Jeff Barrett writes: We were saddened to hear of the death this week of Brian Case. It came our way via Richard Williams and his blog The Blue Moment (that’s Richard laughing at something Brian just said whilst hosting the launch for ‘On the Snap’ at Ronnie Scott’s Club, 25 May 2015 – photographer unknown I’m sorry to say).

Read on as James Oldham pays his respects…

I was 16 when I met Brian Case for the first time. I’d just started going out with a girl called Maddy and he was friends with her parents. I was into the rock’n’roll thing. I liked the Velvet Underground and Spacemen 3. My favourite local band was Thee Hypnotics (this was High Wycombe, unfortunately). Regardless, I thought I’d already journeyed to the edge of civilisation and was feeling pretty good about it. Brian — quickly and, with hindsight, somewhat generously — disabused me of that notion.

He was something else. He was a writer. He’d written a great first novel — The Users — and spent time on the Melody Maker. When I knew him, he seemed to be largely on film sets for Time Out. He had good stories and told them in an otherworldly jazz argot that meant everyone was a cat that you should either dig or not. He thought rock’n’roll was for idiots (perhaps failing to realise that was part of its appeal…) and he thought it might be better if I turned at least some of my attention to Art Pepper and Johnny Griffin. He was probably right.

I didn’t totally get him or his music but I wanted to. He made me think that being a writer was something to aspire to. He was constantly suggesting books to read, records to listen to, films to watch. He never hectored, it was more kindly than that, a desire to share what he’d found along the way. I quickly realised that far from having conquered the cultural universe, I hadn’t even really started.

I stayed friends with him and asked him to help me, years later, when I wanted to start writing for the music press. And he did, kind of. He invited me to a lunch with Pete Paphides, who he thought was more in my musical world and might be able to help. He took us both out to lunch in a glorified kebab shop around the corner from Goodge Street tube station and, I guess, the then offices of Time Out. Whatever wisdom Pete may have tried to pass onto me was quickly sunk in a succession of bottles of red wine that left me — and everyone else — smashed by 2.30. It didn’t matter, it was all an education and I ended up writing for NME later anyway. I probably wouldn’t have done without him though.

A long, long time later, and without really realising what I was doing, I tried to thank him by helping him out with his book — On the Snap — that Jeff and Caught by the River put out. It was just him talking about some of the favourite people (cats, I suppose) that he’d met on his travels, and listening to him remember it all was like going back to the kitchen table where I’d met him in the first place.

When I first heard he’d died, it took me a minute to feel anything about it (he’d been ill for a long time) but then I woke up the next morning and realised that there was probably no one who set my compass more. I mean I have a son called Gil only because he bought me a Gil Evans boxset when I got married. I wished I’d thanked him properly before he died. I didn’t, but maybe he’ll read this?