Samantha Jane Miller, 1967-2024

Sometimes I don’t understand life at all. How could someone so young and beautiful be taken away? Simply go to the hospital and not come out? It’s a big old goofy world. Why did she have to leave it?

And why now? 

Honestly, I’ve lost too many loved ones at this stage. And as much as I’d like to honor everyone I once knew with a heartfelt tribute, I’m trying to honor the time I’ve got here in the land of the living. 

But sometimes it just comes out of my fingers. Maybe because saying goodbye to Sam is like saying goodbye to more than just an old friend. It’s saying goodbye to a whole slew of chapters in my life. 

Samantha was a special character. And when Robert, her man of 33 years, contacted me through a DM to let me know she’d passed, it shook me. She went into the hospital with internal bleeding and her organs just shut down one by one. 

Thinking about Sam takes me back. To Sheffield in the 80s. Sam and her gang were synonymous with Sheffield. Sam was striking. With that Ana Wintour-like trademark bob. And her blonde hair. Always looking smart in a knit skirt jacket ensemble. And matching lipstick. She was put together.  She had style. And I can hear that dulcet voice and her Yorkshire accent now. 

Sheffield. A working class town, in the rust belt of the UK, we played a lot in those early days. Green On Red were reactionary. Or at least we represented that spirit. And Sheffield was the home of some hard line socialists. Sheffield punters are a breed apart. And they took to us. And Sam and her crew were always there. We’d all connect in the pub. Which was more often than not where you could find the band before the show. And we’d shoot the breeze. About music, Sam’s Gran, life, Thatcher, or that time when Frank White, the Sheffield guitar legend who was once courted by the Stones, showed up at her door stumping for the Jehovah’s Witnesses and even (my least favorite subject) real estate. I had some idea Sam was struggling. When she didn't make it out to our Sheffield stop last year. Robert brought his brother along, and said she wasn't feeling so hot, in so many words. Might not be able to stand for long. And now today he tells me she didn't want to be seen out in the shape she was in.

The Sheffield contingent, they’d make it out to other towns as well. Sam was the leader of her gang – she had wheels. She drove a Mini Cooper. And the lads (her admirers, she had a few) would pile in and hit the motorway to see Green on Red or CP shows in the neighboring towns like Leeds, Manchester, Hull, or even down to London.

A few years back, I think around the time those Green on Red reunion shows in 2006 wrapped, I went on and played some solo dates. And I can remember visiting with Sam and the lads after a show in Sheffield. Peter, the graphic artist, one of her exes, was there and told me with a shrug that he was out of work. And Robert, Sam’s man, whom I’d known from the Harbourkings (they opened for us a few times) was there. Robert was a cool customer. Low-key. He’d had a moment with the Harbourkings (or as Sam commented, "Fookin’ Harlequins”) on Fire Records. And could regale me with a grab bag of hilarious Johnny Thunders stories about [SPOILER ALERT] Johnny behaving badly on stage.   

One afternoon I did a promotional visit to BBC Sheffield. The host was a former children’s show host or something. (No, not that one!) Anyway… I must’ve gone into some pretentious rhetoric. Trying to sound like a real artiste. (It happens!)  Because she told me later that night, “Heard you on the radio. I don’t know – if I didn’t know you, I’m not so sure I would like you.” Fair enough. She didn’t always buy into my bullshit. And I loved her for that.

Sam was a painter. Rothko was her man. “Alizarin Crimson” was her “colour.” (Not a typo). And she loved music. And always had a new band to obsess over. But she struggled, like so many of us do. And one night our conversation drifted, for lack of a better phrase, into mental wellbeing. Mine was shaky. Without getting too lost in the details, Sam and I were chatting and I don’t remember what was said, but we hit on something and her voice broke and a couple heavy tears fell down her cheeks. 

I’m going to miss her. 

Robert tells me she was an only child. Survived by her mother. And that her father committed suicide when she was a teenager. Something I don’t imagine anyone ever truly gets over. 

In those early years, Sheffield was a city in decline. Classic Steeltown blues: high unemployment, impoverished Council estates. Today, thankfully much of those sad grey days of Thatcher England are in the past. 

Then again, those were magical times too. Touring the UK, we’d always return to the same hotels: The Columbia, The Adriatic, The Britannia. The kind of places where I might be greeted with a "Mr. Prophet, so nice to have you back, sir" from a lovely desk clerk. 

Green On Red at the Leadmill. Note: £1.50 admission

Eventually, we all break down. No matter what your ride is. Don’t I know it. 

One time Green on Red‘s transit van did just that on the motorway. Barely shy of the Leadmill smokestacks. Which were our destination. While someone went in search of a phone box, we sat on the side of the road smoking, doing nothing. There was a canal and some skinhead kids were fishing with crude fishing poles with string. 

Seriously, like out of a cartoon. 

We wandered over and asked what they caught. The answer was deadpan and perfect: “Oh, nobody ever catches anything here.“

And then we moseyed across the motorway and there was a pub. We ordered our pints within a minute or two to spare before closing time. And they locked us in like it was a private party. I shared that with a native and he said, “Oh, that's a proper lock-in, innit?” The bartender’s knuckles spelling out  “B-E-S-T”. Best what, I wondered? Someone later told me, “Probably George Best.”  

Those days.

As opposed to these days where it’s an ongoing battle with my manager to stay clear of the Travelodges out on the Motorway where the desk clerk is safely behind what looks like bulletproof glass. And there’s nowhere to walk to when you get there. Everything on the Angry Island is starting to look homogenous. Some days it takes an effort to not sit in your room with instant coffee and the kettle, snooker on the telly, and stew in your deeply felt resentments. But just like that dissonant sound of the symphony tuning up, this too shall pass. And what follows might just be glorious. 

Life is hard. The future is unwritten. Yet somehow, I’m still out there headed for another joint. No matter what, Sheffield will never be the same without Sam. 

Love,

-CP 

Peter, Sam, James, and Rob (Photo: Chuck Prophet)