{"id":936955,"date":"2026-05-04T11:04:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T11:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/936955\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T11:04:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T11:04:23","slug":"godfrey-old-the-heath-harmonica-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/936955\/","title":{"rendered":"Godfrey Old, the Heath harmonica man"},"content":{"rendered":"

Godfrey Old playing his harmonica<\/strong><\/p>\n

YOU may have heard him before you saw him \u2013 his harmonica ringing through a pub in Hampstead, or whistling across the Heath as he performed to crowds on the bandstand.<\/p>\n

Talented musician and illustrator Godfrey Old, has passed away aged 71 after suffering a heart attack on Sunday.<\/p>\n

His death comes just a few months after the closure of the Pentameters Theatre in Heath Street, which he ran for decades with his partner of 40 years, L\u00e9onie Scott-Matthews.<\/p>\n

She said:\u2008 \u201cIt was love at first sight. We\u2019ve been deliriously happy, working together \u2013 it\u2019s been a wonderful time. I\u2019ve been very privileged to have had this time with him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was loved by everyone, hugely talented, caring. You couldn\u2019t wish for a better person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their daughter, Alice Old, added: \u201cHe was an amazing father, and completely devoted to my mother. He made me who I am \u2013 everything I love was what he loved and all my gifts are from him, we were cut from the same cloth.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was looking at the moon and even looking at that reminds me of him because we\u2019d walk and talk about where we come from. He was a beautiful philosopher.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Old was drawn to music, anything sonically strange and unusual \u2013 from hardcore psychedelia to obscure electronic bands, blues and soul.<\/p>\n

He performed with his group Mad Dog Bites in Hampstead pubs, including the King William IV and the Wells Tavern or on Hampstead Heath.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Godfrey with Leonie Scott Matthews and their daughter Alice\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Close friend, Conrad Blakemore said they had first met while auditioning for the same band in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was very gifted in being able to listen to something and then just play it, that is the sign of a top notch musician,\u201d\u2008he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Old was inspired to learn to play the harmonica after listening to On The Road Again by blues rock group Canned Heat.<\/p>\n

Mr Blakemore added: \u201cGodfrey was a genius, a natural performer, he was always trying to in a sense steal the show with his antics.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking the most extraordinary noises, he wasn\u2019t just a harmonica player he was a soundscape artist. You had a whole orchestra behind you with Godfrey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Old also worked on Hampstead Heath as a ranger from 1991 to 2018.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Godfrey Old with Mad Dog Bites<\/strong><\/p>\n

Among colleagues, there was a running joke that Mr Old could never be found and that he would disappear for hours, only to reappear later in one of the huts reading a philosophy book.<\/p>\n

Colleague and Mr Old\u2019s manager Danny Murphy said: \u201cYou could never get angry at him. He knew absolutely everybody in the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe really did love the Heath and was immensely talented.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Old was also a gifted illustrator and designed posters for Heath events, retirement parties and birthday cards for colleagues and family.<\/p>\n

He also created much of the artwork for Pentameters Theatre, always in a distinctive 1970s hippy cartoonist style.<\/p>\n

Known for his quirky sense of humour, and mischievous smile, he liked cooking and playing records around the house.<\/p>\n

Mr Blakemore added: \u201cHampstead has lost a lot in terms of its character and Godfrey was a little light on the horizon that kept a sense of bohemian, eccentricity, and uniqueness.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a very talented guy. It will be a lot duller in Hampstead without Godfrey around.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Godfrey Old playing his harmonica YOU may have heard him before you saw him \u2013 his harmonica ringing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":936956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,108626,5554,393,4884,52577,257,18394,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-936955","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-caitlin-maskell","10":"tag-community","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-hampstead","14":"tag-london","15":"tag-the-camden-new-journal","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116515980635043740","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=936955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/936956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=936955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=936955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=936955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}