The Comedy of Errors appendices: The Werefrogs - Don’t Slip Away (13 June 1992)

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As the early summer of 1992 arrived, the world seemed to be there for the taking for The Werefrogs
With the majestic Forest of Doves dropping in March of that year, and only 26 years away from being acclaimed as the outstanding track to soundtrack the rehearsal and performance of the then contemporaneous production of Oliver!, they had followed this up with a new single, Don’t Slip Away.  As part of the promotion for this, they played a series of dates in the UK and recorded a session for John Peel in which he cited the session version of Don’t Slip Away as superior to the
studio version. Nevertheless, he held a competition to give away copies of a limited edition blue vinyl 7-inch version of Don’t Slip Away to anyone who could draw a good representation of a werefrog.  There was certainly a gap in the market for crunchy, melodic guitar rock of the kind which The Werefrogs specialised in.  Marc Wolf never had the voice to compete with the grunge boys, but neither could he pull off the detached cool of say Sonic Youth.  Instead, he sounded sincere, Not choir-boy, white-bread sincere, but rather like an average Joe, who carried romance in his heart and poetry in his soul, but was outmuscled by the everyday world in a such a way that the light could never quite find its way out from under the bushel, because someone had built an office block on top of it.  But the angst and fire were there, hence why Wolf always seemed to be backed up by a forceful, rolling wave of pop-rock exultation.
In Forest of Doves, this touches hallucinogenic heights.  Don’t Slip Away is a little more earthbound and with its blend of driving acoustic guitar and electrics that seem to be opening a portal into the world beneath the ocean, particularly at the 2:02 mark, it suggests that the band had been listening to similar mash-ups achieved by The Boo Radleys in tracks like I Feel Nothing.

Lyrically, the track continues the flirtation that Forest of Doves had between gentle romanticism - the lines about closing eyes and running fingers through hair sound loving and close - and lamentation for the dead.  And it’s this which gives it extra resonance for me when recalling what was going on in my life around 13 June 1992:

“We could be old now
What’s left for someone who has slipped away.
Don’t slip away”

While I was taking exams and rehearsing for The Comedy of Errors, my parents found themselves effectively having to look after an extra family.  Due to a mixture of deaths and estrangements (happily reconciled in subsequent years), my father had very few blood relations in his life outside of
my mother and I.  The only exceptions were Cecil and Elsie, his elderly aunt and uncle and their
daughter, Beryl.  We used to visit them every Sunday evening. I’d visit my friend, James, who lived up the road from them and would go down to join them at 8:45pm.  We’d have a cup of tea and I would read the Sunday Mirror, generally asking to borrow it if I saw something in it which got my teenaged hormones stirred up. These visits were, from about mid 1988 onwards, utter hell for my parents, but they had to be done, because essentially they were the only things keeping Cecil, Elsie and Beryl alive. Elsie was starting to fall prey to dementia, Beryl had been starved of oxygen to the brain when she was born meaning that she had a mental age of about 12.  She had her crown green bowls and did gardening but had never worked or married, instead being cooped up at home with a ringside seat of her parents’ marriage disintegrating into elderly, loathing of each other.  Principally this was because Cecil was not a patient or kind man.  He had been a shrewd and ruthless businessman in his day, but this had carried over into his home life and as old age bit and he found himself between a wife who was losing both her memory and her bodily functions and a daughter who for all her own problems saw him as a monster, it seemed that he decided, “Sod it. If that’s what you think of me, I’ll behave as badly as you think.”
Throughout the early 90s, I have memories of the phone ringing at odd hours and my dad having to go down to their house to sort out an argument which had spiralled out of control.  Once Elsie became unable to cook, my mother took up the slack and was cooking up a week’s worth of meals for them which my dad would take down for them each day.  And as I say, on Sundays we’d do the formal visit to their house where things always seemed to follow the same pattern:

1) watch  Songs of Praise
2) Turn television off and have a chat.
3) Conversation would go in circles leading to row between Cecil and Elsie. My parents acting as referees.
4) My arrival would signal peace but things would drear along till 9:30 when we would leave.
5) On arrival at home, my parents would pour whiskies to try and recover equilibrium.  Dad would
often be exposed to this at 8am the next day when dropping off food to them again.

Through 1992, the situation got worse. Cecil would sometimes be on the phone once we’d got home on the Sunday nights.  Elsie’s health declined further, and she refused to countenance leaving her home, but eventually it became impossible and she spent the best part of May/June 1992 in hospital. My father would normally take Cecil over to see her and come back with stories of men in the hospital who had confused him for someone they had fought in the war with.  Or of the time Cecil started trying to eat a meal that had been brought in for Elsie while she was sleeping.
 She died on the day of the final performance of The Comedy of Errors, which at least meant my dad didn’t have to come to the performance, which suited him as he wasn’t much of a fan of Shakespeare.  My mum came with a friend of the family instead.  Although Elsie had died, there was no let-up in the care routine and the confrontations and listless visits continued for another couple of years until Cecil’s death in 1994 and that is a tale for several shows hence...

I went to Elsie’s funeral but I shed no tears for her.  I don’t mean that callously, but it was a blessed relief because her last 5 years of life had been a tragedy really.  I wouldn’t wish what she had to go through on anyone and I found myself hoping she would finally be at a peace which was denied her effectively for the whole of her life. I have given her very little thought these last 28 years until
hearing this track and remembering the state of how things really were for my family in mid 1992.  Acting, not for the first time provided me with an escape that was not open to everyone, least of all, poor Elsie.  I hope someone, somewhere was smoothing her hair and singing her to sleep through those last months.  She deserved that.

Lyrics are copyright of their authors.

Video courtesy of Iain 3d - who went to the courtesy of putting this video up especially after reading me waxing lyrical about The Werefrogs on Twitter, so my very grateful thanks to you, Iain.