in the family?’ is a deeply rooted fear.
On two occasions I spoke to Joe Strummer about the death of David. I felt a professional need to do this, to get something on the record about what seemed a cathartic moment in his life. But each time I asked him, I wished that I hadn’t, so great was Joe’s recoil into himself, every defence mechanism instantly raised, the atmosphere suddenly spiky. The first time was in his hotel room in Aberdeen in July 1978, where he was on tour with the Clash. Then he admitted that David’s death ‘happened at a pretty crucial time in my life … He was such a nervous guy that he couldn’t bring himself to talk at all. Couldn’t speak to anyone. In fact, I think him committing suicide was a really brave thing to do. For him, certainly. Even though it was a total cop-out.’
Then, twenty-one years later, in November 1999 in Las Vegas, I tried again – I sincerely felt that the death of David must have been such a great issue in his life that there must be more to be found out about it, especially as Joe had just admitted to me that for years he had been in a state of depression. Joe told me he was sixteen when David died, and that he had been in the National Front.
‘And it just did his head in?’
‘Well, I don’t know if that did. Who knows? You can’t say, can you? But I don’t think it was being in the NF that did his head in.’
‘Was your brother’s suicide a catalyst? How did it affect you?’
‘I don’t know how it affects people. It’s a terrible thing for parents.’
That was it: Joe paused for a long, long time – I couldn’t tell whether he was being deeply thoughtful, or indicating the end of this line of questioning.
Richard Evans says that he and Johnny never once talked abut the death of David. Paul Buck says it was the same with him. People around Johnny describe his response as having been, essentially, no response. Richard Evans, however, feels there was a discernible shift in his friend: ‘I think he … maybe he did change a bit, but only in terms of more focused.’ This would hardly be surprising: tragedy in the family often acts as a spur for other members. ‘All I know is that within a year Joe had gone to Central School of Art. We’re still reeling from David, and Joe went off to Central.’
Johnny Mellor’s response to David’s death was no different from that of his parents: for them it became an unmentionable subject, an indication of the terrible grief and shock that they were suffering. As we know the Mackenzies were always very ‘close’ when it came to family secrets, and Anna, though grief-stricken beyond belief, toed the familiar line, Ron going along with this. Anna’s family in Scotland had noted that the previous year the Mellors hadn’t been in touch, failing to send their habitual Christmas cards. ‘As a small boy and later, I remember my mother reading out the greetings from the Mellors’ annual Christmas card, always from somewhere far away and overseas,’ said Iain Gillies. ‘I enjoyed this seasonal ritual. My mother was puzzled that we had not received a Christmas card from the Mellors in December 1970. She commented on this.’
It was not until over two months later, when Iain Gillies hitch-hiked down to London to check out an art school he was thinking of attending, that the story came out. ‘I went to London to apply to St Martin’s School of Art in early March 1971. I hadn’t seen Aunt Anna and Uncle Ron and cousins David and Johnny in seven or eight years and I wanted to reconnect with them. In the mid-afternoon of the 9th of March 1971 I went to their house and found no one at home. Their neighbour asked me what I wanted. I told her who I was and she said I’d better come across to her house.
‘On her front step I mentioned that Uncle Ron and Aunt Anna had two sons, my cousins. “They’ve only got one son now,” she said. I asked what she was talking about. In a very dramatic and hushed voice she said, “David … he took his life.” Those exact words. She invited me into her house where I sat stunned for maybe an hour or so, my mind flicking back to my memories of David. For a few moments I thought she might be deranged and was making this up. Eventually Ron arrived home next door. Ron thanked his neighbour for her hospitality to me.
‘Ron was welcoming. As we went into his house Ron said that his neighbour was very kind but I should not start thinking they’re all like that. Meaning, I suppose, the population of the Home Counties. Ron and I sat in the living room. He surmised very quickly that I had been told about David. We then left to collect Anna from her nursing job at the local hospital.
‘Anna was surprised to see me. She was friendly and said it was a welcome surprise to have me visit. She told me they had been in contact with David a few days before he died, saying they were going to meet him somewhere in London, but he called to say he had to return to his hostel to pick up a bag. Their meeting didn’t take place. Within five to ten minutes Anna said she couldn’t talk about it any more. Later that evening Aunt Anna said that David had liked to spend time out in “no man’s land”, the bushy area just over their back garden fence. It was indeed a difficult time. I felt very sad for them and all of us. They told me what John was doing. Aunt Anna and Uncle Ron had some charmingly detailed naïf paintings that Johnny had done in Malawi. They said Johnny had enjoyed being there and meeting the people who lived in the mud hut dwellings that were in his paintings. Uncle Ron told me that David had found Malawi to be “troubling”. I stayed the night in David’s old bedroom, which had remained as David had left it. I stayed awake far into the night.’
Ron and Anna Mellor’s ghastly difficulties over David did not end with his death. Acting with its characteristic blend of insensitivity and profound hypocrisy about the death of one of its parishioners, the local Anglican church at first refused to bury David as he had committed the sin of suicide. ‘Anna had to fight to get David buried,’ remembered Richard Evans. ‘Eventually he was buried in Warlingham.’ Along with Keith Wellsted, a friend of Johnny Mellor with whom he would sometimes stay at half-term at his parents’ home in Suffolk, Ken Powell from CLFS went to the funeral with Johnny to offer support. Some twenty or so mourners were present. ‘I’m sure it affected him, but he wasn’t in pieces,’ said Ken. ‘Whereas Joe was quite ebullient, his brother wasn’t. I can remember going to the house after the funeral, thinking how dreadful it must be for his parents. At the house the sadness was all-pervading.’
Iain Gillies told me Joe had shown him David’s suicide note: ‘It was the evening of Anna’s funeral, about the 3rd or 4th of January 1987, that Joe and I went up to the loft at Court Farm Road. He passed me a few things to look at and then a piece of folded paper. It was David’s suicide note. I had not known of its existence and I was very surprised at Joe showing it to me. I read it silently, sighed, and handed it back to him. Neither of us said a word about it. We went back downstairs. Thinking back to that day, 9 March 1971, when I was first sitting alone with Uncle Ron in his living room, he did say something about David leaving a note. By the time Joe showed it to me sixteen years later I had forgotten about this and also presumed, perhaps naïvely, that it would have been destroyed. I was asked not to repeat its contents.’
Two weeks after David’s suicide, his younger brother went on an already planned holiday with Paul Buck. You can imagine the hushed, tearful conversations between the desperate Ron and Anna: ‘Best for him to get out of the house, let’s try and let things get back to normal.’
Johnny Mellor had booked two ‘berths’ for four nights, beginning on 13 August 1970, for £1 at the Cuckmere camping site near Newhaven in East Sussex. ‘He rang me up and he said his brother had committed suicide and I was shocked,’ said Paul Buck. ‘I think he just wanted to blank off from it. He didn’t really talk about it on that camping trip. Except for one time he came back to the tent and he said, “I’ve just washed with my dead brother’s soap.” I don’t know whether he felt guilty or not. People do, don’t they, family?’
Johnny ‘Woolly’ Mellor outside a shop in Horam, East Sussex, in 1970. (Pablo Labritain)
The two teenagers spent a nice time on their camping trip, hitch-hiking the sixty or so miles to the south coast and extending the four days for another three. (‘We weren’t that grown