The story of Newport music legend Jon Langford

Jon Langford was born at the Lydia Beynon Nursing home the same week the Sputnik went up, so it says Caerleon on his birth certificate making him suitably ancient and space age.

He was one of the first kids to be christened at St Martin’s-in-the-Gaer on the award-winning Gaer housing estate and spent his childhood running round on the old Iron Age fort.

His dad, Denis Langford, was firmly from Newport and never lived more than half a mile from the Handpost pub. He was an accountant who worked with the Newport Chamber of Trade and the Butcher’s Association, so the fridge was always full at Christmas.

Jon’s mum, Kit, was from a large working class family from up the Eastern Gwent valleys.

Jon Langford's parents Denis and Kit

Her parents lived on Florence Place, opposite the Cambrian Arms in Croesyceiliog, and he has powerful early memories of his grandmother Lenta and her friend Alice, the Cambrian’s landlady, cleaning the pub in the morning and wandering in the bluebell woods where Arthur Machen claimed you could see into the pit of hell.

On Saturday mornings Denis would take his two boys - David and Jonathan - down to the docks to look at the merchant ships and Jon would draw the flags. He spent most of his childhood drawing.

In 1969 he left the Gaer primary school and went to Newport High and ended up in Bettws in the chilly brutalist new comprehensive school which slowly sank into the marshes.

As a teenager Jon was drawn to the folk club and jazz club in Pill and, after renouncing long muddy weekends of school rugby and club football, he got interested in music and played some early gigs at dockside night spots like the Galaxy and the Sub Aqua Club.

On the night of the 1975 earthquake Jon was wandering through Pill as people poured out of the pubs and clubs thinking a bomb had gone off.

Round this time Jon and his mates became rabid Man fans, following the Welsh space rock band around the clubs of South Wales and the West country. One of Jon’s proudest moments was inviting the band to TJ’s in 1999 and taking them for a drink at the Ivy Bush.

Relocating to Leeds for Art School in 1976, Jon met Andy Corrigan and Mark White, who would be the singers in The Mekons on the first day he arrived.

The Mekons

Driving up in his dad’s car with high school pal Piers Storey, they read in the Sunday papers scandalous exposes of the filth and fury of punk rock.

Within the next year there were seismic changes in British culture and Jon lost his Bay City Rollers feather cut and bought some straight jeans.

The Mekons formed as a band “where nobody could play” and stumbled blindly into a 45-year “career” on the fringes of the music industry.

Championed by John Peel and mates with the Gang of Four, Buzzcocks and Scritti Politti, they ditched the paint brushes and went on the road playing variations on the theme of punk rock for about 15 years, in and out of favour with the press and public, making records for two major labels Virgin and A&M.

During this time Jon also formed the Three Johns in Leeds and began working as an independent record producer working with such bands as Eton Crop, Marc Riley and the Creepers, Membranes, The Ex, and Gaye Bykers on Acid.

Ties to Newport were always very strong - one of Jon’s first production jobs was Newport legends Ralph and the Ponytails’ debut single James Bond.

Bettws boy Mike Mulcahy, aka Ralph, ended up in college in Leeds and Jon and he became scruffy but uneasy flat-mates on a few occasions.

During the 80s and 90s Jon collaborated with Croesyceiliog boy and local legend Carlton B Morgan to make the Great Pop Things cartoon strip for the NME and various other papers.

Through Carlton Jon met the 60 Foot Dolls and produced their career defining single Pig Valentine.

In 1988 Jon and his friend Marc Riley, formerly of the Fall, produced an album of Johnny Cash covers by various punk rock chums to raise money for the Terrence Higgins Trust, the groundbreaking Aids charity.

They met up with Cash at the Manchester Apollo Theatre and he got right behind the project.

A visit backstage with Cash at the Newport Centre in 1990 saw the Man in Black kiss Jon’s mum Kit full on the lips. “After that she never gave me a hard time about anything,” said Jon.

Jon Langford with Johnny Cash and Marc Riley

In the 80s The Mekons became fascinated with American roots music and started touring the States every year, which culminated in Jon moving to Chicago in 1992.

Settled in Chicago, Jon somehow revived his artistic career and has exhibited his unique artwork across the planet and continued to play music with The Mekons, Waco Brothers and various solo projects.

In 2015 Jon was artist in residence at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee, and provided artwork for its record-breaking exhibition Dylan, Cash and the Nashville Cats.

Jon continues to tour with The Mekons and Waco Brothers, exhibit paintings and maintain strong connections with Newport.

Jon Langford

He still has a full band he can call upon in Newport called the Men of Gwent featuring cousin Mark Price, old chum Julian Hayman, Pretty Thing Barkley McKay, Welsh story teller and dancer Guto Dafis and Matt Gray and Erik Stams, of the Darling Buds. He plays regularly at Le Pub, where he even has a small shelf named after him.

Most recently he illustrated his Caerleon homeboy Arthur Machen’s Chronicle of Clemendy for local publishers the Three Imposters, which was marked with a major exhibit of work at Abergavenny Museum, which runs until the end of the year.

Jon’s band the Three Johns opened for The Clash in 1983 and around that time Jon met Joe Strummer while The Clash were busking outside his local pub the Faversham in Leeds.

Friends: Jon Langford and Joe Strummer

“It wasn’t til much later that I fully understood Joe’s Newport connection. When The Clash first started there were all sort of stories about this guy called Woody who used to live in Newport. If I had a quid for everyone who knew someone who’d taught him how to play guitar I’d be a wealthy man,” he said.

Jon and Joe finally got to talk about all this at the Metro Club in Chicago when Jon’s band Skull Orchard opened for The Clash frontman’s final Chicago gig with his band the Mescaleros.

Jon said: “We had a really nice chat and managed to put ourselves in the same room in the Port a couple of times - specifically the Melody Maker Rock&Pop competition at Allt-yr-yn Tech and, of course, the back room of the Murenger Pub.

“Joe told me about drinking after hours in the basement of the Silver Sands Restaurant on Commercial Road and how the West Indian guys got 12 inch vinyl straight off the boat and toasted over it, rapping along live into a microphone like U.Roy or Prince Farai. The fact that Joe was exposed to that in my hometown and the way he brought reggae and rock together with The Clash a few years later is just amazing to me.”

Jon, together with fellow Mekon Rico Bell will be playing at the Westgate Hotel, Newport, as part of the Joe Strummer Newport Years celebrations and will be joined by The Men of Gwent and supported by Calamity. A number of Joe Strummer songs will be covered during the evening.

The event is on Saturday, August 20. Doors open at 7pm. Tickets are available from Kriminal Records or www.tickettailor.com/events/thewestgatehotel/735417/