Last month I posted this piece, summarizing some of the music events that I have been involved with since last summer. I mentioned a performance that really stood out: “Working Class Hero”, John Lennon’s 1970 composition. “Hammered out on an acoustic guitar, each verse sung without hesitation or prompts, I was reminded of what a great song it is, and taken back to an evening at my uncle’s place in Southampton in early 1990. I must write about it sometime.” I return to the subject now.

I have mentioned my uncle Jimmy a few times in this Blog. He was five years older than my mother, the younger of her two brothers. This piece, about a trip to a long-gone pub called The Emperor, explains why I only really got to know him when I was a teenager, unlike my other aunts and uncles who all lived in Ireland.

Once I learnt to drive, in 1987, I was able to visit him more often. He had settled in Southampton in the 1950s and was the only one of my parents’ siblings to marry someone from the UK. Jimmy and his wife Marge had six children. One of them, my cousin Shaun, died in 1983. By 1990 the others had all left home but Jimmy and Marge were taking care of one of their grandchildren, Matthew who was 16.

In March 1990 I drove down to Southampton with my uncle Shaun (the older of my mother’s two brothers) to visit Jimmy. My two uncles were both younger then than I am now. We spent the day in the house and then sometime after 7pm the two of them went to the local pub, The Woodman. I stayed in the house, chatting to my cousin Rosita. We’re the same age, and over the years I had spent more time with her, and got to know her better, than Jimmy’s other children.

We went upstairs to carry on our conversation and play some music, mostly records that her brother Shaun had owned. We were in his old room, but he hadn’t liveed at home for at least 10 years before his death. Matthew was with us. He was expecting us to go down to the pub to meet my uncles but we didn’t want to. Rosita thought of it as “an old man’s pub”. I didn’t drink or smoke, so didn’t spend much time in pubs back then.

I flicked through the 7” singles and played a few of them while we were chatting. The only song I remember playing was “Working Class Hero”, the B-side of “Imagine”. I played it over and over again, maybe 15 times. I learnt the words to the song by playing it repeatedly. Matthew kept asking when we were going to the Woodman. I kept putting the needle back to the start of the record. “Working Class Hero” was still playing when my uncles came back from the pub. Around 11pm Shaun and I headed back to London.

I didn’t see Matthew again. Within a year he had died, in an incident involving a motorbike. We never heard the full story. I drove my mother and my uncle Shaun down to Southampton for the funeral. I thought back to the previous March, sitting in my cousin Shaun’s old room playing his records. It comes to mind whenever I hear “Working Class Hero”.