Stratford-upon-Avon had four shops selling records by the time I'd reached the age at which music becomes the most important thing in your life. There was WHSmith - obviously, Midland Educational, RVS and - the best of the bunch by some way - Discovery Records which was independent, a chart return shop, and was owned by a hairy man named Bob. The shop was pretty small, almost a kiosk, situated on the left as you made your way to the precinct from its associated multi-storey car park. RVS was generally decent, but Discovery was the place to go if you wanted anything truly off the beaten musical track. Also, the staff were a couple of vaguely punky kids from the local school, two or three years older than myself or my peers, so even if we remained too awestruck to actually converse with them, it was better than having to deal with the squares who worked behind the counter at RVS. There was Ollie and there was Simon Morgan, and probably a few others I've forgotten but those seemed to be the main two. They were talkative and funny and they seemed to enjoy the job, even occasionally taking the piss out of our overly-earnest schoolie purchases, but not in any mean-spirited way. Simon was kind of beefy with spiky blonde hair and a leather jacket and I recall him as the man who facilitated my purchase of at least two Sex Pistols albums, so obviously he became lodged in the mental map of my teenage years early on. The second of the two albums was The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, which counts as an overly-earnest schoolie purchase if anything does, but Simon nevertheless managed to keep from rolling his eyes too much. Being a double album, it cost more than I could afford with a single week's worth of combined pocket money and paper round wages - so probably a tenner, obliging me to buy the thing in instalments; and I can still see either Simon or Ollie taking my two quid and noting it down on a payment slip kept in the till.
We also knew Simon to be in a local punk band called Domestic Bliss, because my friend Graham's older brother had the single they had recorded and released through the shop - Child Battery with Life on the other side. Life featured one of the first bass lines I ever learned to play through copying it from the record. Others were Gotta Getaway by Stiff Little Fingers and Public Image's Theme from the first album.
By 1984, I'd moved to the other end of the country, and Discovery Records had relocated to Leamington Spa. I bought a few things from there, but I'm not sure Simon was involved by that point. He turned up in Runaway Rhinoceros, a local zine, as a member of a group called the Hop (pictured), whom I'm pretty sure I saw at the Royal Spa Centre supporting the Three Johns. Unfortunately I don't recall much about them, although later came to the startling realisation that their drummer had been Simon Gilbert who eventually joined Suede. This section of the anecdote trails off with myself in the rudimentary recording studio of Maidstone College of Art bashing out a cover of Life by Domestic Bliss just to see if I could do it, and because it was a fucking great and criminally neglected song.
Several decades later, I encounter Simon on facebook, and so we have our first conversation which doesn't end with a financial transaction. I tell him that he sold me the first Pistols album. I think he may have apologised, which was funny. We talk a little about mutual friends, and only now in my fifties do I realise there have been so many of them. Had I been aware of this at the time, I might not have been quite so desperate to get myself as far away from Warwickshire as I could manage. I send him my cover of Life, and am amazed that he likes it, even makes noises about putting it on YouTube. I guess it's flattering to have someone cover one of your songs.
Months pass and we communicate from time to time. He posts clips of bands I've never heard of on my facebook wall and tells me, you need to get a copy of this. This is how I first hear the Sleaford Mods, Pessimist, Parquet Courts, Enhet För Fri Musik and others who now sit neatly alphabeticised within my collection. Simon's recommendations are always good, and it's funny that even after all this time he's still influencing my listening habits. I still don't know much about him beyond what I gather must have been a pretty serious battle with booze in the years between Discovery Records and facebook, which led to his involvement with recovery in a more general sense and helping others to get clean, to sort their lives out; but then I don't feel I need to know much more because I already appreciate that he's one of the good guys. He's a constant voice of reason and common sense on facebook, one of the few, always generous and considerate, kind and funny, never acting the asshole. He's one of those people whose existence seems to prove that there is good in the world, a man about whom one can find nothing bad to say; and it's inspiring seeing him doing so well, still cutting through the crap of daily existence. Like myself, he cycles a lot, and I'm hoping one day we might hit the country lanes together when I'm back in England visiting my folks.
Out of the blue, I find a photograph of Simon posted on facebook suffixed with a trail of condolences. It seems difficult to believe. He was only a couple of years older than myself, and there have been too many deaths this year, and this isn't even the first Simon. It was a cycling accident, an encounter with a tractor along a country lane upon which I myself have ridden many times. Death is never fair, but this one seems unusually harsh. In the days which follow, social media fills with glowing tributes in numbers proving that it wasn't just my imagination. Simon was popular because he was one of the good guys, one of the best. Even from halfway around the globe, his sudden absence is shocking.
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