‘I would say that going to school in a place like that you became independent. You didn’t expect anybody to do anything for you. And that was a big part of punk: do the damn thing yourself and don’t expect anything from anybody.’
The boy boarders were lodged in four dormitories, according to age. For the younger boys bedtimes were strict: they had to be in bed by 7.30. The seniors did not have an official bedtime. The junior dormitory, where John Mellor first slept, lodged ten boys and two prefects. The dormitory had fifteen-feet-high windows, from which the more adventurous pupils, like Mellor, would climb out onto the building’s flat roof.
Life for CLFS boarders was regimented: day-pupils had to arrive at 8.45 a.m. for assembly, held in the main hall that doubled as diningroom; by then the boarders already had gathered for ‘Boarders’ Assembly’, at which they had to account for what they would do at the end of that day’s lessons, which started at 9.00. Games or homework were all that were on offer. ‘We usually put down games, as this would get us out of the school buildings,’ said Adrian Greaves, who had joined the school the year after Johnny Mellor, also as a boarder. While a ‘Grub’, as Juniors were known, John Mellor wore short trousers for two years and was so diminutive in stature that he was known as ‘little Johnny Mellor’. At first he remained in the fantasy world of small boys in which role-playing games are a norm; in the grounds of the school Adrian Greaves remembered Johnny and himself making ‘tiny villages of mud huts with twig people. He was very normal – bright, enthusiastic and mixed well.’ As a member of the school’s Boy Scout troop, Johnny Mellor learnt to put up a tent and sleep the night outdoors, a skill he would later harness to enhance his love of the festival outdoor life; his woodwork classes had given him the facility to knock up lean-tos and small sheds. Adrian Greaves recalled how even as a ‘Grub’ Johnny would immerse himself in the world of art that had led to the cowboy painting that hung on the wall at Carnmhor: ‘Johnny was very good at drawing. I can remember as early as 1962 him drawing cartoon-strips on long rolls of paper. They were good stories, cowboy and Indian stuff. Certainly I didn’t expect him to be a musician. He would often be in the art-room. I think the art teacher had a lot of time for him.’
In 1962 Ron Mellor had been given another overseas posting, to Tehran, the capital of Persia, a Moslem state ruled in a feudal manner by the king-like Shah, whose family had been installed by American oil interests. Ron and Anna drove down to CLFS and spent a Saturday afternoon with their two sons, explaining where they would be living for the next two years. In the interview he gave to Caroline Coon in November 1976, Joe vented anger at the notion of boarding school: ‘It’s easier, isn’t it? I mean, it gets kids out of the way. And I’m really glad I went, because my dad’s a bastard. I shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn’t gone to boarding school. I only saw him once a year. If I’d seen him all the time, I’d probably have murdered him by now. He was very strict.’
The ‘old bear’ had plenty of spirit, however. He decided that he and Anna would get to Persia by driving, taking the boys with them during the summer holiday. While they were traversing Italy, Anna’s suitcase slipped from where it was strapped to the top of Ron’s Renault: they had to go to a children’s shop to find replacement clothes that would fit her slight stature. In Tehran Ron and Anna lived in an embassy compound. But Anna was not at all taken with the country. ‘She didn’t like Tehran,’ said her sister Jessie. ‘She said she had been spat at in the street. The locals didn’t like her walking out on her own.’ Unfortunately for Anna, Ron was stationed in Tehran for almost four years. During school holidays and even for the half-term break, she would often return to Britain. The next time that David and John went to Persia, they flew. Arriving in a taxi at their parents’ residence, they climbed out of the vehicle to pay their driver, at which point he drove off, stealing their luggage. John Mellor thought this was hilarious, spluttering as he recounted the story back at school.
John (right) and David Mellor (left) share a donkey ride in Tehran with an unknown friend. (Phyllis Netherway)
In 1963 John Mellor and Adrian Greaves appeared together onstage at a school drama evening; previously, John had performed in an ensemble, playing recorder onstage at the age of ten. Inspired by the satire craze of the time, the evening’s performance took current television advertisements and twisted them into skits. A regular appearance during ‘commercial breaks’ was an ad for indigestion tablets called Settlers, which concluded with the catch-line ‘Settlers bring express relief’. Johnny Mellor and Adrian Greaves took to the stage in cowboy outfits as they acted out a scene in which they were part of a wagon-train besieged by Indians. ‘What we need is some settlers,’ said Adrian. ‘Settlers bring express relief,’ Johnny delivered the punchline. At the carol service that Christmas, Johnny and Adrian sang ‘In the Deep Midwinter’ to the tune of ‘Twist and Shout’, a recent hit for The Beatles.
By the autumn of 1963, in the sports’ changing-rooms and in the showers after games, Johnny Mellor, Adrian Greaves and their cohorts would join in off-key spontaneous renditions of a song that had swept the country late that summer, ‘She Loves You’ by the Beatles. ‘We’d all sing along to “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah,”’ remembered Paul Buck. ‘The first record I bought would have been probably “I Want to Hold Your Hand” by the Beatles,’ said Joe Strummer of the follow-up to “She Loves You”. Throughout Britain the image of the Fab Four was ubiquitous by the end of that year; and at CLFS John Mellor’s illustrative skills played a small part. ‘He had a job drawing The Beatles on the covers of everyone’s rough book,’ said Buck. ‘And he’d get the guitars the right way round.’ Plugging earphones into their tinny transistor radios, the boarders would listen in bed to the newest pop sounds on Radio Luxembourg’s evening English service, sailing through the airwaves and clouds of static from the European royal principality; this was especially popular on Thursday nights, to drown out the weekly bell-ringing practice in the nearby church. There was greater listening choice after Easter 1964 and the launch of Radio Caroline, from a converted fishing-boat anchored outside the three-mile limit of the British legal restrictions, pumping out the British ‘Beat Boom’ non-stop; soon Caroline’s 24-hour pop service, a symbol of rebellion for teenagers against the staid BBC, was joined by a flotilla of competitors, including Radio London, Radio City and Swinging Radio England, whose name alone defined the cultural change taking place. On Sunday afternoons the boarders could watch the ATV pop programme Thank Your Lucky Stars, presented by Brian Matthew. ‘That’s the first time I saw the Stones, way down the bill on Thank Your Lucky Stars in the sort of dead-end slot, singing “Come On” by Chuck Berry,’ Joe told Mal Peachey. ‘And we just flipped when we saw it: the whole school was sort of gathered in the day room to watch it and we didn’t need anyone to tell us this was the new thing. We all flipped, and likewise with the Beatles. In fact, I can’t imagine how we would’ve got through being at that school without that explosion going off in London: the Beatles, the Stones, the Yardbirds, the Kinks. Without that rock explosion, I don’t think we would have been able to stand it. It just got us through. Every Friday a new great record. We couldn’t have survived without that music, definitely. We were very young at the time this really happened, and the older boys would bring in the records and on Saturdays they’d let them play them on this huge radiogram that had speakers all over the hall.’
It was not the Beatles or other avatars of the ‘Beat Boom’ who inspired Johnny Mellor to become obsessive about popular music. This came through the California group who became great rivals to the Liverpool quartet, the Beach Boys. ‘Johnny came back to school one term with a copy of a Beach Boys’ Greatest Hits compilation. It knocked him and me out,’ says Paul Buck. John Mellor began to try and grow his hair as long as he could, which was not very long at all, tucking it behind his ears to avoid the attention of teachers.
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