In early 2020, Johnny Daukes found an old storage box in his loft with a big black folder inside marked Toxic Hazard. It was stuffed with old sheets of paper: every song he’d written, starting as a teenager, just a boy with a guitar, then for Fin, his 90s indie band, and then his five solo albums. By that time in his life, Daukes was 55 and deep in turmoil.
He and his younger brother were working with the Metropolitan police to build a criminal case against the man who had sexually abused them both as children. Every case of historical abuse can disrupt a family, but this one was truly labyrinthine. Their abuser, John Phillips, had gone on to marry their sister and have 10 children.
Every relationship was affected – cousins, siblings, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, godchildren and every variety of in-law. Initially, if Daukes had been asked why the abuse had taken so long to surface, he might have replied that, for years, he hadn’t known it happened, that somehow he’d completely buried it. Now, up in that loft, reading these lyrics, Daukes could see it wasn’t that simple.
His song Shadowman was one example of many. (“All he wants is one ambiguous touch / a secret between you that’s never discussed.”) Heaven Is Hell was another. (“I mustn’t let myself relax or fall asleep / Stay still, stay calm, this panic will retreat.”) Then there was Squid. (“Squid’s been abused and his mind is confused in a way that he can’t understand …”) “I spent weeks sifting through them and I was blindsided by some of the songs,” says Daukes. When I wrote Squid in 1992, in my brain I thought I was writing about our soundman Phil because he had dark eyes, like a shark. Now it’s obvious that Squid was me, the 12-year-old.
How was it possible?” These songs form the basis of his one-man show Squid: A Victim Impact Statement, which opens shortly at London’s Arcola theatre. Daukes uses them as a route into a childhood, to tell a story that he is still making sense of. He now sees them as cries for help, messages in a bottle.
But the clues weren’t just in his songs. The dark references, the family secrets, hiding under blankets from footsteps on the landing, fumbling in tents – the themes repeat in his scripts and sketches, and much of his life’s work. Daukes isn’t just a musician.
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