Richard Chapman – Northern Electric, Polly manager, friend

Paul and Richard at the Heritage Grill April 24, 2016

 I first met Paul back in 1984, I was DJing at Victoria’s campus radio station CFUV. No Fun was #1 on our charts at the time ...AND they were coming to town!

The show was beyond my expectations and Paul’s guitar solo on their cover of Almost Cut My Hair led me to purchase a [Crosby Stills Nash & Young] LP the following week trying to re-live the high of that experience. Neil did a fine solo ...but he’ was no Paul Leahy!

Fast forward to the next century. I had followed both The Transvestimentals & Pleasure Suit at The Railway a few times as well as The Sugar Refinery and chatted with Paul a bit at those shows.

Fast forward again a few years later - I bump into Paul in uptown New West at London Drugs and from there we started both a professional relationship, as his record label, and a valued friendship.

While first listening to early mixes of All Messed Up, he inspected my decrepit electric guitar and asked if he could borrow it for a bit.  About a week later he returned with the guitar re-strung, re-set and totally rebuffed, making special mention that he removed all the blood stains. 
 
About a year later Paul asked me how my guitar playing was going. and my excuse for lack of progress, was that I had moved from the house into an apartment. He then showed up a week later with this groovy Danelectro mini amp thingamajig  giving me no excuses. Paul also generously shared design books, another topic we often discussed, and when orphaned one year, Paul kindly invited me to the Leahy Christmas dinner. 

As a friend his actions were generous, sincere and caring - his words and advice, encouraging, thoughtful, wise and often humorous. I’m going miss seeing my quiet unassuming friend, in his cap and jean jacket, set down his glass of red wine then disappear - returning a few moments later as the biggest rock star I think I’ll ever get to see — Polly! 

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