I always thought of my Uncle Jack’s stories as unreliable. It was not that he told lies, rather that his mind tended to wander and reality and fantasy blended. But whatever their accuracy, his stories were never less than entertaining.

He wasn’t my real uncle; he lived with my mother’s sister, Lillian. They had never married, though he always referred to her as his wife. I think he might still be married to someone else, officially, though it’s something that was never discussed. At least never in my hearing. But he had been part of our family since before I was born, and I wasn’t about to disown him. He was the most interesting relative I had, by a long chalk.

According to family lore he had been a bit of a tearaway in his youth, and something of a celebrity. There’s a picture of him on our sideboard dressed in a leather motor-bike jacket, his hair greased back in a quiff and holding an electric guitar carelessly under one arm. My mother always said it made him look like Eddie Cochrane, whoever he was.

Aunt Lillian kept a huge suitcase under the bed, stuffed with memorabilia related to Jack’s career. She always maintained he had the talent to be one of the greats, ‘but he was a bit ahead of his time’. He was into psychedelia in 1964, before anyone knew what it was. He stopped being a hippie in ‘66 and began wearing eye-makeup and glitter in ‘69. By the time glam hit the charts he was already the oldest punk in the business. So it goes.

I can’t remember how many times I’ve read articles in the music press about the next big thing, to discover them naming Jack as a major influence. Some of them record songs he wrote. A couple have even been hits. It’s those royalties that enabled him and Lillian to live in comfort, even though he hadn’t worked since he turned forty. ‘He felt like a fraud,’ Lillian said. ‘Rock and roll was a young man’s business. He didn’t want kids laughing behind his back because he was a wrinkled old fart trying to be hip. I think the sight of Elvis getting fat and recording rubbish affected him badly.’

‘It’s a pity you didn’t know him when he was at his peak,’ she said, a secret, proud smile playing on her lips. ‘He was really something.’ The smile broadened. ‘All the girls fancied him.’

It was hard to believe that, looking at him. He was thin and stooped and balding. I don’t think I ever saw Jack without his carpet slippers and a cardigan. Even in the garden. He loved his garden. Even in his late seventies when his faculties were fading rapidly he’d be out there for a couple of hours if the weather was fine, weeding his vegetables, checking the raspberry canes, deadheading the roses or planting something new. At that stage he employed a gardener two days a week to do the heavy work but all the fiddling, as Lillian put it, was his province.

Watching him pottering about the garden, constantly pushing up the sleeves of a baggy cardigan to keep them out of his way, I could never imagine him as a ladykiller. But there was plenty of evidence to support Lillian’s claim. He had been married before and had a son. That was Julian, who was also a sort of honorary uncle. Jack and Julian were very close. The only time Jack would ever perform at family gatherings was to duet with his son. They looked and sounded so alike it was always difficult to tell who was singing which part unless you watched them closely. Julian would usually take the guitar and Jack the piano. By the time I was old enough to attend these gatherings Jack’s hands were unable to form guitar chord shapes well enough for his standards. But he could still hammer out a tune on the Joanna.

Julian wasn’t Jack’s only child. At least, not for certain. Between breaking with Julian’s mum and meeting Lillian he had a fling with an Asian woman, an artist of some sort. She had a baby she claimed was Jack’s, though it wasn’t born until after that relationship ended. There had been others too numerous to count, according to Lillian, but they were merely one-night-stands, groupies who meant nothing to him. And there were none after he met her and started on what he referred to as ‘my real family.’ Lillian always wondered if he was disappointed at not having a son with her. All four of their children were girls. If the subject ever arose, and especially if Julian was there, he would say, ‘They’re just trouble, boys,’ and laugh.

I suppose I would always have thought of Jack as a vaguely interesting but dotty old guy, had it not been for Sir Brian Epstein’s funeral. There was a three-minute piece on Sky News about it. Jack and I were eating our tea in front of the TV, chatting over the background noise – the aural wallpaper he called it – about that year’s Booker nominations, I think. Jack was always interested in literature, he wrote poetry and had a novel published once, though it was a commercial failure despite acclaim from the critics.

But anyway, we were watching Sir Brian’s funeral and Jack suddenly cut me off in mid-sentence with a chopping motion of his hand. “I want to hear this,” he said, sitting forward onto the edge of his armchair. For the length of the item he watched intently. When it was over he surfed a couple of dozen channels until he found something else about the funeral. BBC 4, it looked like; an in-depth appraisal of the late Sir Brian’s career.

“Poor Eppy,” Jack said. “He was a decent poor sod. He didn’t want me thrown out.”

“Thrown out of what, Jack?” I asked.

His gaze never shifted from the TV, his concentration never faltered. “From the band, son,” he said.

“A band? You worked for Epstein?”

He looked away from the screen for a moment. “He worked for me, son. He worked for me.”

“Get away with you, you old chancer,” I said, nudging him in the shoulder. “Your stories get more outrageous the older you get.”

“It’s true.” The voice came from behind me. Lillian was standing in the doorway. How long she had been there I couldn’t tell.

I turned in my seat. “Are you trying to tell me that my uncle, Jack Lennon, played in one of Brian Epstein’s bands?”

She nodded. “Wait there. I’ve got something to show you.”

 

 

 

 

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