Mummy Says You Won’t Come Back

Originally published January 2007. This was the first time I wrote about my childhood and connected it to my feelings about a pop record. Get your violins out.

Whenever I hear “Grocer Jack (Excerpt From A Teenage Opera)” by Keith West I’m overcome with a massive Proustian rush of memories and feelings. As soon as that cooly elegant harpsichord riff starts up I’m transported back to my childhood bedroom on a cold and rainy Saturday morning sometime in the late 60s/early 70s, listening to it on Ed Stewart’s “Junior Choice” show on Radio One. In my mind it’s coming out of my little orange transistor radio sitting on the window ledge, the melancholy tone of the record blending perfectly with the chilly air and misty windows of a slate grey London weekend back when there was nothing much to do but sit in your bedroom listening to the radio and reading comics.

A huge UK hit in 1967, this is an lavishly beautiful pop record (though those of you with an aversion to children singing on records may want to leave the room now) with an ornate, paisley-shirted production that makes Sgt. Pepper sound like the first Clash album. But beneath the incredibly pretty surface is emotionally heavy stuff about a man dying of a heart attack and the distress this causes the children in his town — none of which I realized at the time.

Without wanting to overload the song with too much emotional weight, I sometimes wonder if the reason it gets me so verklempt is when I hear those kids pleading “Grocer Jack, Grocer Jack, is it true what mummy says, you won’t come back? Oh no, no” I’m connecting to the feeling of loss or dread I had at that age. My Dad left home when I was very young and it was quite unusual in those days to have separated parents and be a so-called “Latchkey kid.” Teachers at school would come up to me with a concerned look on their faces and ask me if I was OK, and I was teased by other kids for only having one parent at home. The most upsetting thing though was my sister and I were genuinely worried that we’d be put into state care (this was the era of Cathy Come Home), a fear which our mother occasionally took advantage of by threatening to have us taken away if we didn’t behave. So I think I’m hearing a lot more than just a lovely pop tune, sometimes I feel like it’s my whole childhood and the fear of it being ripped away from me wrapped up in 4 minutes.

Download: Grocer Jack (Excerpt From A Teenage Opera) – Keith West
Buy: “A Teenage Opera” (album)

“Grocer Jack” was the first single from a planned concept album by producer Mark Wirtz called “A Teenage Opera.” Unfortunately the follow-up single “Sam” flopped and the record company pulled the plug on the project when they saw how much his lavish production style was costing them. But though “A Teenage Opera” was never finished at the time, it was recreated and released a few years ago as close to the original conception as possible using demos and unused songs Wirtz later recorded with other acts. It may not be the real thing but it’s good enough to make you wonder how incredible that would have been.