Writer, musician, promoter:
Born: July 2, 1960: Died: February 15, 2012 .
AN APPRECIATION
Without Fritz Van Helsing, who has died aged 51 following a prolonged battle with hepatitis C, Edinburgh's nascent 1977 punk scene would have been a very different place. Whether as the precocious brains behind the Wrong Image fanzine, scribbling out early paeans to Edinburgh's first wave of punk and post-punk acts of his generation such as Scars and TV 21 – both recently re-formed – or else playing mine host at various incarnations of his Full Moon Club, Van Helsing was at the heart of a boisterous scene that remained truly underground in the best sense of the word.
As some of the posts make clear on the Scraps, rags, factions, splinters and glitz Facebook page, set up to document the crucial years between 1977 to 1982, when a fast-changing Edinburgh music scene seemed to promise the world, Van Helsing was at the epicentre of a very special social circle who, inspired by punk's unleashing of new freedoms, were determined to do things on their own terms. The endless round of gigs in long-gone venues and parties in his East Claremont Street flat carved out rites of passage for a now-scattered community whose lives were changed forever.
Born in Inverness, Van Helsing studied at Milburn Secondary School (now Milburn Academy), before moving to Edinburgh in 1976 aged 16.
Flushed with the sense of reinvention the punk era inspired, the teenager took his diabolic nom de plume from Dracula's vampire-slaying nemesis usually played by Peter Cushing in Hammer's increasingly camp restyling of Bram Stoker's original Gothic novel. Van Helsing took on the very of-its-time pen-name of Lou Kemia for his excitable scrawls in Wrong Time, but kept the eventually legally acquired Van Helsing name to the end, his former pre-teen identity a closely guarded secret.
Where others of his generation moved on to more respectable outlets, Van Helsing kept the faith throughout the next two decades, be it through his zines Asylum and Full Moon, or playing drums in equally wilful bands including FRAK and Nicotine Fingers. In 2000, with two friends Van Helsing began the Full Moon Club in the suitably labyrinthine confines of Bannerman's, the former folk pub in Edinburgh's Cowgate. For seven years on the last Thursday of each month, the Full Moon operated an anything-goes speakeasy policy that could see solo troubadours on the same bill as stand-up poets and punk guitar duos in an off-radar cabaret that attracted a loyal fan-base without ever attempting to curry favour with the rest of the city's music scene.
When the Full Moon moved to a Sunday afternoon slot at the infinitely different vibe of the Three Tuns bar on Hanover Street, there were some who thought the club wouldn't work. The child-friendly licence held by the establishment, however, actually helped the atmosphere, according to some. When the venue closed, Van Helsing effectively retired, his hard-living past having had a detrimental effect on his health. He was told by doctors that he was unlikely to live past 2009, but proved them wrong, his lust for life getting the better of his illness, even though growing old gracefully was never going to be an option.
In 2008 Van Helsing married Mary, and enjoyed the next few years with her and his daughter Jet from a previous relationship.
After 35 years at the frontline of an equally messy musical community, it was the perfect way to go out. A tribute gig to Van Helsing will take place at Bannerman's on April 15. Mary and Jet survive him.
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