Tim Smith, the Cardiacs singer hoping to overcome brain injury to make music once more The band Cardiacs inspired musicians including Blur and Radiohead. But 10 years ago, lead singer Tim Smith suffered a catastrophic […]

The band Cardiacs inspired musicians including Blur and Radiohead. But 10 years ago, lead singer Tim Smith suffered a catastrophic brain injury – not that he wanted fans to know. Now, Rhodri Marsden is telling his story in the hope of helping him to make music again

On a sultry evening last August, 400 people crammed into a former church in Salisbury to attend an event billed as “The Alphabet Business Convention”. That bland, corporate title masked its true purpose: to host a festival of ­gloriously unconventional music (in which I was lucky enough to participate) and to honour a ­musical hero.

As we played, that man watched us from a wheelchair in the wings, almost completely paralysed by dystonia (a neurological disorder). Occasionally, with great effort, he would convey his appreciation of the music by laboriously pointing at letters of the alphabet stuck to a specially made cushion. More often, his gratitude could be seen in his gaze, a sparkling window into a razor-sharp mind.

The concert ended with the crowd chanting his name: Tim Smith. But tucked away as he was, out of sight, few would have been aware of the extent of his condition.

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Indeed, thousands of fans across the world simply don’t know about it, and have been waiting for him to make new music for nearly 10 years.

I first witnessed Tim’s extra­ordinary presence in 1989, when his band, Cardiacs, played at The Fridge (now The Electric) in Brixton, south London. For many of us, the shows felt life-changing – “like the world suddenly going into 3D”, according to one fan. The music was complex, playful and unpredictable, the performance full of exuberance and colour. Tim, the singer and guitarist, was its driving force. I stood open-mouthed, as Cardiacs played these strange, majestic tunes. It was stunning.

Over the course of their career, their rejection of the nonchalant “cool” of mainstream rock music made them few friends in the business, but inspired devotion among fans. Musicians from bands such as Radiohead, Blur, Napalm Death, Faith No More and Biffy Clyro would cite them as an inspiration. “People who could genuinely be described as geniuses are few and far between,” says Steven Wilson, whose album To the Bone reached No 3 in the UK charts last year. “But I think Tim is up there, I really do.”

Kavus Torabi, a former Cardiacs guitarist, recalls: “The crowds were getting bigger and younger and something was definitely happening. On our 2007 tour, I remember Jim [Tim’s brother and bass player] saying that something was in the air, that this might be our time.”

Cardiacs – ‘Is This the Life?’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZQtZNcOnnM

A life-changing moment

That bright outlook was shattered in June 2008, when Tim experienced cardiac arrest in a north London street. “He was supposed to stay at my house that night,” Kavus says. “I remember making up the spare room and going to bed, expecting him to arrive in a taxi, but he never came.”

Tim was treated in intensive care at University College Hospital, where there was some initial optimism. “He was sat up in bed and smiling,” says Craig Fortnam, a musician and composer and friend of Tim’s. “I thought he’d got away with it. But the next day the spasms started.”

At the age of just 46, Tim had suffered extreme brain damage.

“There was a key moment,” Kavus says, “when a doctor told me that Tim had been lucky, that he would live, but could not say whether he would ever be able to fetch himself a can of beer again. That’s when reality hit.”

Life for Tim since that day in 2008

Since the accident, Tim has required constant care in a specialist neurological facility. But the patient soon made it clear to his friends and bandmates that his dystonia must not shatter the myth and magic of Cardiacs’ world. “From the records to the live shows to the band’s back story, the whole thing was so perfectly conceptualised,” says Mary Wren, who runs Cardiacs’ record label, The Alphabet Business Concern. “Part of the myth of the band was that The Alphabet Business Concern fiercely exploited Cardiacs, and Tim wanted to keep that idea going, too.”

Post-accident press releases would obliquely refer to Tim’s illness as “undignified shenanigans”, stating that the record label disassociated itself from him and considered his condition to be a poor excuse for “not fulfilling his duties”.

But while Tim railed against the idea of becoming a charity case, his health declined. Sharron Fortnam, Craig’s partner, recently asked him to put his current state into words, and then watched him spell the following out at a painfully slow speed: “Imagine if you were wearing a skintight bodysuit made of fishnet all around you, with electrical pulses going all the time. This is what my body feels like unless I fall asleep.”

Cardiacs – R.E.S.

The fundraising campaign To help provide for Tim’s care, visit his page on JustGiving

Fears for the future

The seriousness of his condition, says Tim’s partner, Sarah Maher, has been exacerbated by repeated failings of a system under great stress, with NHS cutbacks and corporate take­overs stalling and then halting his rehabilitation.

“One of the first nurses that came into contact with Tim said that his only enemy was a bed,” she says, “meaning that if he was left to languish, that’s when problems would start. And that’s what happened. When he has physio­therapy, his spasms fall away and he gains the capacity to overrule his own condition, but he needs practice.” Sharron shares her frustration: “He hasn’t had treatment in a consistent way,” she says. “What’s maddening is that when he gets input, he makes progress. But any progress he has ever made has been as a result of private care, paid for with money he’s made from the sale of his music.”

The 10th anniversary of Tim’s accident represents a critical moment in his story.

“The way the care system works,” Sarah says, “is that the patient must justify funding. Right now, the council says that it’s too expensive, that Tim could be kept in a nursing home for less than half that sum – and they’re right, but what they don’t understand is that Tim is not nursing home material.”

The recent takeover of Tim’s facility by a health trust with an excellent track record of working intensively with people with severe brain damage represents a beacon of hope, but only if there is cash available.

“Money has become massively important,” Sharron says. “While we fight his corner he will get to stay where he is, but if no one was fighting he’d be put into a nursing home to die. We’re not going to let that happen. I keep reminding him we’ve got his back. He still has work to do.”

The short term goal is to raise £40,000 to help with Tim’s on­going care, but the ultimate goal is to get him back home on a smaller, cheaper care package. The rent on his empty house, nestled in the Wiltshire downs, is still being paid from the proceeds of sales of his music, and its interior remains in much the same state as when he left to catch a train to London in 2008: a piano, beautifully decorated with plastic flowers; hundreds of nick-nacks and ornaments; and his beloved studio where an album languishes, unfinished. “What’s so sad,” says Kavus, “is that I’d never known him to be as productive as the time we were making that record. And now 10 years have passed.”

He sighs. “About a year ago, I was behind him as he passed through a friend’s living room in his wheelchair. He stopped for about two minutes at their piano and tried to play a couple of notes. It was heartbreaking. He is so keen for that album to be finished – but it is completely dependent on how well he gets.”

Cardiacs – ‘Tarred and Feathered’

Sarah stresses that no one is able to say by how much Tim’s health might improve, but if he can recover enough to use a computer mouse then he could make music, and if he can find his voice, say his friends, “he will be able to boss us about in the studio.”

“A few months ago,” Sharron says, “Tim spelled out to me: ‘I don’t know if I should still be banging on about this Cardiacs myth thing.’ I said: are you kidding? It’s brilliant!”

When Tim agreed, the decision was made to tell his story. “We’ve tried really hard not to have a funding campaign, but this is where we’ve got to.”

Tim, for his part, now confesses to feeling “ashamed” about the fuzzy smokescreen of the past decade. He spells out: “All I can say is that I’m so sorry. I had no idea how much I actually meant to all these incredible people.”

Tim’s self-effacing generosity always stood in stark contrast to his brutal onstage persona. “He made everyone feel good about themselves,” Kavus says. “He would compliment you on the things you felt insecure about.”

Smith will never know the full extent of the influence he has had and the joy he has spread, but as I listen to Cardiacs’ 1989 album On Land and in Sea, I’m reminded of how that record upturned my world as a 17-year-old boy.

“I try at my best,” sings Tim in the ­album’s grand finale, “and I cry as I listen to the bustle of the day passing me by.”

He concludes: “There is life in me left to strike a blow for effect.” He’s not wrong.

The fee for this article has been ­donated to Tim’s fundraising campaign, now live on JustGiving