Ross-shire meeting with John Byrne, the creative genius who changed my life, didn't disappoint
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
THE death of Scottish artist and writer John Byrne reawakened in fellow author TONY BLACK memories of a man whose work changed his life – and a first meeting in Ross-shire that he will never forget.
I unearthed my Certificate of Scottish Education today, during what my beloved, late Grandmother would once have referred to as a 'right good bogle' about the loft.
It can be unnerving up there, balanced on rafters, juggling baby clothes and bags of tax returns, whilst past-lives flood back. I spied the document before I recognised it, in its latest incarnation it has become dog-eared, tattered, the colour of butter. But, there it was, present-day proof of my teenage self'ss attainment in higher education.
Aside from the subjects of Art and English, believe me, these long sweated-over results were anything but assured. And for a while, even Higher English, to steal a line from the class's set text, was as dead to me as the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns.
- Ross-shire kids draw praise from artist John Byrne at Strathpeffer event
- The Ross-shire Journal newsletter delivered direct to your email inbox
It all started with John Byrne for me, following each turn of his incredible career, his every leap and bound inspired me.
However, as fate would have it, beneath my teacher's Fair Isle tank-tops beat the raging heart of an iconoclast. If he couldn't breathe life into the curriculum then it was to be out with hoary Hamlet, and in with the woodbine-touting teddy boys of John Byrne's Slab Boys.
To a one, my '80s Ayrshire classmates couldn't quite believe their luck. Something extraordinary happened the day we received our photocopied pages of that now famous play: enthusiasm entered the room. A group of stroppy youths became ecstatic about the written word, hanging on the every deadpan antic of Spanky and Phil McCann as they skirted the edges of a strangely-familiar abyss, located in the depths of a Paisley carpet factory.
My teacher cast a spell on that class, we now ran to English, waving those photocopied pages, eager to read more. We came together in our sense of a shared tribe, in a camaraderie I'd never experienced before, or since. We roared with laughter, brought the stage to ourselves, and left those too-short lessons with aching lungs from heartfelt hilarity.
Time passed and the school-bell chimed, again and again. The pages of the photocopied play started to thin and we grew nervous. Soon it would be all over, and then where would we be? Rumours circulated that it was all a ruse — surely the exam board would never let us write about our own sort. Our fears were unfounded, but the magic still ended and we never understood why.
Years later I met a writer who had won the Whitbread Prize and immediately switched to what others were calling lowbrow genre fiction. William McIlvanney explained to me how wrong his critics were, because 'it's aw books' and as the son of an Ayrshire miner, he couldn't see it any other way. The Slab Boys spoke to a class of kids in a way they had never heard before — in their own voice — and it opened their hearts, they fell in love for the first time, with words.
I looked for more words to fall in love with and my shelves filled up with names like Twain, Salinger, Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Joyce and Mansfield — I even took to Shakespeare, eventually, but Byrne remained first and foremost. With his passing there is, of course, grief and sadness, but I have something else: gratitude for the great gift he gave me back in the early days of my journey with words.
It all started with John Byrne for me, following each turn of his incredible career, his every leap and bound inspired me. Through Byrne I discovered Scottish artists like Bellany, Howson, Campbell, there were more writers too, on the underbelly, like Welsh and Legge and Graham. I even stumbled upon the idea that this might be the life for me, though writing this now I wonder what on Earth inclined such a grand notion?
When I met Byrne for the first time in 2001, it was as a journalist. I was in the dream position of getting to quiz my hero on whatever, within reason, I wanted. But, I was wary, nervous, and unable to maintain eye-contact with an inscrutable gaze that I’d, by now, seen on a hundred magazine spreads. He wanted to meet in the Highland town of Tain, and turned up in a green Fiat Multipla. This is a vehicle which regularly tops the Ugliest Car Ever Made lists, but the betweeded Byrne seemed to revel in the juxtaposition.
Within minutes I'd thawed, Byrne (always a typewriter devotee) feigning interest in my HP Jornada (an early palmtop) to put me at ease. He'd recently been to Thailand with his then partner, Tilda Swinton, where she was filming The Beach, and he wore a Hawaiian-style shirt, directly over two polo shirts, both collars turned skywards. We spoke about a new exhibition of his work, a boon for a local gallery called Brown's, and about his television work drying up. I found it a little difficult to digest when he told me he now considered himself unknown to the new batch of BBC producers.
He called the process 'mutual negation' explaining that none of them knew who he was now, and he didn't know who they were. There was no enmity, no bitterness, just matter-of-fact summation. I felt the most enormous injustice on his behalf and told him why, explained the impact of The Slab Boys on my English class and it made him giggle, or maybe that was my stance of the sycophantic fanboy.
Over my years as a journalist I continued to interview Byrne, always through a halo, how could it be otherwise? I still have our taped conversations, my prized cuttings, and a sunburnt, fag-in-grill self-portrait on a print he signed for me. A fax he sent to my Inverness flat from Thailand, replete with jagged cursive doodles, seems to have gone missing for now, which saddens me, but I still have the joyous memory of seeing the pages spooling out of the boxy machine, like they were divinely sent to me.
Byrne had a kindness and graciousness, a way of welcoming others, bringing them in, that I have not found elsewhere. I thought so highly of him and cherished our slim connection to such an extent that on the publication of my first novel I dared to dream he might recall we'd once discussed my own aspiration to write. For days after the news that my book had been bought by Random House I fancied the idea that I’d call up Byrne and say: 'Remember that daft laddie you chatted to a wee while ago about writing ... and remember you told me to keep going ... and remember I told you I would ... well ...'
I paced around my rabbit-hutch Edinburgh flat for days, convincing myself that surely he'd have a new mobile number by now. I gabbed about my quandary endlessly, went on and on, to anyone who'd listen, about how I wouldn't even have passed Higher English without
John Byrne and — fed-up with my prattling, perhaps seeing no other relief — they said call. They convinced me with those famous last words, 'What's the worst that could happen?'
So, I called John Byrne, and expected to be sectioned soon after. I told him my news, hanging on a rebuke, but none came. He recalled our talks, ladled heavy congratulations on me, and asked for a copy of my novel to be posted to him on its release. That was the last time I spoke to John Byrne, but I can confirm it's a conversation I'll never forget. Like all of his words, they're buried deep. They're in there with the nugget of aphoristic genius he once shared with me, and which I roll out often, to whomsoever will listen, 'Art's in the heart, not the head.”
In my loft, amongst my press cuttings and my son's Christening shawl, I located an interview I did with Byrne titled, 'A Man of Many Talents'. Upon re-reading I recalled the day I handed in the piece. My editor, not normally one for praise or blandishment, had promptly appeared at my desk, brandishing the printout.
"That's a brilliant piece ... brilliant." She slapped the paper, Byrne's iconic genius gazing out, as she burst again: "Can you get me some more, just like him?"
Aye, if only.
