In November 2021, over four dazzlingly bright, bitterly cold autumn days, a seven foot high mural was created by Brighton street artist, FEK, to announce the forthcoming comic book series, Trombone Man: Ska's Fallen Genius. Here's the story of how it came about.
By Adam Reeves, September 2024.
First, check out the time lapse film of its creation:
(Special thanks to FEK for creating the mural, Adrian 'Ujuchin' Storey for editing the film, and Lucas Petter & Grippa Laybourne for the music).
Striding along Hove seafront with my partner Peta, one fine spring morning in 2021, a small dog playing by the shoreline caught her attention. She stepped down onto the pebble beach to ask the owner what breed mix it was, while I waited on the promenade. Their conversation went on for longer than a simple chat and after about half an hour I went over to join them. Peta was engaged deep in conversation with an intense-looking young man with piercing blue-grey eyes. They'd long moved on from dog breeds and were now deep into some heavy duty philosophy.... God, religion, the usual stuff. As the conversation drew to a natural conclusion, he causally mentioned that he was a graffiti artist and that he'd recently spray-painted a mural of Bob Marley at Black Rock, the run down area down by Brighton Marina where once an open air swimming pool stood. I remembered the monochrome painting, which seemed to jump right off the wall at you.
I told him about my plans for a comic book about Don Drummond and asked if he'd be interested in doing a piece of street art to publicise the imminent launch of the project. I didn't need to explain who Don Drummond was, he knew of him and was familiar the music of the Skatalites. It turned out his Dad was a comics illustrator, as well as a collector of old reggae and ska records. He liked the idea of doing something together and we made some kind of a pact right there to make it happen. Graffiti artists prefer to remain in the shadows. For convenience sake, I'll refer to FEK by his graffiti name for the rest of this piece We parted company and I walked off, buzzing with excitement about what had just transpired. I checked out FEK's Instagram page and was blown away by the sheer diversity and ambitiousness of his work. Here's a selection - click on the right image to scroll through:
Later that spring I met up with FEK in central Brighton to discuss a possible location. He made it clear to me that our mural would need to be a wall with permission. Brighton and Hove council had been cracking down on street artists, resulting in many getting hefty fines. Not that it seemed to have curtailed the sheer amount of spray painted art around the place. Brighton is renowned for its street art, with a couple of books dedicated to it. I set of with FEK on a fascinating meander through the back alleys of Brighton's North Laine area, my own personal guided tour of the street art underworld. He seemed to know who was behind every creation and held an opinion on each one. He pointed out their flaws and failings as well as masterful strokes of technical and artistic wizardry that I would have been otherwise oblivious to. I learned about the etiquette of the street art world. You have to earn respect in the scene by adhering to certain codes of conduct and those that don't soon get a bad name. For example, you don't cover a new piece of of work. 'Tagging' (writing your graffiti name) on other's work is a no-no, although plenty do it. One piece he showed me was by a feared London gang. Paint over their work and you're asking for trouble, apparently.
At the end of a back alley, on a street corner, we stopped at a freshly painted piece that FEK had completed a couple of days previously. It was of Sebastian Eubanks, son of local boxing legend Chris Eubanks. Sebastian had died earlier in the week, aged just 29, while watching a sunset in the sea off the coast of Dubai. He had a previously undetected heart condition and had suffered a massive heart attack. He had been due to become a father in a few weeks. At the foot of the painting were some scattered sunflowers and a few burning candles. A young man of about 18 was gazing at it in silence. 'Did you know him?' asked FEK. 'He was my cousin,' the man replied. 'Did you do this?'. FEK nodded. 'Thank you,' the young man said. 'On behalf of my family, thank you.' We stood for a few moments in silence and left him in peace. It was a powerful moment.
We looked at more wall spaces and FEK explained why this or that one wouldn't be possible.
He remembered a wall alongside Richer Sounds hi-fi store on the corner of the busy London Road, a seedy shopping area that has been undergoing rapid rejuvenation, for better of for worse. There was a gaudy purple painting of T-Rex singer Marc Bolan on the wall as well as some fairly scrappy art. The store manager was happy for us cover the wall but not the Bolan image. That wouldn't work. We needed the whole space. FEK tracked down the artist and cut some kind of a deal with him, offering some wall space in exchange for forfeiting his Marc Bolan. Now I do love a bit of T-Rex but I thought the image was second rate and wasn't sad to see it go.
Spray paints were purchased and work began on a bitterly cold Wednesday morning. I filmed the entire thing on time lapse, using a Panasonic Lumix FZ-70 point-and-shoot compact camera, grabbing a shot every 30 seconds. The painting was going to be in three sections, a portrait of Don Drummond, a portrait of his lover Margarita Mahfood, and a recreation of the main project motif by Trombone Man comic illustrator Costantinos Pissourios. FEK set about rapidly covering the first section of the wall to be worked on with an alphabetical (A-Z) and numerical (0-9) grid, which you can see him doing in the video. The purpose of this is to act as an accurate, to-scale guideline. He photographs the grid, then creates a composite transparent image overlaying the grid with the image he will be copying onto that part of the wall. This provides an exact map of the wall scaled right down to the size of his phone screen, detailing what needs go where.
Those four days were memorable for several reasons. I'd always just passed through the London road area, and its not until you really spend time there that it becomes apparent just how many drug-crazed, mentally unstable people there are around the place. And FEK seemed to know them all on first name terms. We were right by a rehab clinic with a constant thoroughfare of junkies, crackheads and the inevitable dealers passing by. Word had obviously got out, because by day two loads of street artists started turning up to observe and an assortment of weird and wonderful characters joined in the fun. A doctor showed up who also happened to be a surrealist painter. He showed us his work and it was like that of a great master. He told us that he came from a well known South African banking family and that his ancestors had bought up dozens of works by a world famous Italian painter (I can't remember which one, but I'd definitely heard of them). The collection was worth gazillions, he said, but due to a long running family feud they were all locked away in a vault and would most likely never be exhibited again and would remain there indefinitely.
A fight broke out between a junky and a dealer and to my amazement, FEK put down his cans and waded right in to calm things down between them, and clearly knew one or both of them. He successfully diffused the situation and was giving the junky character a big hug while seeing off the dealer. You can remain one step removed from Brighton street life, until you hang out with someone like FEK for four days on one of the sketchiest neighbourhoods in town.
At the end of day four the final mural was professionally photographed by a local photographer, Diensen Pamben, who happened to pass by and introduce himself, so I enlisted his help. He created a seamless panoramic image, stitching several shots together. One slight problem with the image though was that there was a large blank sign in the top right hand corner. Richer Sounds was in the middle of a makeover and would be getting a new sign the following week. So we had to put up with an unsightly blank space. The image at the top of this page was taken a week or so later with the new sign, Diensen's one below shows how it looked on the day.
I was really thrilled with the end result. Its presence would start generating intrigue and conversations on social media. Prints could be made available as part of the rewards packages on our Kickstarter campaign. The short time-lapse film at the top of this page would serve as a perfect announcement to the world as to what was being planned. But most of all, it was a statement of intent, in the lead up to going into production, a symbol of commitment to realising my original vision of adapting Heather Augustyn's biography of Don Drummond into comic book form. It even got a feature in Brighton's local rag, The Argus. The ensuing comments at the foot of the article are worth a read - lots of grumpy members of the public disapproving of street art.
The mural remained immaculate and untouched for eighteen months. Every so often I would pass by and check up on it and be amazed that it was still there. Several members of the current Skatalites touring band went down to check it out when they did a show in Brighton. Eventually I heard that it had been covered over with another Jamaican-themed painting, a stunning tribute to Rita Marley done in a not dissimilar style, mixing monochrome and colour. I was delighted for ours to be sacrificed for something worthy, knowing that maybe we had started a tradition on that corner that with Richer Sounds' blessing could continue in the same vein for years to come. One day we might do another one, but for now I'm just happy with the memory of what we created and proud to have brought a little bit of ska history to the streets of Brighton.
Prints of the Trombone Man street art available to purchase. Please message Adam directly through the contact page.
Above: Adam and Fek, just after finishing the mural. Below: The replacement.
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