My brother, Jon Wyce the busker.
Introduction.
My brother was born Jonathan Charles Wyce on January 24th 1949 He was born with yellow jaundice which was very serious at that time. The doctors did not think he would survive, but he did, although weakened and somewhat fragile as a consequence of the illness.
Because of his fragile state my mother always had a special bond with my brother and was always quite protective of him. The only person my father really loved was my mother, so because of her, he was less of a bully with him than he was with me or my sister. Also, because of his more passive, gentle nature my brother never was able to fight back against my father; he would either say nothing or just leave the room. This used to infuriate my father, but he couldn’t do much about it because it would upset my mother too much.
As Jonathan always used the name Jon in his later life, I shall refer to him as Jon from this point on.
Jon as a child.
When we were very young, Jon and I were always close. To be honest we didn’t have a lot of choice. We shared a bedroom and my father was always kicking us out of the house and my brother was always the one designated to look after me. I’m sure he thought I was a pest, but he was mostly patient with me and when his friend, (our neighbour, Tim), would tease him that I was always tagging along with him, he would always defend me.
Jon was almost four years older than me, and less than two years younger than my sister, and yet he was always closer to me, despite the fact that there were times I felt he was closer to her.
The infant school I went to was linked to the primary school of the same name adjacent to each other. My brother went to that primary school so when I first started to go to the infant school it was he that used to bring me to school and take me home after. My mother was working and my father never took me to school. By the time I started going to the primary school at about seven years old, I would walk to school by myself as my brother started secondary school. It was quite a long way from where I lived in Chelsea to where I went to school in Kensington, and it amazes me now to look back and remember that I used to walk all that way, and sometimes even take the bus by myself at seven years old.
Jon was not only rather introverted as a young boy, he was also quite independent and resourceful. I remember one day when he was about eleven years old he went missing and my parents got really worried, so they started calling around everyone and were about to call the police when my grandmother called them to tell them not to worry, he had walked all the way across London to go and see her, a distance of more than ten miles! He had simply decided to go and visit my grandmother.
I always looked up to Jon when we were younger, but he had such an innocent soul that by the time I was about fifteen I started to feel like I was the older brother, and I became more protective of him. He had already left home by then.
Jon started playing guitar and singing when he was about sixteen. He was already beginning to follow the hippie movement and grew his hair long accordingly. It wasn’t long before the boys at school started calling him JC because of his initials and the fact that he looked like Jesus Christ, (ironic as we were Jewish). I don’t remember how he acquired the instrument, but I assume my parents must have bought it for him. They often bought things for him, for example they also bought him a bicycle for his fifteenth birthday. They never bought anything like that for me and never took me out for a fancy meal, but the funny thing is, I was never jealous of Jon; I loved him too much and it just made me more aware of how little my parents thought of me.
When my sister left home at almost eighteen, my father decided that would become the rule and that was the age my brother and I would have to leave home. So when my brother left home at eighteen I was only fourteen. The first place he lived was in a hippie commune on Eel Pie Island.
Eel. Pie Island has even been called 'the place where the Sixties began'. The hotel closed in 1967 and briefly became something of a hippie commune before it burned down during its demolition in 1971.
I was still living at home at this time but I remember one weekend I had a premonition that something was wrong with Jon, so I decided to go and visit him there, at the commune. It was a good thing I did; a junky bully had kicked my brother out of his room and I found him lying sick on the floor of the rat infested basement of the old hotel. I went to confront the bully in the room upstairs but was shocked to find him lying there dead with a needle sticking out of his arm. So after the police and ambulance had gone I nursed Jon back to health.Not long after this Jon went to share a flat, (apartment), with a friend.
Then the unavoidable happened; he was arrested for possession of drugs. My father borrowed money from friends to bail him out of prison. He also then bought him a new suit and my parents then took him out to dinner to a fancy restaurant in town for his nineteenth birthday. Then, with his new suit, he tried his first and last office job in an insurance company. He was booted out after a couple of weeks and he never worked in an office again.
From that point onwards my brother decided that he was a folk singer. He would sing in many of London’s folk clubs and even helped form one or two of them. When he couldn’t earn enough money in the clubs he would sometimes get jobs singing in the pubs or restaurants and then he finally started singing in streets as a one man band in the streets of London. Unfortunately Londoners were not very generous when it came to giving money to buskers so it was quite a struggle for Jon.
When I first left home I tried an office job for a while before getting my first job with London Festival Ballet: this was a long six month tour of the UK and was both exciting and stressful for a young man that turned nineteen during the tour. It wasn’t long after my return that I was off again, this time to Northern Ireland to fulfill a contract with the Ulster Orchestra and then with BBC Northern Ireland in Belfast.
By the time I got back to London Jon was sharing a large flat with four other guys. One of those guys left so I filled the gap and went to live with them in the flat.
The last phase in the UK.
This review of my brother appeared on line recently. I am not sure which friend of his wrote it.
Jon Wyce was an English Singer Songwriter who lived and worked in Amsterdam from the late 1970s until his passing in 2002. ‘Shoreline’ compiles a number of Jon’s recordings rarely heard. Jon blew in to Amsterdam like an exotic bird coasting on a trade wind from a magical far off land… I first met him at a friend’s house near the Vondel Park where he was crashing for a while. He sang to us his beautiful songs, fingerpicking across the frets with his strange open tunings, those long fingers teasing the strings into rare and unusual places, framing that most distinctive voice into unforgettable melodies. Jon came visiting quite often, his wild hair curtaining that thin face and those owl-like spectacles, velvet cape wrapped around his willowy frame. And always with his guitar. I had a good free-to-reel recorder and I would sit him down and record a new tune or two. Those were special moments… Jon was special, and made his mark on the folk scene in the Amsterdam of the 1970s, playing wherever live music was heard, busking on the edges of the Albert Kuyp Market, jamming with friends, making magic… …and then Jon was no more. …and then someone got in touch. Someone from our past. Jon was in our thoughts once more, and the idea came to us that maybe we could assemble some of those magic moments and create a musical legacy. Jon touched so many of us that, to hear his voice now, is to transcend time. The songs he created were never of our time - they occupy their own time and space - at once ancient and mysterious, and then again futuristic and fantastical. We hope that you will enjoy this compilation of everything we could find that Joh had recorded during his lifetime. The quality is lo-fi, home recordings, live recordings, demos and try-outs - but Jon’s music outshines all of that. Jon’s music is his lasting
https://youtube.com/channel/UCsgBlcbAbddW_L0Rk_YyCsA
PS: I just received this correction from my niece:
“I remember my mother told me she first met my father in a pub in London where he was singing. She was interested in him and put a note with her phone number in his guitar box. Then they lived in a tiny room together in London for a year before they moved to Amsterdam to squat in an apartment where my mother still lives today.”
I was unaware of this part of the story, so thanks go to my niece, Sah Wyce.
How sad that you and your brother were apart for such a long time. He is a brilliant singer/song-writer. His songs are beautiful, as is his voice! I love folk music! You could have recorded some cello lines! How beautiful that would have been! That is what I do and it is very beautiful qriting cello parts for people's songs!
ReplyDeleteI listened to all of his songs on the link and thoroughly enjoyed them! I was in tears reading your story and listening to his songs! Thank you so much!
Thank you Christine. Although I used to accompany my brother when we were younger, it is too painful to add to his recordings now.
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