Tributes / Jeff Merrifield (1943 – 2024): Writer, musician and arts administrator who was ‘forever open to the shock of the new’
JEFF Merrifield, who has died aged 81, was a writer, musician, arts administrator, archivist and publisher who played a key role in assorted underground scenes across more than half a century that a simple job description can’t come close to capturing.
Ultimately, Merrifield made things happen. This was the case whether as co-conspirator with theatrical maverick Ken Campbell on his assorted capers, sorting out Peter Gabriel’s WOMAD festival enough for it to survive a loss-making first year, or setting up an improvising orchestra in Shetland, where he settled in 2008.
To co-opt the title of his brick-sized biography of Campbell, published in 2011, Merrifield was a Seeker. His tireless pursuit of artistic enlightenment saw his free-thinking evangelism offset by a practical can-do sense of what was required to bring projects to fruition.
There were plays, books, and, in the last year of his life, his first album recorded under his own name. No wonder Campbell dubbed him ‘a field of merry’. Without Jeff Merrifield, the world would have been a much less interesting place.
Jeff Merrifield was born in Burnley, Lancashire, the youngest of two sons to Elsie, a machinist in a metal work factory, and Gordon, a chauffeur. When Merrifield was six, his father gave him a jazz record. Entranced by the sounds he heard, he sought out more of the same, both at record shops and at the local library.
By the time he was eight he was similarly attracted to the visual arts and theatre, and aged nine followed a travelling theatre, always making a beeline to be first on the bus. By the time he arrived at Burnley Grammar School, Merrifield was immersed in the work of Shakespeare, as well as contemporary playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller, John Osborne and Harold Pinter. Musically, Merrifield fell under the spell of American cornet player Buddy Bolden, a pioneering figure in New Orleans ragtime jazz in the early twentieth century. Bolden became a major influence on Merrifield’s own jazz adventures, particularly his Shetland-based combo, ZIPPER.
Merrifield honed his early skills as an impresario while still a schoolboy, helping out on theatre productions in Burnley, Chorley and beyond. It was while he was social secretary at Chorley College of Further Education in 1968 that Merrifield first encountered Campbell. As recounted in Seeker!
Merrifield overheard a row at Bolton Octagon Theatre, where Campbell was running the theatre’s outreach road show before being dropped after audiences seemed to prefer that to the theatre itself. Merrifield offered the college’s common room as a rehearsal space, and the Ken Campbell Road Show was born. As Merrifield wrote, ‘I guess we’ve been bessy mates ever since.’
Merrifield’s work with Campbell included publicity, developmental work, making props and occasional stage appearances. He was later involved in a revival of Campbell and writer Neil Oram’s 24-hour epic The Warp (1999-2003). As a kind of anarchic Boswell to Campbell’s Johnson, Merrifield became the official chronicler of Campbell’s Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool. This eventually resulted in the award of a Doctorate on Campbell’s work for the University of Liverpool.
In 1975, Merrifield founded Playback, a typically multifaceted umbrella company that acted as publisher, production house and vehicle for assorted artistic pursuits. His own plays included Tapestries: A Travesty (with Alan Lever), Lovers Come and Lovers Go But Friends Are Hard to Find and The Dark Haired Girl, based on the women in the life of science fiction writer Philip K Dick. As a radio presenter, Merrifield helmed Close Up, an arts magazine show on BBC Radio Blackburn (now Radio Lancashire).
In 1982, Merrifield attended the first WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance) festival, held in Somerset by Peter Gabriel to showcase non-western music. Despite an exemplary programme, the event made a loss. Merrifield called Gabriel out of the blue and offered him a venue in West Mersea Island, Essex, where he ran a youth camp. The second WOMAD was held there in 1985, with the festival running in various venues ever since.
Merrifield and Campbell reconvened in 1992 for Slatzer’s Bouquet, a piece devised by Merrifield that investigated the death of Marilyn Monroe. In the Herald prior to the show’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe run, Campbell related how Merrifield knocked on his door one day after the pair hadn’t seen each other for several years. “‘Hello” he said,’ Campbell recalled. ‘”I guess you’ve been very lazy about punk”’. Merrifield proceeded to take Campbell to gigs every Sunday, forever open to the shock of the new.
This punky spirit was carried over for Hit Me! – The Life and Rhymes of Ian Dury, which toured in 2010. For the play’s initial Edinburgh Festival Fringe run the play was known as ABFCAP, an unpublishable acronym taken from the opening line of Dury’s song Plaistow Patricia. In 1998, Merrifield joined hippy novelist Ken Kesey’s reconvened Merry Pranksters, riding the bus for a tour that included an Edinburgh happening as part of the Flux festival.
Back in Essex, Merrifield ran the Monkeys Jazz Club at the Brentwood-based Hermit Centre for almost a decade, with bookings including Ronnie Scott and Kevin Ayers. It was this spirit he brought with him to Shetland, where he moved to in 2008, ostensibly to devote more time to writing.
The quiet life didn’t last, however, and Merrifield’s insatiable appetite for events saw him set up The Bop Shop, the Lerwick home for what was then Shetland Jazz Club before it morphed into Jazz and World Sounds (JAWS) to bring a host of major artists to the islands. With Joy Duncan, Merrifield co-hosted the BBC Radio Shetland show Jazz and World Sounds. Merrifield also hosted Campbell’s daughter Daisy, who performed her show Pigspurt in Lerwick Town Hall. Latterly, Merrifield became involved with Damanhur, a spiritual community situated in northern Italy.
Aged 81, Merrifield recorded The Lovecraft Cthulhu, an album of free improvised music inspired by H P Lovecraft featuring a band that included saxophonist Raymond MacDonald, singer Christine Tobin, saxophonist Steve Kettley, pianist Brian Kellock and more on what has turned out to be Merrifield’s final field of merry.
He is survived by his wife, Dawn. The couple married twice. He is also survived by a daughter, Donna, and son, Christopher, to his first wife, Anne. His elder brother Gordon predeceased him.
Jeff Merrifield, writer, musician, arts administrator, archivist and publisher, born 9 March 1943 in Burnley; died 31 October 2024.
Neil Cooper
Fifteen years of Jeff at JAWS: ‘I was sucked in like a hoover!’
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