… is how Idles’ frontman Joe Talbot described Bristol’s most-famous concert-goer Big Jeff at Glastonbury this year as he recovered from serious injuries sustained in a house fire. One month before the accident, Simon Horsford sat down with Jeff to delve into his love of music and art and discuss his extraordinary outlook on life. To this day, it is abundantly clear that the local legend’s strength and positivity remains unwavering in his fight.
In June of this year, the Bristol artist and famed gig-goer Jeffrey Johns, aka Big Jeff, was seriously injured in a house fire. He remains in Southmead Hospital and is making a slow recovery. In August, Big Jeff’s family and art manager Lee Dodds released details of the fire: “On 6 June, Jeff went to see Amyl and the Sniffers at the O2 Academy Bristol. As usual, after the gig he returned home to cook himself something to eat. While he was cooking a simple meal, the bottom of his shirt caught alight on the gas hob. This resulted in a flash fire as the flames quickly spread on his clothing. Jeff ran to his bathroom to get under the shower to cool himself. The fire team who rescued Jeff did an incredible job and we are so grateful to them and to the neighbours who called them. It most certainly saved Jeff’s life. As a result, he is able to tell his story, to try to protect others. We want to reiterate that Jeff does not drink alcohol or take drugs, so this could happen to anyone at any time.”
In September, Johns tweeted: “Three months ago I was in a coma struggling with 49 per cent burns… I seem to be the human equivalent of a black cat dancing between nine lives like a balancing act.”
Johns has received a huge outpouring of support, including from bands such as Idles and Self Esteem – Joe Talbot, the lead singer of the former, said at Glastonbury, “I just wanna dedicate this next song to our brother and our friend, Big Jeff.” Before performing A Hymn, he added: “He’s everything that we wish we represent, he’s everything that is music fandom and he’s everything that is love.”
Speaking more recently, Johns said: “I’m really looking forward to getting back to life – gigs, football matches and being a sociable human being. I feel unbelievably lucky to have had the support I’ve received and to overcome the odds to survive.” This interview took place a month before his accident…
The 6ft 3ins Johns is something of a cult figure in Bristol. The legendary gig-goer (his wrist displays numerous festival entry bands) and champion of the indie music scene is also an artist, occasional DJ and short film-maker. He is such a familiar face at gigs that the Charlatans singer Tim Burgess once said: “A gig in Bristol without Big Jeff doesn’t count.” On cue, a sound engineer walks past us at a café in Castle Park and greets him like an old friend.
More pertinently Johns’ love of music – and his enthusiasm for painting – reflect a way of dealing with his mental health struggles and, coincidently, we are meeting during Mental Health Awareness Week. “Going to live music is like my safe zone,” says Johns, who has Asperger’s and Dyspraxia and suffers from anxiety issues. “I knew going to gigs was something where I could interact with people. I find myself flourishing there because the way I describe it, it’s like structured socialising. You know that there is a clear definition point: a beginning, a middle and an end.
“The Asperger’s probably did manifest itself when I was a kid and I did have special needs help at school and really struggled to connect with people,” he adds, “but music and art helped with my self-expression and it’s a form of therapy. Sometimes if I am feeling really down, I use creativity as a way of talking about it.”
Johns, who is 40, also suffered from a “double whammy” of setbacks when he was 20 – a botched appendix operation, which left him in a coma for three days, and a close family friend having an aneurysm. “I kind of invented a split personality to deal with all the emotions – something which I basically turned into an industrial hip hop solo project called Manic F and each performance would be cathartic. He still pops up occasionally and I will always have memories and flashbacks of that time. I used to get a lot of muscle memory too [of that time] and occasionally get it now.” Having access to music in Bristol was also a huge help, he recalls.
I feel unbelievably lucky to have had the support I’ve received and to overcome the odds to survive
Johns grew up in Milton Keynes “in a quite a hippie community” and then rural Gloucestershire – his mum, a chiropractor, was “quite arty” and also a caller in a ceilidh band, while his dad was a structural engineer. He gravitated to Bristol because of the music scene, arriving in the city in 2002 – attracted a few years before by the now defunct Ashton Court Festival, “at the time it was the biggest free-entry festival in Europe and it provided a huge stage for local acts who would try and upstage the national headliner,” he laughs.
Although Johns was surrounded by creative people as a child, it’s only comparatively recently that art has become more central to his life and given him another outlet with which to deal with difficult emotions. He began with an online collection on his website last year followed by small displays at the Bristol Beacon and The Island. The bold, colourful and highly personal paintings are also inspired by his love of music with some depicting his favourite artists. He’s previously stated that his art is also about expressing a feeling that sometimes he doesn’t fit into this world.
“I went through a period when I was drawing at gigs whereas now what I tend to do is whip out my phone and take a quick photo. I go through creative phases and probably I am in an in-between phase now. I’m someone who likes to give different forms of art a go. There is an abstract element to some of it, I take images of artists and musicians I like and change the background and create like a dreamy space so I like having that playfulness and I also try and give myself a challenge.”
Above image credit: Simon Holliday
Johns is also prone to synesthesia, a neurological condition in which the stimulation of one sense leads to involuntary experiences of a second one. In Johns’ case, he says he gets it “through light, sometimes blotchy patterns will occur, occasionally with strobe lights. I remember car journeys as a kid as the sun came through the window and then being left with a multicoloured fuzzy red or yellow greenish shape.” The condition can also impact on his art.
With one exhibition called Welcome to my World and paintings entitled Are You Ok? and Fear of Social Expectations, Johns is clearly putting a marker down about his emotions, one that resonates. “It’s been really flattering. I’ve had people come up and engage with me and I find it quite moving and it’s amazing how you create something and whether you think it’s good to not, it can connect with people and be rewarding.”
I sense a similar approach in Johns’ short film making, collaborating with Biggerhouse Film, who specialise in making films with people with special needs and learning difficulties.
Ultimately, though, it is music to which we return and Johns is a mine of information and not only about Bristol-based bands such as Idles – he’s known Joe Talbot since the lead singer was a student and saw their second ever gig “what shambolic mess they were,” he jokes. For Johns, knowing about bands partly comes, he says, from his “fear of missing out – I was at Coach Party [an indie band from the Isle of Wight) at the Louisiana and realised I’d seen them before they were Coach Party – and the whole thing with FOMO is that sometimes you’ll see people way before they become famous like Wet Leg as I knew Rhian [Teasdale] when she lived in Bristol years ago.”
What about fantasy gigs? “I’d love to have seen Prince if I could take a time machine back to the late 80s early 90s. Also Funkadelic back in the day, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin and Brian Wilson in his pomp, and Miles Davis through to some of the early punk stuff.”
It’s reasons such as these and Johns’ curated all-day music event at the Arnolfini gallery in 2017 that he was asked to do a DJ set at the Green Man Festival that year “in exchange for a free ticket!”
Elsewhere he’s been involved in the annual independent music week, which celebrates small venues around the country. Favourites include Bristol’s Louisiana “there’s an emotional attachment there because of getting to know the family that runs it.’ He rates Clwb ifor Bach in Cardiff and the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire “which is like a really beautiful old working men’s club”. As for festivals, he loves the Green Man in the Brecon Beacons, Standon Calling in Hertfordshire and Primavera Sound in Barcelona “for the music nerd in me because it covers every musical genre under the sun from Miley Cyrus to Napalm Death and everything else in-between.”
Johns would normally rack up around 300 gigs a year “with two weeks off around Christmas for family time.” But it’s about more than just gig-going. “It’s an incentive to leave my flat to go to a show, especially if I’m struggling and it’s cold and miserable. It’s like a motivation.”
Music and art may be the coping mechanism through which Big Jeff handles everyday life but his outward positivity inevitably looms large. As we go our separate ways, he says with a grin: “I’m lucky to have led the life I have”.
There will always be a mosh pit somewhere with his name on it.
Support Big Jeff
Big Jeff has launched a fire safety awareness campaign with Avon Fire & Rescue. Adopting the life-saving phrase of ‘stop, drop and roll’, Johns is working with the Blue Watch team at Temple Fire Station to raise awareness of fire safety in the home and has begun a campaign on Instagram. Follow Big Jeff at @bigjeffjohnsart and sign up to his mailing list via his website bigjeffjohnsart.com, where you can also buy a print.
As Big Jeff continues his treatment at Southmead Hospital, he has been asked by the Fresh Arts programme – managed by North Bristol NHS Trust – to brighten up the main entrance by drawing one of his legendary faces on a window. The programme exists to enhance patient, visitor and staff experience, create distraction, provoke thought and improve health and wellbeing. The programme engages more than 12 professional artists and 50 musicians and supports in excess of 50 volunteer pianists, all of whom offer opportunities to enjoy performances and productions as well as provide the benefits of engaging with music, dance, creative writing, visual arts and crafts.
Jeff has now set up a fundraising page to “give something back to the hospital” as he continues to regain his creativity. If you can, donate at: southmeadhospitalcharity.enthuse.com/pf/bigjeffjohnsart
Featured image credit: Ania Shrimpton
