John Jonah Jones | Ralph, Albert & Sydney

One For Jonah CD

“There will never be anyone like him in our lives again”
Ralph McTell

John Jonah Jones was Ralph's friend and stage manager for many years. His death in December 2003 was felt by many, including Ralph's fans who remember seeing John busily at work before, during and after a Concert. Like me I am sure you have stuck a song request in John's hand and asked if he could get it to Ralph. He more often than not did!
Andy.

'All About Jonah'
If I tried to give a quick description of John I would say his personality was from a different time to the present. He most reminded me of my great uncles who fought in the 1^st World War in terms of attitude, philosophy and the skills needed to survive without complaint. If a job had to be done you did it, if it rained you got wet, but you did it. If there was no bed you slept on the floor, if the craic was good you never slept. Food and drink was a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich, and later when we became used to more exotic food, the donner kebab. John was generally suspicious of any food that did not come out of a frying pan. Fruit generally upset him and indeed when our driver Clive discovered this; he took delight in eating an apple when Jonah sat next to him in the bus because the smell of a fresh apple caused John to be sick. He once revealed that if his old mum put apples in the fridge he would be forced to throw out the bacon as it was “tainted” by the fruit.

John B Jones was born in Tonnarevel in Wales and never knew his birth parents. He told me he had eight sets of foster parents before being adopted and raised by John and Mabel Jones who lived in rented rooms in Bethnel Green. John often joked that when they were evacuating children from the East End to the country, they sent him from the country back to the centre of the Blitz in the East End.

By his own admission John was a difficult little boy and by the age of eight had visited many parts of the country when he discovered how to board a train without a ticket. He was brought back from all sorts of destinations but never lost that fascination with railway routes and could and did quite often recite every station on routes all over the country. He was never keen on aeroplanes, not frightened by them, he just didn’t trust them. If there were an option for a sea crossing he would always go for that.

He was sketchy about his education but clearly had a great gift for numbers and was very good at arithmetic. This ability stood him in good stead when he worked for Mickey Dean the bookmaker in many capacities. He was a reckoner/settler of complex bets and could resolve Yankees and each way doubles and trebles in his head. He could calculate tiny differences in the odds and also chalked the board in the old bookies offices. He also learned Tic Tac, the on course signalling which keeps bookies in touch with each other and which horses the punters are betting on. He rode with these turf accountants in the back of a big American car in a cloud of cigarette smoke to every course in the country, relishing the travel, adventure and colourful company. On opening his morning paper when we were on tour, he always started at the back and calculated his profit and loss from the previous day’s racing even with his imaginary bets. His knowledge of form was encyclopaedic but of little use to him. Only occasionally did he really get in front and when he did, the money was an encumbrance to be got rid of at one betting shop after acquiring it at another. His favourite horse of fairly recent times was Desert Orchid and if ever a picture appeared in his paper he would point at it and give the photo an affectionate stroke with his finger.

His main purpose in life seemed to be to try and beat the system or, at least break even with it.

Before his number work, his first job was with his adopted father as a plasterer’s labourer and could remember mixing the plaster with horse hair “with the fleas all ‘oppin about.”

He was later a painter on the London underground night shift and his tales about having to wash his hair in methylated spirit and the accounts of terrifying armies of rats that marched through the tunnels at night were how he accounted for his premature hair loss.

Jonah’s entrée into music began with his interest in the Temperance Seven Jazz band in the early sixties when they played a residency at the County Arms near Wandsworth prison. He progressed from doorman to stagehand and from his twenties onward was never far from the musical action. John supported himself in a variety of ways during this time from some dodgy dealings, street corner selling etc. to contract decorating. At Easter he would take a job on the fair at Mitcham and he usually got the more glamorous roles on the waltzer or dodgem cars. He was variously a roof repairer (usually one loose tile that he spotted needing to be fixed whilst on the way to the pub) he might have offered to fix for a drink, programme seller indeed anything that would “turn a dollar”.

As John and I are the same age our paths must have crossed dozens of times as we frequented the same music venues all over southwest London and beyond. Friends of mine in the Tooting and Mitcham area knew him and I might have even stood near him when I went to see the team of the same name play at the Sandy Lane ground. John was a life long supporter of Tooting and Mitcham F.C. and non-league football in general. Most recently he actively supported the Sutton and Carshalton teams. He was also a qualified Surrey Counties referee.

John enjoyed the total experience, which at football would have included watery Bovril at half time and a pie on the way home. There were no late night clubs like today’s, so after a gig us kids, who weren’t ready to go home, would meet up at the various pie stalls at places like Thornton Heath pond, known as the “officers club”, or the one at the Tooting Broadway underground station. John delighted in telling how he had ordered a fried egg sandwich there once, and the old boy broke an egg into a cup and threw it into the greasy pan only to discover it was the cup he kept his false teeth in. John spoke of the egg smiling back at them. Once he reckoned they hitched the trailer to a trolley bus as well.

John said we first met when I went to the Nag’s Head pub in Battersea to see Noel Murphy. John was running a folk type club in this rather run down hostelry, which he had exotically named the “Candlelight Rooms”. To say this place was unorthodox is an understatement. Its clientele were all in cahoots and their main aim in life seemed to have been in unsettling the performer. At Christmas they had a “Cod “ pantomime and poor Joe Stead was totally mystified when the audience started singing “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” whilst he was tuning up. Someone had lowered the words on a scroll behind him. Another time Cliff Aungier remembers receiving what he thought was a request from the audience after a particularly spirited rendition of an old blues number. When he opened the scrap of paper all it read was….”average!”. Fortunately Cliff saw the funny side.

I first remember meeting Jonah (as he was already called) when I managed to pull a snooker cue out of his hands that he was about to use on a third party in a way the implement was not intended. This was at the legendary Half Moon pub in Putney. Drink had been taken, offence given and taken and settlement was about to ensue. Luckily I helped to calm the situation and it passed off calmly.

That was more than twenty-five years ago. I was immediately intrigued by this character and have remained so ever since. There really was no one like him.

Jonah began to put on gigs at the “moon” and with the active help of the “guvnor”, Mick O’Mahony, the pub became the foremost music pub in London. John became involved with all aspects of live music and brought many major international acts to the venue. He took his profits and losses on promotions in the same spirit that he had with the bookies, and even became a personal manager to the unique talents of entertainer Earl Okin. This was a partnership of such unlikelihood that many people mistook Earl as the manager and John as the artist. Together they supported Paul McCartney’s Wings on tour. The only real hiccup on the road that time was when Earl’s elderly Rover car broke down as the party left the Ferry ‘cross the Mersey causing a hold up as Paul and co. were to triumphantly drive into Liverpool. John told me he had to get out and push the vehicle with the population of Liverpool looking on incredulously. In any case it was a partnership that worked very well.

Sometime in the early eighties John hatched a plan to combine his two loves of music and football by forming the Blue Moon All Stars side. Various musicians filled the ranks including, Ronnie Johnson (Van Morrison), Cliff Aungier, Denny Laine (Moody Blues and Wings), Tom Mates (Guitars), all four O’Leary brothers, Kevin Boyle (Crannog), Richard Digance, Colin Irwin (Melody Maker). I too was persuaded to play and although utterly hopeless enjoyed the best Sunday mornings I can remember. We somehow managed to make a cup final where we were losing three nil and John inexplicably replaced our only potential goal scorer with a defender causing a minor altercation and head butting session with a disgruntled team member.

We lost.

John was a naturally funny man and his great rambling tales were extremely entertaining and always in demand amongst the late night crowd. Encouraged by this he even set his stall out as a stand up comedian being billed on the Will Fyfe Junior and Anthea Askey laughter show as “Jonah, Tales from Wales” It is hard for me to imagine that scenario but he did tell me that one night his five minute set went down with no laughter and no applause. He was on the point of quitting show business when it was pointed out that the tiny audience had not yet taken their seats in the blacked out auditorium.

John, man with no office, secretary, or even a typewriter, accomplished these enterprises. John’s amazing memory kept everything in his head. All that he needed to get by with at any rate. He also had brilliant recall for names and faces. This, and a very earthy charm was how he conducted business and he earned a reputation that was to take him all over Europe in capacities from stage manager to record merchandiser, tour manager to personal assistant. He loved European work and stage-managed prestigious festivals in Switzerland and Austria. Much of this was accomplished often by the skin of his teeth and it was this element of danger and risk (almost like a wager that it might not come off) that appealed to all of us in this business with all its attendant vagaries, tensions, highs and lows.

I think it was I who introduced Dave Pegg to John probably at the Half Moon. I had been telling Dave about John’s famously bad tattoos and Peggy had asked to meet him.

When John was about thirteen he had lied to the tattoo parlour about his age and persuaded the needle man to give him a tattoo in the form of a skull with a snake disappearing into the eye socket emerging at the mouth. It was on the way home on the 220 trolley bus admiring the design through the piece of vaselined Bronco that John realised his adopted father would go crazy. John hopped off the bus and ran back to the tatooist and in an attempt to lessen the impact of his new skin adornment asked the tatooist how much it would cost to have some letters added. The man told him they would cost three pence each. Thinking quickly John invested his last nine pence and had the three letters MUM tattooed underneath the snake. This example of thinking on his feet did not save him from a severe “larruping” when he got home. On his other arm he had a crucifix with a very large feminine hipped Jesus on it. It was these tattoos which formed the basis of one of the earliest Cropredy Fairport reunion posters and Fairport and Jonah have been synonymous with that festival ever since.

John loved the Cropredy weekend and it will be the place that will miss him most. He was simply the best stage manager and managed to be thought of as a friend by performers and audience on both sides of the stage. He loved to walk out and announce the acts all be it often in a cabaret style that was not always entirely suited to the venue. Indeed once Simon Nicol remarked to me after a particularly “working men’s club type” intro… “Jonah’s the only M.C. that can make every act sound like a stripper”.

In his earlier years John had quite a temper but in later life he could usually see the funny side of even quite dark situations. In the middle of long grinding tours he would suddenly feel the urge to perform his own cabaret. This would quite often occur in an Indian restaurant or after hours in a friendly pub or hotel bar. His most famous story was the saga of the leg o’ lamb, (too long to be detailed here) and his most famous sketch was entitled “Fifty Impressions in Less than a Minute”. Actually it was never fifty and it was always over a minute. With his only prop, a borrowed comb (he had little use for one himself) he would do various impersonations commencing with Hitler (holding the comb under his nose), Johnny Weismuller (holding it on his chest) Napoleon (using it as an epaulette) “….and from the immortal pen of James Fennimore Cooper, “The Last of the Mohicans!” here he laid the comb upright on top of his head etc etc. I remember he was particularly proud of night he thought of his Robin Cousins pose where he held the comb skate-like against the sole of his shoe. This was sometimes risky as he was often a little unsteady by this time. One memorable evening in the “White Bear” at Masham his Gorbachov with the aid of a bottle of Daddies Sauce was a triumph.

Jonah toured extensively with Fairport, the Fureys, the Dubliners and several other bands including myself and earned the sobriquet “The legendary Johnny Jones” from the famous A.S.S. music company in Hamburg. He liked especially being in Germany where he and I toured in solo performance and also together with Donovan. John had friends all over Europe but he was most happy in Denmark. The Danes appreciated his special talents and personality and he engendered the same respect there as any visiting musician or artist. They learned to penetrate his broad cockney accent and his liberal sprinkling of mis pronounced words and malapropisms. I.e. Gigs were never cancelled they were councilled. The band Lindisfarne was always Linda’s farm, Pantomime was pantomine, and a Faux Pas became a Foo Poo. Once when observing one of the better players in the Blue Moon All Stars side he remarked “That boy has so much talent but he’s sadly off form at the moment. I blame all them birds he goes with. They’re takin’ all his Marylebone Jelly out of him”.

John was welcome at all the festivals and was most recently at Skagen, Tonder and Aarhus where he and I met up again with his friend Alan Fisher. Although his diabetic illness had slowed him considerably his enthusiasm for the adventure of life on the road was undaunted and we had a great time in each other’s company.

That was the way it was with John, you may not hear from him for months and even when times were tough for him, he never complained or asked for help. When you met it was a seamless join from where you left off, punctuated by tales of more scrapes, successes and near misses, interspersed with huge laughter and coughing.

He tried to organise his life around the seasons. Spring somewhere out on the road, Summer doing the festival rounds, a tour management position in the Autumn and Wimbledon theatre to provide his winter quarters. He loved this particular theatre and worked at nearly every job from front of house manager to stage door keeper. He also held the record for selling the most “pantomine” swag!

John would have been the first to admit that he ignored advice when it was discovered that he was diabetic. He could not stand being “lapped up” the term he used to describe being fussed over. He continued to live his life the way he always had. His smoking 60 cigarettes a day was reduced somewhat when he began rolling his own in an attempt to save money rather than to cut down and he reduced his “top shelf drinking” considerably, but old ways die hard and as he said to me shortly before his amputation ”I didn’t really understand what was involved”. This was also the occasion of one of his famous malapropisms when he told me they were going to send him to St Mary’s Roehampton to fit him with a “prolific” leg.

I believe he did understand the implications of his illness, but just could not or would not make the changes necessary. I think he believed he could “get round it” the way he dealt with any other problem. I know the years of roughing it and toughing it out took their toll.

John never asked for sympathy, accepting that, like the game of Black Jack, he could have changed his cards when he was offered the opportunity. He decided to play the hand he had been dealt and accepted the consequences with great courage. Unfortunately this was a bet he could not win.

Because of the amount of antibiotics used before his leg was amputated he was unable to successfully combat the infection, which affected several vital organs. His condition remained stable for several weeks but his body failed to respond to the treatment despite all the tremendous efforts by the staff at the intensive care unit at St Helier Hospital.

Jonah passed away peacefully on the 20^th Dec without fully regaining consciousness.

Thanks are especially due to Steve Kennedy who was at his bedside and visited Jonah every day and read him his cards and letters that quite overwhelmed the nurses in his unit. All John’s friends are grateful to the staff that was so attentive to John.

“Who was this special man that received so many cards and letters”? they wanted to know. Who indeed?

Recently John made a C.D. of some his memories. This was to be the preparation for an autobiography. This now cannot happen but we do have John in his own words thanks to his friend Paul Mitchell who actually got John to record.

In another sense all John’s friends have their own chapter of his remarkable story. Perhaps that is how his story should be told. Recounted by those who knew him adding their memories to the legend like the mythical heroes of older times.

To say we will miss John is a massive understatement. John had no family but his real family are the hundreds of people who will count themselves fortunate to have laughed, or shared a drink with him. Been stage managed by him. Had him sell their records or what ever else.

In Germany I was once asked by a promoter in what capacity was Jonah working with me? He wanted to know why was I travelling with a man who was clearly not the most agile or fit stage helper, and who neither drove a car nor worked a sound desk.

I had never even thought about it before and answered. “He makes me laugh, I love his company”.

There you have it. In the true spirit of “Old Bill” the WW1 trench survivor. He was no angel, just totally loyal and supportive to whomever he was working with. It was “us” against the world and when things were tough, you could not be down for long with Jonah at your side. He may not have had technical knowledge but he would stand at the side of stage watching your body language, monitoring your performance to reassure himself that all was well. A glance to prompt side, and I could see him in his black T shirt and slacks, standing in the shadows watching every move. I expect in that heightened state we enter as performers when we are on stage, we probably will always see him there.

Like Fairport, I have a ton of memories that will sustain us as we carry on without him. He will always be at our side.

Cheers John, there will never be anyone like you in our lives again, and lots of love.

Jonah born Jan 43/44/45 died 20^th Dec 2003

Stage manager, bookies runner, tic tac man, fairground operative, settler, f.o.h.theatre manager, tour manager, security man (Bouncer) stand up comedian, street corner salesman, turf accountant, promoter, roofer, painter, artist management, football referee, team manager. Stage door man, river Thames steward and who knows what else.

Ralph McTell (5th Jan. 2004)

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