As one gets older, I find some school memories sweeter than others and worth cherishing as part of that enduring, if precious, collection of good times. Let me share this one about my old school mate ‘Rocky’, and his revival.
I remember Francis Rockliff- or ‘Rocky’ – as one of the more colourful seniors, two year older, born with radical instincts and music in his head. He was destined to walk on the wild side and thus never became a prefect but instead ended being beaten by one. My early teenage years and adolescence were spent at Stonyhurst College, a Catholic boarding school set among extraordinary mystical countryside that inspired the likes of Hopkins and Tolkien. I was privileged to have more good Jesuits than bad ones as my educators. The better ones among them were intensely human and specialists in their field whatever the subject. Corporal punishment including beating with a piece of Indian rubber called the ferula or a piece of birch tree (used by prefects on younger boys) for offences ranging from under-age smoking to violent drunkenness was judiciously applied along with a liberal view of world politics and our mission to change it for the good. On the whole, the Jesuits were very good in giving us the freedom when they thought it creative and spiritually uplifting – ‘discernment’ was what their founder St Ignatius called it- so that I grew up in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s inspired by revolutionaries in Latin America, and the liberating force of rock music.
Stonyhurst was present last Saturday in a small theatre in Oxford where a small group of old boys were among the audience to hear a concert put on by Rocky. Other enduring schoolboy memories of Rocky is of a handsome and passionate individual , hiding mysteries in his background with his mop of jet black hair and dark olive skin, who shunned intellectual pursuits, other than developing refined covers of the Beatles and The Rolling Stones. He would lock himself up for hours in one of the school’s basement music rooms and play endless tunes on the piano, when not gathering others for an impromptu session. Rumour had it that he owed his Latin looks to someone other than his very Anglo-Saxon LIverpudlian father who had no time for Rocky’s obsessive interest in music.
Over fourty decades later- with the intervening years spent learning music production and management alongside-inter alia- George Martin, and being co-nominated for a BAFTA musical award, when not making occasional escapades into more eccentric business ventures- Rocky was this weekend not in a basement cubicle but on a stage, joined by his mates, old and new, among them some well known musicians and others unknown although no less talented.
‘Rockliff’ Jazz & Blues Jam’ drew in the likes of John Coghlan (ex Status Quo) on drums, Vo Fletcher (guitarist to Nigel Kennedy Jazz Quintet & The Rio Sanders Group), and Phil Robson, a veteran guitarist from several bands of the 60’s and 70’s along with a young female vocalist called Nikki Loy who has moved on from her early days as a busker.
A veteran saxophonist, a Spanish classical guitarist (the only Stonyhurst boy, other than Rocky, brielfy on stage ) , a music therapist from a local hospice for the dying, and a blind female singer with an extraordinarily powerful voice, were among others that contributed to the evening’s musical mix that ranged over folk , jazz and blues to latino and pounding rock improvisation on one note. At the heart of the evening was Rocky himself-strutting his stuff at his piano or on electric key boards when not interrupting his broad musical repertoire with humorous confessions of a neurotic life, as when he introduced a beautifully crafted instrumental called Rio by telling us of his belated discovery that his real father had come from darkest Peru. “This next number is called Rio- yea I know that’s not Peru-but what the hell, I think it’s inspired by my other Dad”, he seemed to tell us.
Sometimes he left it to the lyrics of a song to fill in the missing parts of his helter-skelter life. Thus a vocal duet with the delectable Ms Loy called The End, put to original music that mixed tango with blues, spoke of one of several relationship breakdowns that have dogged his life.
Rocky’s thick black hair has endured along with his eccentricity. Only his paunch and bags under his eyes reflect a life occasionally lived to excess. A somewhat tongue -in-cheek blues number set in the west country was on the theme of sexual temptation stirred by drink and cocaine. While paying tribute to the “loyalty of true friends” and those “who may be talented but are never successful’, like his blind guest, Rocky never grew heavy. His repeated calls for a missing piece of equipment on stage struck the only discordant note of self-indulgence and provoked an outburst from one of his Stonyhurst chums-turned lights man for the night, theatre director Hugh Wooldridge. “You are a Prima Donna, Francis”, cried out Wooldridge who has dealt with many an actor since leaving school. Others on the evening simply saw a consummate and hugely engaging entertainer, drawing his musicians and his audience around him with his seemingly improvised rendering of some inspired music and words.
Towards the end Rocky seemed on a bender, letting music sheets slip chaotically from his fingers and leading his band down unrehearsed paths , as his eyes rolled and closed, and the pounding of the key boards became increasingly frenetic. As the show reached its climax, he threw off his jacket, staggered to the front of the stage and there stumbled through a chaotic roll and roll dance with the short-skirted and spirited Ms Loy- she all poised sexuality, he his black hair all over the place, his shirt hanging out , his eyes wild, as he briefly grappled with his lead female singer’s young body, Meat Loaf like. One could only love him for it.
Rockliff’s Jazz & Blues band played on February 5th at The North Wall Threatre in Oxford. The event was a ‘sell-out.’
