Early in the new year, Fisherman’s Friends, the uplifting true story of the part-time Cornish sea shanty group that hit the big time, is coming to cinema screens amid hopes it may connect with audiences just as powerfully as other British feelgood hits such as The Full Monty and Calendar Girls.
Behind the wit, warmth and energy promised in the film, which stars Daniel Mays, James Purefoy and Tuppence Middleton, lie the stark facts of a tragedy that threatened to rob the real band of Cornish singers of their good spirits for ever.
In 2013, on the last day of a small national tour, the 10-strong group’s outstanding tenor soloist, Trevor Grills, and the band’s promoter, Paul McMullen, were both killed in a backstage accident.
The two men had been together in the loading bay of the G Live theatre in Guildford, Surrey, on a cold February morning when a heavy metal door collapsed on them as they unpacked for a sold-out concert. Band members had been ducking in and out of the theatre, carrying equipment under the door, as it opened to let their minibus inside.
“The door must have been almost at the ceiling when I remember the hum of the motor suddenly cutting out,” the band’s frontman, Jon Cleave, said at the time. “There was a distinct click and then a rush of air as four tons of metal hurtled to the ground. Just like a heavyweight guillotine.”
The 54-year-old builder, Grills, took the full force of the door’s weight and was knocked to the floor, while McMullen, 47, was trapped beneath it.
“For a split second there was absolute silence,” Cleave recalled. “Paul was still breathing, but you could tell he was badly hurt. Trevor looked worse because he was bleeding so heavily. In our hearts, I think we all knew it was hopeless.”
McMullen, from Cheshire, died at the scene. He left a wife and young son. Grills was taken to hospital, but did not regain consciousness, and died three days later, leaving a wife and three boys. Grills’s moving performance of the slow lament The Last Leviathan had been a highlight of the group’s live shows and, now given extra poignancy by his death, it remains a YouTube favourite.
The group’s second album, One And All, had been recorded a few weeks before the accident, but its release was put on hold, as was early talk of a film charting their meteoric rise. Remaining band members turned down a chance to tour America.
For one of the new film’s writers, Piers Ashworth, the cinematic celebration of the humour and camaraderie of the original Fisherman’s Friends comes at the right time for the band. “The real men have helped us and they even appear in some scenes,” he said. “And the singing is a blend of the voices of the group themselves and of the actors.”
The original a cappella band, comprising genuine fishermen, a shopkeeper, a potter, an engineer and two builders, started performing in pubs during the mid-1990s. Nine of the original singers – aged from 36 to 68 – had grown up in Port Isaac, the town now also known as the location of the fictional Portwenn in the long-running ITV show Doc Martin. The tenth member, a fisherman from nearby Padstow, Jason Nicholas, was invited to join as accordion player.
After a decade of entertaining locally, the Fisherman’s Friends’ big break came in 2009 when the BBC Radio 2 DJ Johnnie Walker heard a couple of self-produced CDs while on holiday.
His manager, Ian Brown, who was also intrigued, came to Cornwall to hear them sing, and eventually helped secure them a £1m recording contract with Universal Music. In 2010 the band’s debut album made the top 10, selling 150,000 copies.
The film, directed by Chris Foggin, takes some licence with the truth as it focuses on the fictional character of a cynical London music executive, played by Mays, who has little faith in the troupe. The film also stars David Hayman, Noel Clarke, as well as I, Daniel Blake’s star, Dave Johns, as band members. It was co-written by Ashworth with Nick Moorcroft and Meg Leonard.
“Our story is about the events leading up to their fame and about their effect on other people, so we do not cover the deaths, and I think that is as it should be,” said Ashworth.
A year after the accident Nicholas, the accordion player, said that none of them had felt like singing together or accepting gigs for a long while.
But a year to the day after the accident, Fisherman’s Friends reunited to sing again at the Royal Albert Hall, receiving a standing ovation. This year they released another album, Sole Mates, and on Thursday they complete a November run of gigs with a show at the Octagon theatre, Yeovil.
After an investigation found the G Live door’s motor and drive-shaft had failed, supplier Express Hi-Fold Doors was fined £30,000 for a health and safety breach and its director, David Naylor, cleared in court of manslaughter by gross negligence.