Blessèd

Are Those Who Love and Lose It All*

ON SATURDAY JULY 27, 2024 — just over ten months after my son Jackson’s death and the day before what would have been his 22^nd birthday — I made a music festival in his memory. In theory JackoFest was for Jackson’s brother, for all of his and Jackson’s friends, raising money for two small charities supporting bereaved parents and siblings after the loss of a child. In truth, however, it was also a coping mechanism for me.

Rewind: Making music festivals was not part of my skill-set, however, some of my older professional skills as a magazine editor (albeit lapsed) turned out to be unexpectedly transferable. For example, constructing a ‘flat plan’ — a magazine laid out in 2D — is not dissimilar to creating a festival’s running order. Editing a magazine is also, in its own way, about building an atmosphere in which to tell different ‘stories’ — creating a narrative arc, from first page to last, and leaving readers satisfied… even if they don’t necessarily choose to wave lighters/phones in the air.

We now usually read ‘publications’ without turning pages—however, a good editor still instinctively makes this cohesive overall statement; they know what their publication is and what it wants to say. The biggest difference between editing a magazine and directing a music festival is that the latter has moving parts — people, mostly — and the sound is turned up to eleven, along with the emotions.

After Jackson died, I had cancelled our best-laid plans for a ‘centenary’ party, scheduled for the mid-summer of 2024. Celebrating my 60^th, my younger son Rider’s 18^th and Jackson’s impending 22^nd we were, collectively, 100. Now, however, the numbers didn’t (couldn’t, wouldn’t ever... how could that be?) add up.

In late October last year, a couple of weeks after Jackson’s funeral, Rider and I were in the car, driving in silence.

‘Mum!’ he said suddenly—urgently—’There’s a song I really wish we’d played.’

There had only been four different pieces of music at the funeral, chosen via some difficult conversations by me, Rider and the boys’ father (we had been apart since 2007).

‘Well, we all compromised with our choices, didn’t we? What’s the song?’

Rider scrolled through Spotify and though I hadn’t heard it for a while—and not in this context—I knew it well. It was by a young rapper called Songer — real name James Songer, implausibly — from Wokingham, near Reading. Jackson (whose musical tastes were broad but whose great love was rap) had picked up on the younger Songer very early in his career, five or so years previously: ‘Listen to this guy, Mum’ he’d said, ‘he’s really good’.

We are a family who appreciate music and recognise a good lyric. My late father, Doug Flett, was a professional lyricist whose words (tunes by his writing partner, Guy Fletcher) have been sung by artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Ray Charles and Frankie Valli, so the family’s lyrical bar is set quite high. I listened to Songer and Jackson was right, he was talented. Subsequently, car journeys with either of my sons were often accompanied by Songer — whose skills matured, as artists’ talents invariably will, given the chance.

In August 2023, less than a month before his death, Jackson had a job making pizza at the Reading Festival—and Songer was about to make his hometown festival debut. I loved that; a couple of lads who didn’t know each other—but who would probably have got on brilliantly—growing up in parallel, symbiotically.

‘Caught half Songer’s set. He smashed it, Marge’* said Jackson when I spoke to him the next day.

Now, less than three months later, early November 2023, and Rider and I were listening to ‘From Us To You’ — written by Songer in response to the accidental death of one of his best friends, Luke, when they were both 19; he’d performed it at Luke’s funeral. Listening to the lyrics again, now, with Rider, I had to pull over.

Heart don’t feel the same now, got a different shape now

We just did an asset, shut the fucking place down

Bust a couple shapes for my brother

And I spat a couple of lyrics, it was gas

But it made me wanna break down

See I got the word play, know that was your favourite

Love is in the air Luke, I’m praying that you taste it...*

And I wept.

A couple of years previously Jackson had somewhat optimistically suggested booking Songer to play at our (long-anticipated) Centenary party. I’d laughed. We eventually secured a lovely local pub venue and might have had a DJ or two — however, live music was unlikely to be on the bill (and if it had it would have been a spontaneous scratch band made up by our —top-notch but conveniently also local— musician mates). Now, however — freshly bereaved and with my personal universe utterly reconfigured — Rider inadvertently sowed a seed…

Maybe I could make a music festival?

A ‘field’ full of Jackson’s dreams.

Plant it and they will come...

Look, I’ll cut the (eight-month long, crazily stressful) story somewhat short(er) — because putting on a successful music festival (and I definitely wasn’t going to be putting on the Fyre Festival!) turned out to involve quite a bit more than just sending a few quality emails, crossing my fingers and then effortlessly selling lots of tickets—and not much admin detail is interesting.

However, fresh from an actual old skool chart hit, ‘Toxic’, and with an upcoming tour scheduled, we pretty speedily secured Songer’s involvement. I had written a good email and as a result he (via his management) ‘got’ us. After that the rest of the bill grew (mostly) organically and (fairly) effortlessly.

Apart from one artist whose management were so unpleasant that I was profoundly relieved when they eventually pulled their artist on the grounds that we couldn’t pay them 5k up front. In fact, we couldn’t pay anybody anything—either up front or after the event (much less 5k) without going straight into the red and denying the charities a penny. So I was ‘happy’ (resigned, more accurately) to wave goodbye to anybody who made their bottom line the priority.

Happily, nobody else did; all the artists were a joy. When Nerina Pallot (who had just sold out the Palladium) messaged me to say she’d been booked to play main stage at Latitude on the same day as JackoFest—but not to worry, she’d just drive down to us straight afterwards (Suffolk to East Sussex), I knew we were literally blessed. (And yes, Pallot fans, on the day she played the extraordinary Blessèd — which I’ve borrowed for my title).

However, I’m getting ahead of myself…

With about eight weeks still to go (and despite me banging on about it endlessly on the socials) we still hadn’t sold anywhere near enough tickets to afford the outdoor infrastructure JackoFest required. The magnificent team at our venue, the de la Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, had been incredibly generous and theoretically entirely accommodating of my crazy plans… however, apparently, outdoor stages don’t just build themselves, staff wouldn’t just manifest; stuff needed hiring, people needed paying...

How did these things get done? I not only didn’t have Emily Eavis’s phone number but if we weren’t selling any tickets it wouldn’t matter if I had.

‘I’m really sorry, Kate, but on our projected sales it looks as though you’ll have to either cancel completely or compromise by letting go of some of the artists and taking it inside the venue.’ Greg, the DLWP’s head of live music programming, told it like it was — albeit gently, over a latte — while horizontal driving rain pummelled the (Grade 1 Listed) Pavilion’s gorgeous Modernist exterior.

It was 10.30 am, May 28th, with just under two months to go. In the absence of any marketing/advertising budget I was scheduled to do a 15 minute lunchtime interview that day with BBC Radio Sussex. I am an old hand at radio yet I was extremely nervous even thinking about talking publicly about Jackson’s death… though I was also determined to shift a ticket or two. But now, given Greg’s news, to what end?

At several points along this road I had had to acknowledge (if only to myself) that creating this mad festival of maternal love might conceivably break me at a time when I was already deeply fractured — grieving, aching, for my lost boy.

I’d already parted company with the Events Pro I’d originally hauled on board so I was now learning how to be ‘Festival Director’ alone, on the job. The title looked good at the bottom of an email, professionally persuasive, even — however, the truth was I’d naively embarked upon this project in order to try to navigate an ineffable void. I simply needed something tangible to hold on to — and believe in. Something to (somehow) get me (and Rider) through the first twelve months without Jackson, through the relentlessness of all the (literally) dreadful this-time-last-year triggers.

On the 28th May last year, for example, Jackson and I had a text exchange. He was studying for his finals and feeling under the weather:

Me: How you feeling today?

J: Slightly better throat still weird and scratchy, struggling to swallow etc. Am at Costa gonna do a bit of work then swim and sauna, then do a bit more x

Whenever I sought them out (which I did, often, in an attempt to re-connect) Jackson’s digital ghosts — particularly the kind of banal, everyday Mum/Son text-chats I’d assumed would go on (albeit presumably decreasing over time) until I died — always floored me. Now, however, a year on from the quotidian beauty of Jackson’s texts, the news that ‘JackoFest’ may fail was exceptionally tough to hear. Our tickets were on sale, there was a poster designed, JackoFest was A Thing, so it had to happen.

I clenched my teeth and blinked back tears.

‘OK, I get it. But the thing is, Greg, I just don’t give up very easily…’

TO BE CONTINUED…

CREDITS

• Stills photography by Euan Baker

• *Lyrics ‘From Us To You’ — Songwriters James Songer/Othello Beats

• *’Marge’ is urban slang for Mum, in homage to Marge Simpson

• JackoFest is on Instagram @jackofest2024