Martin Duffy

 Martin Duffy has died. I met him a few times. On one occasion myself, Martin and Mani from The Stone Roses watched England play a World Cup Qualifier in a South London pub. That is unrecognisably off-brand for me. Even at the time it had the quality of a dream. We were on route to a birthday party in a club made from an old Victorian public toilet beneath Clapham Common. I swear I'm not making this up. I think it was Martin's birthday. I remember, because Bobby Gillespie never showed, which is typical Bobby Gillespie. 

The party was the most star-studded event I'd ever attended. I mean, we're marking on a curve here - it wasn't the red carpet at Cannes. But for an indie kid from Basingstoke rubbing shoulders with The Charlatans, My Bloody Valentine, Irvine Welsh, The Stone Roses and Primal Scream - bands I was too cool to admit I liked, despite liking them - was like communing with a leather-clad pantheon of Gods. I'll say this for Basingstoke - it gives you a keen sense of your place in the scheme of things. I was like Oliver Twist waking up in the rich man's house: Who Will Buy This Beautiful Evening? I should have worked the room like the street-smart hustler I am, and walked away with a Creation contact signed in Alan McGee's chemically enhanced blood. But I didn't. I clung to the shadows, supping on a can, saucer eyed, as mid-tier rock royalty played bongos and sucked on hookah pipes in a beautifully restored Victorian pissoir. 

Martin was a lovely man. There was never any side to him. He always seemed upbeat and chipper, always friendly and interested. My girlfriend Chloe had previously been his girlfriend, so he could easily have been rude or surly or even aggressive. He was none of those things. The fact that they remained friends after splitting also speaks to their humanity, class and the affection between them. It's good not to be a dick. 

Martin was a prodigy, was in Felt for their imperial phase and played for both The Charlatans and Primal Scream, lending them an authenticity and musicality which they utterly lacked without him. To be in a band with Lawrence and Bobby Gillespie, neither of whom seem like very nice men, and to be so wide eyed and delighted with the world, where they were both so crippled and corseted by a need to look cool, is remarkable. Martin was a joy to be around. Lawrence obviously has his demons, but Gillespie is a straight up dick, and Martin was the opposite. 

It's a peculiar thing to try and write a sort of obituary for someone semi-famous, and whom I barely knew a long time ago. But he made a great impression on me and I think that's what I'm trying to communicate. The pleasure of him, the sunniness. He was great. 

I didn't meet him very often and I haven't seen him since Chloe and I split up. But I think very fondly of him, especially now. He was a lovely man. And 55 is no age at all. RIP