A good friend of mine, Paul Simister, died recently. I first met him in 1982 when I was 19 and he was 36. We were both studying at Mabel Fletcher’s College of Music and Drama in Liverpool, where he was studying music and I was studying drama. He had been playing the guitar for several years before I met him, having taught himself, but went to the college to learn music theory.
He played the guitar to a very good standard, even though he was self-taught, and could play most styles of guitar music, from blues to classical. In his late fifties, he taught himself to play classical piano to a fairly good standard. He was also a talented sketch artist and could draw life-like pencil portraits of people, having studied art before I met him.
In 1987, he taught me to play folk guitar, and I was able to learn some folk guitar picking styles within a few months. I didn’t have a guitar, so he gave me one of his. He had several guitars and lots of guitar equipment, like plectrums, capos, tuners and guitar chord songbooks. He gave me some of these too. I wouldn’t have been able to learn the guitar without his generosity.
In late 1987, we started going to folk nights at The Lion Pub in Moorfields, Liverpool, each month, where we would sing and play folk songs as part of the line-up. I stopped going in 1989 for reasons I now forget, but he continued to be involved in the local folk scene, attending various folk nights up until the late 2000s.
By 2019, his feet had become very numb due to diabetic neuropathy, which made it difficult for him to walk long distances. When I next saw him in 2022, after the Covid lockdowns, he was using a walking stick and walking very slowly. We didn’t meet much due to that and mainly talked to each other on the phone.
I will always remember fondly his flat, which had a cosy ambiance, especially on winter nights, with the dim glow of the low-wattage light bulb casting shadows in the corners of the living room. For some reason, I associated the ambiance of his flat with what I imagined to have been the atmosphere of the various apartments that folk musicians in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s lived in.
He was a remarkable person whose kindness and generous nature, I’m sure, left a mark on everyone he met, as it did on me. His friendship for 42 years has given me lasting memories that I will forever cherish. He once said to me in the summer of 1983 that he had a feeling he would know me for a very long time, and that feeling turned out to be true.
May he rest in peace, knowing he was deeply loved and will always be remembered.
