Goodbye my friend
Roger Dean
16 Mar 1943 - 3rd Aug 2008
If anyone had ever eavesdropped on conversations I had with Roger Dean they’d have come to the conclusion that we both needed to be admitted to the nearest asylum forthwith.
From the moment he got in touch with me, in response to a piece I had written about the Nu-Notes, we both just knew we were going to get on like a house on fire. We had the same stupid sense of humour.
One of our long conversations went along the lines of:
Don’t you dare die on me. I’ve only just finished your web site and I refuse to ruin the design by putting a black border round it.
Couldn’t you use Cherry Bakewells instead?
You want me to do a border round your obituary with Cherry Bakewells!
I like Cherry Bakewells.
and that’s the reason why the home page of Roger’s site has a box of Cherry Bakewells on it. Roger wanted them there. And whatever Roger wanted is OK by me.
You see this was a man who, besides being a superb guitar player, was also a really nice guy. I just knew him as Rog, lead guitar with the Nu-Notes. It never occurred to me to ask him what he’d done after that and he never mentioned it. It was only when he’d had his accident and I decided to take his mind off it by doing his site that I found out. I needed some information to build a bio, he shipped over his CV, and I nearly fell off my chair.
As I tracked people down to get information and old photos it became clear the amount of respect and friendship there was out there for Roger, even from those who hadn’t seen him for years. Many people mentioned his serious exterior which hid a sense of the ridiculous that would surface when you least expected it. He was quite capable of bringing the most solemn of events to raucous halt with one off-the-cuff comment.
At one point I had a monthly column in a music magazine documenting the tongue-in-cheek saga of the development of his incredible ‘Electric Dancing Trousers (for men who can’t)’. He contributed to this with great gusto. I was never sure if readers thought it was funny or that we’d totally lost the plot. Whatever they thought, Rog and I had a whale of a time putting it together. His descriptions of power source trials, beginning with a car battery on a trolley which had to be abandoned when it threw other dancers to the floor as he executed a particularly energetic spin, had me in fits of hysterics. He could get you to picture his thoughts, no matter how outlandish.
I count myself truly fortunate to have known him. He didn’t want anyone mourning his passing, he liked people to be happy. He liked making them laugh. I laughed till I cried at times but right now, ‘happy’ is one wish of his that I’m afraid I shan’t be following. This time I need to cry until I can laugh again.
Bye my friend.
xxxxxx
Jaybee responds:
Posted: August 6th, 2008 at 1:45 am →
I was taking a nostalgic trip round Roger’s Facebook profile and came across something he’d posted that I’d never seen before. It’s so typically him that I found myself laughing again.