Larry Boyd

[Jon Jarrett]

        Dear All,
                  I can't do better than Bob Mayo's tribute. I never
actually met Larry, for all I corresponded with him for most of the last
three years and my tape museum only has 11 cassettes and a CD-R in it, all
of his stuff. Now a dead man's voice will sing to me from them and this
change is hard to take on board.

        Best to let the man's own words do the job I think. This is a
transcript I made of one of his lyrics from one of those tapes. There
were a few words I wasn't sure of, but though I mailed him to ask what
they were he was never to reply.

        It's an unjust world. Larry had given far more to rock and roll,
by playing it, writing it, propagating it and living it, than it ever gave
back to him, and the only comfort in it is probably that I think that's
the way round he'd rather have had it.

        Anyway, this was from 1983 but twenty years later it still seems
so close to the bone I can't not include it:

> TELL THEM I DIED
>
> "Well whaddaya say, long time no see
> But surely I tried to find you here"
> 'Twas narrow starin' eyes like yours
> From which I tried to disappear
> I thought I was some [hero then]
> I went to catch that lonesome train
> But I met a bunch of nowhere men
> With mush for guts and shit for brains
> And I never found the romance of the road
> And it's all that I can do now
> Not to huff and explode
>       Watch me now...
>
> [Did it too much for equal] time
> I wish I had it back again
> Three years in an [Iowa chair]
> At least I knew my home was there
> I stomped salvation on my boot
> [Ate] the stale meat [we call bread]
> I sold my clothes I sold my blood
> I hustled creeps I fed my head
> And I told myself I must have had it made
> That I wasn't just some burnout [fourth]
> Who couldn't get laid
>       Won't you tell them, tell them I died
>       I'll ask you once and once again
>       Don't say you've seen me on the slide
>       And tell them, tell them I died
>       'Cause they don't need to know
>       Turn around now, go
>
> I don't care what you call it
> Either suicide or self-defence
> Pass it on like second-hand
> Don't matter if it don't make sense
> I used to be the teacher's pet
> I did what had been told to me
> I shot my gun I waved my flag
> I saw from Caesar's shining sea
> But Uncle Sam was nodding on the side
> Beneath a mighty mound of garbage
> Just as deep as it was wide
>       So won't you tell them, tell them I died
>       I'll ask you once and once again
>       Don't say you've seen me on the slide
>       And tell them, tell them I died
>       'Cause they don't need to know
>       Turn around now, go
>
> Tell them I died
> Tell them I died...

        Goodbye Larry. Better luck next time, you surely deserved it.

Jonathan
--
"I recognise that I have transgressed many of the precepts of the divine
law, and that I am subjected by various vices and iniquities, disobedient
to the words of the divine mystery brought unto me and a worshipper of the
delights of this military age." Marquis Borrell of Barcelona, 955 A.D.

             (Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College London)