon, his former bandmates in China Crisis.

King In A Catholic Style (live on Old Grey Whistle Test, 1985)