Magical Morgan is still a No.1 hit

Content at 60, but Morgan will be rockin’ on for a few years yet

MARTYN MEETS...Oldham entertainer Morgan Fletcher at 60
THERE really ought to have been a sign in the window: “Quiet please — hell-raiser in repose.”

Morgan Fletcher was at home, in his comfy armchair with a cup of coffee in one hand and his life story in the other.

We chatted the day before his 60th birthday — yep, that’s all he is — in the lounge of his home in Greenfield, overlooking Churchill Playing Fields.

It was a beautifully serene Saddleworth day — a reflection perhaps of Morgan’s career which, he dreamily tells me, is winding down.

Yeah, right — I saw him a couple of weeks back at the Farrars, when he filled the Grasscroft pub for the first anniversary of the reopening by owners Anthony Kinsey and Michelle Wyllie of Phil Whiteman’s once iconic venue.

It was standing room only... outside.

The man holding centre stage was far from winding down. As ever, he had the audience in his thrall, eating out of his hands, singing along as if the world was going to end tomorrow. Which it wasn’t, any more than Morgan’s life was going to change much when, 24 hours on from our cosy chat, he passed the magical birthday mark with a party for family and friends.

They say 60 is the new 40 . . . it had better be for lots of us.

“Loads of family and friends and a few beers . . . I had a fantastic 40th at the Sheddings Social Club and fabulous 50th at the Grotton Hotel so this one will be a quiet night in.”

Anyone who has ever seen one of Morgan’s raucous concerts, when he climbs the curtains, light fittings, bar tops, furniture, anything that is within reach basically, and belts out chart hits, at times displaying his hod-carrier’s torso with a gusto that shatters the peace for streets around will not believe a “quiet night in” is remotely possible for the rock star of Oldham. But he convinced me, as he made a second cup of coffee, that maybe, just maybe, Morgan is serious when he talks about riding his guitar into the sunset of Tenerife in five short years.

The amiable rocker, who has delighted several generations of music lovers for more than 40 years, will be collecting his pension in 2016 and though he concedes he will never hang up his guitar, he reckons he’ll “slow down a bit.”

Although he has plans to move to Tenerife, where he has an apartment, he will never leave Oldham permanently.

“I shall keep a place here in Greenfield, definitely,” he says with a certainty that brooks no argument.

He spoke wistfully, contemplating a life that has brought two marriages and four daughters, a myriad of memories and a string of pubs and clubs that are no more.

He laughs: “They haven’t closed because of me . . . at least I don’t think so.

“It’s just life. Pubs and cubs are closing all over the place, work is drying up.

“I need to work three or four nights a week to make a living and the days are gone when I could pick and choose where I played a gig.

“I have been to Aberdeen and Stoke — it’s a long way from the days when I said I wouldn’t take the gig if I couldn’t see the place from my bedroom window.

“Thursdays have gone desperately quiet, virtually gone, and I wonder where will all the kids go to learn their craft?”

He spoke of limping towards retirement with a sadness that illustrated how much he has enjoyed his life, singing his way through a series of emotional life traumas.

But the exuberance that is his alter ego, his on-stage persona, soon resurfaces as we chart his life story from his days as a schoolboy in Lees and being sent by his parents to Saddleworth School while all his pals crossed the road to catch buses to Breeze Hill and Grange.

“I wasn’t happy at the time but it turned out really well for me,” he recalls, for it was at Saddleworth he discovered a love of gardening through rural studies.

At 15 he left school and took a job with Lees Urban District Council as a trainee gardener — “but I planted more bodies than flowers — they had me digging graves most of the time.”

His musical career was a distant dream at this point when he was earning £10 a week before stoppages.

He discovered a love of music when he first heard Dusty Springfield’s “I Just Don’t Know What to do With Myself” and was captivated, hooked.

“It was the first record I ever bought — that and, you won’t believe this but it’s true, Tschaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. I was spellbound.”

After three years digging graves, and also working in the demolition industry, he upped sticks and took the big adventure — a summer in Newquay.

“I was living in a tent and ran out of money before the seasonal jobs started, so I did some busking using a chip tray to collect a few bob. The tray was weighted down with a rock to stop it blowing away.

“A bloke came by, heard me, offered me a gig in his pub for a pie and two pints of scrumpy. I was on my way.”

And so began a life of music on the road.

Working in the Gay Gannet chippy by day and the Cornwall pubs at night — Morgan’s career was launched.

He began hosting jam sessions for the shedloads of guitar-playing lads who were trekking to Cornwall’s beaches. He enjoyed this way of life for two years.

Then along came his first family and they returned home. Morgan worked the Ski Lodge in Greenfield for £4 and remembers introducing a young lad from Rochdale who went on to become one of the country’s biggest stars — Mike Harding. He was hod-carrying now on building sites to supplement the family income but took to singing Neil Diamond-style songs, and wearing a bow tie, as he reinvented himself as a singer to further his career. “It was much better money,” he grinned.

He joined a band, the Magic Fossils. They had regular gigs and things were going well but Morgan was hit by a metaphorical bolt of musical lighting — punk rock.

“I became an old man overnight,” he said.

Another reincarnation was required and he joined his drummer-pal Jimmy Semple to form the Morgan James duo.

They toured Germany, singing at British and US airbases along the Rhine.

Domestic issues were never far from Morgan’s consciousness and so he returned to this country and eventually formed the band which defines his career and will be his legacy — Morgan’s Every Which Way.

Younger brother Craig — who later played with Barclay James Harvest — was on bass guitar, Alan Cunningham on drums, Vinny Burns played lead guitar and Morgan was the frontman.

Many of us will remember with glee and relish his residency at The Sheddings, the former rugby league social club — great days, he told with a hint of sadness.

A family holiday in Tenerife followed, he sang in a karaoke bar and was a offered a job on the spot.

He and Adelle stayed two years and return as often as they can.

He has regular bookings in the Manhattan and Churchill’s and is content.

So where, I asked, do all the musical genes come from?

His father Arnold worked as a labourer in the mills and was a pub singer in the evenings, supplementing the family income, but Morgan never saw himself following in his footsteps until “my Uncle Donald gave me an acoustic guitar,” he said.

“He was left-handed, like me, and I would sit in my bedroom trying to play while mum and dad and the rest of the family were watching ‘Sunday Night at the London Palladium’ downstairs.

“My dad used to turn to my mum and say I would never be a musician as long as I had a hole in my ear, if you know what I mean.

“He was probably right for I’m only a strummer really, even now, after all these years.”

Maybe, but what a strummer... what an entertainer.

And still only 60. As long as there’s life in Morgan and life in pubs, Oldham will continue to rock to its very own rock star.