Past Master
NATHAN POOL: Welcome to the RockSnark music podcast with me, Nathan Pool, and no prizes for guessing it’s going to be about the late Gerry Solby, who died this week. He was a proper English rock eccentric, right up to the moment he somehow bled out suspended upside down in the stained glass window of his own personal medieval priory. If only he could have done that when he was twenty-seven years old, it would’ve been the perfect rock ‘n’ roll death.
Too soon? I’ve never understood that thing about not speaking ill of the dead.
Since I was the last person to interview him, and the only one who’d heard the single copy of mastertape of his first new album for twenty years—the one that’s now gone mysteriously missing—I’ve been fielding a ton of MSM interviews since the news broke.
But. I’ve been saving one last thing for you, my loyal listeners, and to make sure I get to tell the story my way. And it will blow you away. Keep listening, and be ready.
Gerry was, as everyone’s said, a musician’s musician, a maverick at the margins of the music industry who pioneered weird sounds that huge megastars took mainstream.
And he hated me for forty years just because I said his whiny cockney accent sounded like a Trotskyist rat squeaking in a tumble dryer.
In my defense it was the 1980s. Tumble driers were sexy new technology. But I was still shocked to get the interview, to be honest.
Now everybody—or rather, nearly everybody—is going to miss out on his final work, which was the most mind-blowing of all.
Anyway, there was a bunch of stuff I recorded for that interview that didn’t make the final edit. It will rock your world, I promise. And possibly some other worlds too. I hope you’ll understand why when you hear it.
But first, here’s a bit of “previously on RockSnark” to set it up.
(TRANSCRIPTION NOTE: RECORDING STARTS – AUDIBLE EXTERNAL ATMOS: SEA ACROSS THE MARSHES, COASTAL BIRDS, REEDS RUSTLING)
POOL: I’m outside Solby’s massive cliché—sorry—his beautiful home, a classic rockstar stately pile on the bleak north Norfolk coastal marshes. I’ve had to walk—yes, me, actually walking—down several miles of dykes to get there, and then it suddenly looms up through the mist. I’m going in. Wish me luck.
(TRANSCRIPTION NOTE: Door opens. Big, echoey space)
SOLBY: Poo! You didn’t fall in the marsh and drown then? Shame.
POOL: It’s Pool. With an l. You know that, Gerry.
SOLBY: Private school tosspot. I’ll give you the tour, Poo.
(TRANSCRIPTION NOTE: a more hushed, interior acoustic)
SOLBY: And this is the library.
POOL: Did all this dark wood and paneling cost you much?
SOLBY: Fuck off. It’s original that.
POOL: Have you read all those books?
SOLBY: As I say. Fuck off.
POOL: Oh, you’ve got a patio.
SOLBY: Widow’s Walk, to you, matey. If you’re a widow, this is where you walk.
POOL: Do you have one too? I mean, is there a wanker’s walk?
(TRANSCRIPTION NOTE: 5 sec of silence apart from the atmos)
SOLBY: (sighing) Are you going to keep this up all the time?
POOL: You started it.
SOLBY: You invaded Poland.
(TRANSCRIPTION NOTE: Both laugh at the Fawlty Towers reference – it’s of their time)
SOLBY: What you said about my album, it was very hurtful.
POOL: Only if you’re a rat. (Pause.) It was a joke.
SOLBY: What? No, what you said was professionally damaging. You said my only value to music was to take the blame when the Stock, Aitken and Waterman bubblegum pop crew experimented and fucked up and made it sound pretentious.
POOL: I don’t remember that.
POOL: [VOICEOVER] It was getting dark and foggy, and he’d pulled on a big army surplus greatcoat, the kind that were cool in the 80s. He retrieved a bit of paper out of a pocket.
SOLBY: Here’s the cutting. NME, 3 May, 1984. See?
POOL: Good gag though.
SOLBY: That’s you all over. Always the cheap gag, never the deeper meaning.
POOL: I like to think so.
SOLBY: That’s why you’re the hack and I’m the musical legend.
POOL: So why invite me up here, if you hate me?
SOLBY: What would be the point in trying to impress a fanboy?
POOL: Oooh, you’re going to impress me?
SOLBY: Oooh I am. Do you ever wonder what music used to sound like?
POOL: In your case, Minimoogs and gated snares.
SOLBY: Almost all of it was church music, you know that?
POOL: Like . . . classical musicians play? Just a thought.
SOLBY: They just look at little dots on paper and guess. Nobody knows what it really sounded like.
POOL: Okay.
SOLBY: That’s what I’m working on. Finding out. You see that building down there toward the sea?
SOLBY: The derelict church?
POOL: Not a church. Not derelict. It’s an old priory, and it’s my studio. I’ll take you.
(TRANSCRIPTION NOTE: metal chains/lock and a huge heavy door)
SOLBY: In you go.
POOL: [VOICEOVER] He opened a concealed door leading into a tunnel, heading down some worn steps to a tunnel under the marshes, toward the old priory. Someone, a long time ago, must’ve built it, big gray stone by big gray stone.
(TRANSCRIPTION NOTE: Tunnel echos and footsteps)
SOLBY: These tunnels are quite common. Monks from the priory used them to get to the big house secretly. Probably Catholic priest shenanigans in the 16th century too. Got to love religion, haven’t you.
POOL: Did the priests put up these lights?
SOLBY: Nah. That was me. LED battery ones from the Middle of Lidl.
POOL: Did you make these markings in the stones too?
SOLBY: That was the hobbits.
POOL: [VOICEOVER] That was a lie. Hobbits can’t reach that high.
(TRANSCRIPTION NOTE: creaky old church door opening)
POOL: [VOICEOVER] The tunnel went on for about a mile, and then we branched off up some steps and into the priory.
POOL: (TRANSCRIPTION NOTE: ENTERING THE PRIORY) Where does the other bit of tunnel go?
SOLBY: No idea, mate. Anyway, look at this. Good, innit?
POOL: [VOICEOVER] From the house, the Priory had looked derelict, but inside, it was anything but. It was a high-ceilinged Gothic church nave, filled with the weird, exotic instruments Solby loves: a retro Trident ‘A’ mixing desk, quarter-inch tape loops stretched across the room, a forest of old microphones—Neumans, AKGs—a big, clunky Studer A800 multitrack tape recorder. At the far end, two massive Sanyo floor-standing speakers. All classic equipment. What can I say? I’m an audio geek.
(TRANSCRIPTION NOTE: in the priory)
POOL: Wow. All analogue?
SOLBY: Not even analogue, mate. Not even.
POOL: Fuck.
SOLBY: Oh yeah, that.
POOL: [VOICEOVER] ‘That’ was a pentagram inlaid on the floor of the old priory, bathed in moonlight, at the exact spot where you’d get perfect stereo image from the monolithic speakers.
SOLBY: You want to hear it then?
POOL: Your new music?
SOLBY: No, mate. My old music. My very, very old music. So old that nobody’s ever heard it before. Stand in the pentagram, shut up, and I’ll put it on.
POOL: [VOICEOVER] And he played it for me. I can’t play it for you here for obvious reasons. I hate to be a pricktease, but you’ll hear it when it comes out. I haven’t always been Solby’s biggest fan, but I’ll say this: It was like nothing else I’ve ever heard—inhuman and yet the most human thing I’ve ever heard, completely alien but completely familiar, that same feeling you get staring at the sea, sating some preternatural satisfaction in your soul. And no, we hadn’t been smoking anything. Gerry Solby has found some way of bringing music back from the past. I admit it. I’m a believer.
(Pause, shift in tone) That’s it for this edition anyway—like and subscribe and all those things wherever you….
(TRANSCRIPTION NOTE: podcast Fades out)
POOL: [VOICEOVER] And that was the podcast interview I posted, and got roasted for—the phrase “two woo-woo old stoners” stung particularly. But I stand by what I said. It was like listening to music you’ve grown up with and can’t imagine not existing, like early Beatles, or Dylan, or Dark Side Of The Moon.
And now he’s gone, and the tape’s gone, and only me and Gerry Solby will ever have heard it—genuine sixteenth-century music. I know it’s that, for sure.
How do I know that? Because of the part of the recording I didn’t play then and will play now.
Just brace yourself, like I said.
(TRANSCRIPTION NOTE: Recording starts, back in the priory. The tunnel door slams)
POOL: [VOICEOVER] A monk came surging out of the tunnel door, screaming out of his decomposing face.
STENTORIAN VOICE: Thou wert to take my notes, learn them well, and perform them only unto thyself. It was a secret trust, a promise that those divine harmonies should survive the desolation and misery of the puritan prohibitions and heard by none save the worthy! But thy modern pride, thy inflated importance could not abide in humility! Thy greedy ear yearned for the applause of the rabble, and thy sordid fame was more precious to thee than the terpsichorean purity!
POOL: [VOICEOVER] To be honest, I nearly laughed. I thought it was some kind of revenge stunt aimed at me. Then I saw Solby was genuinely terrified. I thought he was going to have heart attack.
The monk pointed at him and raised his hand, and Solby was lifted up off his feet and hurled down into the tunnel.
(TRANSCRIPTION NOTE: ON THE RECORDING: whooshing sound, thumps like a body hitting stone, and screams of pain. The door slams again, muffling more screams.)
POOL: [VOICEOVER] It was horrible, and I’m not going to play it all, but it lasted about twenty minutes. I swear I heard some dog growling in there, too. Then the door opened, and Solby stood there, bloodied face, shirt ripped, eyes wide and not taking in much. I grabbed him and pulled him into the studio, onto one of the old church pews.
(TRANSCRIPTION NOTE: The door slams closed.)
POOL: Gerry. Gerry, you okay?
(TRANSCRIPTION NOTE: we hear Solby’s ragged breath.)
POOL: [VOICEOVER] He was an empty husk. The quickest way to safety was back up the tunnel to the house. Fuck knows what was down there, but I had to try. But when I opened the door—not my favorite moment of the evening—the brickwork had fallen in, blocking it. Whatever had been down there didn’t want us following them. We’d haveto trudge all the way back across the marsh, in the dark.
And that’s what we did, in silence. Gerry was still in too much shock to say anything, just slouching silently in that big 1980s greatcoat in the moonlight and mist, through the reeds.The rock star seemed to have been left behind in the tunnel.
When we got back to the house, Solby disappeared into his library without a word. He stayed there for hours, and in the end I had to leave. I had a train back to catch back to London, and the interview to edit.
I don’t know how Gerry died last week. I can make the obvious inference: somehow he’d used that tunnel, that priest, to get sounds from the actual 16th century by promising he’d never reveal them to anyone else. But his rock star ego just couldn’t take it, and he paid the price for playing that recording to me. But I’d sound mad but on brand for RockSnark.
There’s one more weird thing: the incredible, ageless music was roaring through his massive speakers when the monk appeared. Except, as you just heard on that tape, it’s gone now.
I didn’t remove it, I promise. I just know that now I will always be the only living person to have heard sixteenth-century music.
For that, I will always honor Gerry Solby.
(TRANSCRIPTION NOTE: END)
About the Author
Matthew Hurst is a British writer based in Canada. His work has been produced by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Ukrainian television. A career journalist and copywriter, his debut short story is forthcoming on the Kaidankai podcast. Find him on Bluesky and Substack at Stubsack, or sign up for his free newsletter at fupperynewsletter.substack.com.