Lament for John Fitz Brian Hooper, February 2006
He'd just got out of Winchester, and he knocked upon my door,
We talked about the old days for an hour or two, or four;
In a month or two my friendship was exhausted one more time,
And then I didn't see him, then I heard about him dying,
My friend Jon, so now you’re gone;
We had some fun, me and Jon.
My old friend Jon, tried for the sun,
Now your dreaming's done, my friend Jon.
We used to sing together, about thumbing diesels down,
But real life was the kids and the wife at home in Gosport town;
'Til the drinking and the dreaming got too much for love to take.
He cried to me "She blew me out", I had no reply to make,
Oh my friend Jon …
His heroes they all drank a lot, and he thought that was fine;
By the time it killed them he was hooked right on the line.
"You know me," he said, "I like it, living on the edge,"
I'll ask him if he meant that when we meet on the ledge.
Oh my friend Jon …
When he died I heard about the good things he had done,
The friends he lifted from despair and showed the morning sun;
He was cheating his own devils, helping people from his Hell,
And he dried their tears with towels he stole from Heartbreak Hotel.
Oh my friend Jon …
He'd just got out of Winchester, and he knocked upon my door,
We talked about the old days for an hour or two, or four;
How we'd sing together, not always very well,
And if I'd have been a rambler, he'd have been my rambling pal,
Oh my friend Jon …
Jon Fitzgerald was a larger-than-life character who I first met when he came to a folk club I was running in West London in 1970. I gave him a three-song spot but he took so long I had to take him off after two songs. Despite that, we became good friends. Sometime in the late 1980s I lost patience with him (he could consume vast quantities of most things, and other people’s patience was one of them), and I subsequently wished I hadn’t, as this song explains.
