In the dark, under the wires, I hear them call my name - two John Hardys and Jeffrey Lee Pierce

 

Walking to Paddington Station last November, after spending the morning in Kensal Green cemetery, I found myself with a sudden urge to listen to ‘Miami’ by the Gun Club. In particular the song ‘John Hardy’ was running around in my head. And so I strolled along the canal towpath listening to the album on Spotify. It was only a couple of days later, when going through the pictures I had taken that morning, that I realised that I had photographed the impressive mausoleum of John Hardy Esq. A coincidence? Probably not. I like to think that I am the sort of independently minded person that advertisers and other propagandists waste their time and money trying to manipulate. But if a name on a tombstone can send me unconsciously scurrying to Spotify to listen to a 40-year-old album, I am clearly as open to unconscious influence (and therefore also to malign manipulation) as anyone else.  

Kensal Green’s John Hardy died on New Years Eve 1859 at the age of 82 and left a fortune worth just a little less than £60,000. He was probably born in Kegworth in Leicester in 1777 and lived in Jamaica for many years. Exactly what he was doing there we don’t know, but as his sojourn was long before the abolition of slavery, we can be fairly sure that he was making money out of the plantation economy. In Jamaica he had four children with Panache Archambeau, described as a ‘mestee’ on the children’s baptism records. This term referred to people of mixed ethnicity who were less than one eighth black i.e. had one black and 7 white great grandparents. By 1815 he was back in the UK with his four children and marrying Helene Clementine Auchambau of Kingston Jamaica, at St George’s in Bloomsbury. It seems likely that Helene Auchambau is Panache Archambeau, but we can’t be sure. The couple went on to have two more children. John seems to have become wealthy enough in Jamaica not to have to do another stroke of work for the 44 years he still had to live. Records simply describe him as a gentleman. He lived at number 12 Cumberland Terrace, Regents Park, John Nash’s neoclassical terrace, always a very exclusive address. Zoopla can’t tell us what the property is worth these days because it is now divided into flats. The last one bed flat that went on the market in 2011 sold for £2.35 million.

The Gun Club’s John Hardy ‘was a vicious little man’ who carried two guns, ‘shot down a man on the West Virginia line’ and after being baptised ends up being taken to the hanging ground for his sins. It is a traditional American folk song, the original version of which is often said to have been composed by John Hardy himself, a black man who was executed for murder in January 19th 1894 at Welch in West Virginia. There are many, many recorded versions of the song including those by the Carter Family, The Kingston Trio, Leadbelly, Burl Ives, Pete Seeger, Manfred Mann and Joni Mitchell.  The legendary ethnomusicologist and folklorist Alan Lomax in ‘The Folk Songs of North America’ (1960) wrote that “Hardy was tried during the July term of the McDowell County Criminal Court, found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. While awaiting execution in jail, he is said to have composed this ballad, which he later sang on the scaffold. His ballad appears to have been based upon certain formulae stanzas from the Anglo-Saxon ballad stock.” It seems extraordinary, unbelievable almost, that any man could possess enough sang-froid to burst into song at his own execution. And would white law officers in 19th century West Virginia grant a condemned black man enough time to sing about himself just as they were about to hang him? Surely not.

In the West Virginia Archives there is a photograph of Hardy’s execution. He stands on an impressively sturdy scaffold, in bright winter sunshine, dressed in a shabby three-piece suit holding a fedora or a Stetson in his hand. He is a tall, well-built man, taller than the sheriff and the hangman who lean against the scaffold. All three are looking at the camera; Hardy does look remarkably composed for a man about to be publicly executed.  The rope with which he will be hung is wrapped multiple times around the crossbeam, the noose out of sight, hidden behind him. In the background of the picture are a small part of the three thousand strong crowd that witnessed his execution. The Wheeling Daily Register of January 20, 1894 gives details of Hardy’s hanging the previous day:  

WILDE, W. VA., January 19. – John Hardy, for killing Thomas Drews, both colored, was hung at 2:09 p.m. to-day. Three thousand people witnessed his death. His neck was broken and he died in 17 ½ minutes. He exhibited great nerve, attributed his downfall to whiskey, and said he had made peace with God. His body was cut down at 2:39, placed in a coffin, and given to the proper parties for interment. He was baptised in the river this morning.

Ten drunken and disorderly persons among the spectators were promptly arrested and jailed. Good order was preserved. Hardy killed Drews near Eckman last spring in a disagreement over a game of craps.

Both were enamoured of the same woman, and the latter proving the more favored lover, incurred Hardy’s envy, who seized the pretext of falling out in the game to work vengeance on Drews, who had shown himself equally expert in dice as in love, having won money from Hardy. Hardy drew his pistol, remarking he would kill him unless he refunded the money. Drews paid back part of the money, when Hardy shot, killing him. Hardy was found guilty at the October term. 

‘Miami’ was released on Chris Stein’s Animal Records label in September 1982. In April the following year the Gun Club toured Europe and I interviewed Jeffrey Lee Pierce and Jim Duckworth at, if I remember correctly, the head office of Chrysalis Records which was somewhere in the West End at the time. I was keen to meet them; I had loved their first album ‘The Fire of Love’ but was taken aback by ‘Miami’ as it was such a different record. On the first album they sounded like the Cramps but the new one went to a whole different place, country-blues, folk, a bit rootsy at times, it was not what I had been expecting. But ‘Miami’ turned out to be a classic grower and the more I heard it, the more the record got its hooks into me. To this day it remains my favourite Gun Club album. I was 22 years old at the time of the interview and my writing skills were rudimentary to say the least.  The printed interview appeared in a short-lived weekly music paper published by Northern & Shell, a company owned by an abrasive entrepreneur called Richmond Desmond who started owning music titles like International Musician and Recording World and Home Organist before acquiring UK distribution rights for Penthouse and building a soft-porn media empire (he eventually became the owner of Express Newspapers and Channel 5 and detested being labelled a pornographer).  My juvenile feature isn’t sufficiently interesting to merit posting in full.

My interview didn’t get off to a good start with the band because I arrived late. Jeffrey, sitting astride a chair with his arms folded over the backrest, and bearing a striking resemblance to a young Marlon Brando, seemed particularly pissed off by my unpunctuality and could barely bring himself to look at me. Jim Duckworth, who was eating a tube of Smarties, was a little more friendly. The press officer, knowing the band had an album and tour to promote, did their best to dispel the awkward atmosphere and get the conversation going, but it was hard work. For 25 minutes we discussed band line-up changes and how much money and studio time their record company had given them to make each of their records. Then the band had to go, they were due to catch a train to Leeds from Kings Cross to play gig. I was bundled into the front seat of the car to continue the interview.

Jeffrey Lee Pierce photographed on 19 April 1983 at Chrysalis Records - photographer unknown

Years later, in a piece called ‘Gun Club Days’ Jim recollected his 8-month stint with the band. He remembered, he said “some guy from a magazine watching us in amazement as we rattled on about a bunch of bullshit that seemed funny and significant while we were all drunk, but God help me I can’t recall any of it now.” That was pretty much my reaction as I sat helpless in the front seat of the record company car as Jim sat in the back reciting a monologue into my tape machine about various brands of American candy and their innate superiority to Smarties. Then he started talking to Jeffrey about Rockabilly, “a real vacuous music, isn't it? It's really awful. Is the stupidest shit.” Telling stories about Eddie Bond, the man who auditioned an 18-year-old Elvis in Memphis and told him not to quit his job as a truck driver. A few months later Elvis cut ‘That’s alright Mama’ for Sam Phillips and Eddie was soon begging him to become lead singer for his band. Elvis was no longer interested in the job. Jim recalled going to a rockabilly barn dance put on Bond. “no one showed up, so they let you in for free. This guy starts showing us Eddie Bond souvenirs and we just start laughing. Then this fucker puts a pen in our hand saying ‘That’s Eddie over there leaning against that pole, Go on and have Eddie sign that for you. I was saying I don't want to have Eddie sign that for me, he looks like a jerk. He gave us three pens and three pamphlets and made us go get Eddie to sign them, gave me a copy of Rocking Daddy and told me to get Eddie to sign it.”

“Where's Warren Smith these days?” Jeffrey asked. Smith was another early rockabilly star who had a couple of minor hits with Sam Phillip’s ‘Sun’ label before disappearing into obscurity. In the early Seventies he served 18 months in an Alabama jail for robbing a pharmacy. “Oh, he's dead,” says Jim, “Yeah, Warren died, but the famous story is  that just before he died, he asked for a comb so he could do his pompadour one last time.” Warren Smith was 47 when he died of a heart attack. Jeffrey talked about meeting a guy from the Hondells at a party. The Hondells were a surf rock band whose cover of the Beach Boys ‘Little Honda’ reached number 9 on the billboard chart in 1964. “What the hell was his name?” Jeffrey wondered, “He didn't do anything either. He can't even talk about it. It doesn't remember any of it. It’s all so miniscule to him. Oh, did I do something? Did I make that record?” Jim laughs but Jeffrey seemed thoughtful; the evanescent nature of rock fame.

At Kings Cross I showed Jeffrey and Jim where to catch their train and as they had half an hour to spare, I helped them negotiate the perils of the British Rail buffet. The other customers stared at the two Americans, who suddenly looked incredibly exotic in the dowdy restaurant. Jim ate two yoghurts and rattled on about TV and his previous gigs with Alex Chilton and Panther Burns. He occasionally questioned Jeffrey about the identity of that “dildo thing on your plate. Oh, it's a sausage. God, you wouldn't get me putting that in my mouth.” When their train was due I walked them to the platform entrance. Jeffrey, who had been silent for the past 30 minutes, took me by surprise by shaking my hand and mumbling “sometimes I feel like an observer in all this. I watch it all happen but I don't really care about any of it. I've got a few ideas about what I'm going to do when it's all over, but till then I'll just see what happens.” He let go of my hand, adding “nice to meet you,” before turning and marching along the platform to catch his train.

Jeffrey Lee Pierce died of a stroke on the 31st March 1996 at his father’s house in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was 36 years old.