Greg Irons

Ashley Hutching’s biographers describe a famous early poster for the original Fairport line-up:

‘…the band are playing on the roof of a Gothic-style house, centred on a giant’s head. Judy Dyble is stage left. A ghoulish Thompson, Nicol and a serious Hutchings cluster around Lamble’s drum kit. The group’s name is outlined as if in smoke from the twin chimneys. Dyble, commenting on the imagery reminiscent of Mervyn Peake’s fictional creation of Gormenghast castle, recalled, “I wish I had one of those. A friend has got one and they put it in the attic because the kids were scared of it.”’

Greg Irons (1947-1984), the man responsible for this 'scary' art work, was an American poster artist, underground cartoonist, animator and tattoo artist. Together with his girlfriend (later to become his first wife), Evann Walker, he spent an eventful year in London in 1967-8, picking up work as and where he could. One job was drawing animation cells for the Beatles film Yellow Submarine. His hope of designing rock posters was frustrated when he found that Hapshash and The Coloured Coat had the market all but sewn up. No one seems quite sure at this distance how the Fairport commission came his way. Mark Irons, Greg’s surviving brother, told me that he thought the connection was made through Evann Walker:

‘I do know she had some clerical gig related to the music industry which must be how she hooked Greg up with the poster job.’

Joe Boyd’s memory concurs:

‘I remember Greg coming to my home/office in early 1968 where we discussed him doing a Fairport poster. He had SF references and yes, I think his girlfriend had met Tod Lloyd (Witchseason partner) or maybe one of the Fairport.’

But there’s an even more intriguing connection, of which I was totally unaware until I came across Patrick Rosenkranz’s excellent biography of Greg Irons. For some, if not most, of their London year Greg and Evann shared a flat with Sandy Denny. This was the tiny mews cottage in Stanhope Mews West she mentioned in at least one interview. The fourth flatmate was a ‘Canadian girl’, whose parents were leasing the property. I’ve since been in touch with the ‘Canadian girl’, and if the lady in question is kind enough to let me share her memories, I’ll publish them here. This is a period in Sandy’s life – between her leaving the Strawbs in 1967 and her joining Fairport in 1968 – which we know very little about. Also staying intermittently at the mews in this period was the mysterious ‘Tigger’, whom I referred to in an earlier post: we seem no nearer to identifying this big cat.

Sadly, Evann Walker died of cancer in 2006.

Thank you to all those people quoted for helping me to piece together (or start piecing together) this story.

References
- Brian Hinton and Geoff Wall, Ashley Hutchings: The Authorised Biography. The Guv’nor and the Rise of Folk-Rock, 1945-1973 (2002), p54
- Patrick Rosenkranz, You Call This Art?! A Greg Irons Retrospective (2006), p25
- Obituary of Evann Walker-Quezada, Point Reyes Light, 28 September 2006