Danny Welsh RIP 1958-2022

Tribute by Danny's friend Frank Sweeney

I met Danny in the Summer of 1976, apart from myself, my brother Nick Sweeney, we were the only people* in our area were seeing bands in the emerging punk movement going to see The Hot Rods,Sex Pistols, Patti Smith, Ramones etc. and probably the only people in all of Camberwell who owned the first Ramones LP in May 1976. Danny lived in Sceaux Gardens near Southampton Way, and I lived in Wells Way . Nick had met him in The Orange Tree a local pub in Havil Street, and he said that he was a singer into Rock'n'Roll. After the pub, Nick took him to ours and I held up a mic and got him to sing along with the Ramones first LP, he looked pretty terrified having his bluff called so quickly. Danny was a regular gig goer on the pre- punk pub rock scene, he was the only person I knew who had seen the 101ers live. Danny, Nick and I were fairly typical fans of the 1976 punk rock gigs, although our music tastes were different we shared the common bond of wanting some new music to replace the light entertainment that most mainstream pop music had become by the mid-1970s.

He had a great record collection and well known at Rock On records in Camden and mates with Roger Armstrong and Ted Carroll. He was pretty uncompromising in his music tastes all RnR, R&B, Rockabilly and select 60s stuff, he was even suspicious of the velvet underground he thought the 17 mins of Sister Ray was a bit too close to prog rock. And he had nothing in his record collection that was embarrassing in the year the zero of punk.

When I first met him 1976 he worked at Kings Reach Tower, which was home to the NME, while there he did intercept records and gig tickets that were intended for journalists, if your record was any good, the first copy you sent in probably ended up in his collection.

At this time at Kings Reach he worked with Mike Barson, who was putting together a ska band called The Invaders which later became Madness. He also encouraged another workmate Mark Laffley to audition for the vacant drumming seat in The Clash, Mark didn’t get the gig, but was then recommended to and played for Subway Sect, and which got us in on the guest list at the infamous seat ripping Clash gig at the Rainbow. From then Mark went on to drum for Generation X, we never paid for a single GenX gig at the Marquee. Another workmate was Steve Norman who was in a power pop band called The Makers, who we hung out with to get into their gigs. The Makers eventually became Spandau Ballet (Gary Kemp was a really nice guy, I’m sure he still is). I don’t think Danny and I would have made the transition to new romantics.

After leaving Kings Reach he got a job with Southwark as a road sweeper through his Dad’s connections (in the way that people could get council jobs in those days), he led a dispute over having to wear day-glow jackets, because they looked uncool. After the workforce responded to the threat of being sacked, and adopted the jacket, he continued the strike by himself eventually losing his job – Danny was pretty committed to looking cool in a 'didnt have to try' sort of way. He was wrong he would still have looked cool in a day glow jacket.

In time he got to playing bass in the first band we put together, and later taught himself to play guitar and became a prolific songwriter. Although he would never say so but he had a very deep and intuitive grasp of the early roots music that he loved, and this came out in the songs he wrote.

Over the years we lost touch with each other, and I saw him around 2009 performing at a festival in Nunhead, at that time he had just got over his first brush with the big C. I then saw him about 5 years ago, at one of our gigs, and hoped that our paths would cross again. But it was not to be. To paraphrase Jim Dickinson, he’s dead , but he’s not gone, he will continue to live in our memories.

Goodbye Dan.