Ric
Ric’s best friend Lee died in December 2019.
He recorded an album inspired by their friendship and his grief.
“Losing a contemporary makes you question your mortality. This made me realise there’s not a lot of time.
Me and Lee were best friends since we were five; we went through all of school, he was best man at my wedding, I knew him my whole life and one of the things that struck me in my response to grief was that without him parts of me just didn’t exist anymore.
I watched Back to the Future with my kids and there’s that bit where Marty’s back in 1955 and he’s got that picture of him and his siblings and because he is failing to get his mum and dad together, they start disappearing in the photograph.
For me that was the perfect metaphor. I was looking at old photographs of myself with Lee and it felt like parts of me were just disappearing.
That became the whole backdrop of the first song. It’s called Disappearing (This Is Heavy) because that’s what Marty McFly says all the way through the film ‘this is heavy’. The song references it clearly and specifically.
I’m not afraid to use the term pop music – what I make is pop music.
My music is always a response to something but those responses have got further away from what people assume pop music is about. When I was 25 I was writing ‘why don’t nice girls like me?’ but obviously life has got more complicated so the subject matter had become more leftfield; getting older, parenting, death.
There’s a part of me that thinks I shouldn’t be complaining about anything. So I think finding the function of it legitimises me speaking about it in a way that I don’t think I would otherwise.
“Many times I’ve been writing and said a thing and I didn’t realise I felt that way.”
I’m quite an emotional human being - I don’t think it's a thing that men are taught to be, but for me if I can contain that within a process like ‘today between 10am and 3pm I’m going to write and just allow it to take over me just absolutely breathe it in’ when I do that, I feel great. I feel loads better because I’ve given it worth, I’ve given it use, I’ve organised it in my head.
The weight of friendship has increased in most of our societies and yet this is still a weird area of terminology and specifically at this time for me, selfishly, it’s a really odd thing to have to deal with.
A few people went ‘oh yeah it’s really difficult when - and they even put it in quote marks – when it’s ‘just a mate’ because people don’t know how to respond.
It feels shit. It’s rough.
I know my feelings are valid. Turning them into music is my response, that’s how I respond to things.
Because I had known Lee for so long, lots of my memories are held by him and one of my initial responses was ‘oh. Now I have to hold them on my own’.
Actually, the better response is ‘now I get to hold those thoughts on my own’.”
You can listen to Ric’s music here.
Written by Faye Dawson