by Mike Read
I put together the story-board for a video and persuaded the good master of Magdalen College, Oxford to let us shoot around the building and grounds. Not only was it Betjeman’s alma mater, but we were also able to use his rooms for a tea party scene and those of visiting dons as David Essex/Betjeman’s study. Mr Strutt, the head porter, gave his staff instructions to co-operate fully, including ideal, and sometimes very precise, camera positions, one anticipating a shot ‘from New Building’s Staircase 3, Room 7 bathroom’! David was the consummate professional, insisting on discussing the shoot at length, working at the correct dynamics between him and Rachel Roberts, the wonderful young actress who portrayed the role of Myfanwy Piper, and even cutting his hair to give it that ’20s look. He commented at the time, ‘I’ve always had a soft spot for Betjeman. I liked the poem and I thought the music that Mike had written for it was terrific.’ The lovely Gordon Elsbury from Top of the Pops directed the video, which we completed in just one day and which included some wonderful shots of the Oxford skyline and the town. Now, unfortunately, I can’t find a copy of it. I keep hoping it’s going to turn up on YouTube.
Radio One actually seemed happy to play the song. It was promoted for Arista by my old pal and first publisher, Dave Most, and slowly began to climb the chart. Week by week another ten places and another, until we were convinced by the sales pattern that it was going to be a top ten hit. When it hit number fifty-six, it was sandwiched between Percy Sledge and Ben E. King on one side and Tina Turner and Smokey Robinson on the other. I was happy to dwell in that holy place.
We found an unlikely ally when Princess Alexandra helped the single to chart with the copy she bought in Durham. The press reported that she was on an official visit to the city when she spotted a Virgin record shop, had the barriers removed where the police had cordoned off the road and proceeded ask the bewildered manager for a song she’d heard on the radio at five o’clock that morning called ‘Myfanwy’. She told him that she’d been so taken with it that she ‘simply had to buy a copy’. The embarrassed manager explained that he’d just sold the last copy, but, good businessman that he was, he called Virgin MD Andy Warrell in London and before the princess arrived back home at Richmond Park, a copy had been delivered by motorcycle messenger. Even Tim Rice sang the song’s praises in Punch: ‘The tune is bewitchingly simple and marvellously arranged.’ He was very gracious in his comments: ‘The real eye-opener is the music. Mike Read, the composer, is a totally unknown quantity, but those who might have dismissed him as a mere jock or children’s TV host will have to think again.’ Two things stopped it from carving its way through the forty. First, the folk that compile the chart would often ‘downweight’ a single if they thought that sales weren’t evenly spread. The thought was that someone could be deliberately buying copies to give the track a false chart position. This of course was nonsense. If a group were from Manchester, where the core of their fan base was, it was likely that there would be more sales in that area. They noticed what they considered an unnatural peak in Wales for ‘Myfanwy’ and downweighted it. Well, who’d have thought it – a song titled with an archetypal Welsh girls’ name popular in Wales? But we could still bounce back as we’d been offered Sunday Night at the London Palladium, the last of the series. That’d catapult the song into the upper stratosphere, surely? Ah, but life isn’t that easy, and this is where we encountered our second stumbling block. David’s manager, Mel Bush, would only let his boy do it if he topped the bill. Dave Most protested that although David was indeed a major star, Diana Ross was on the same show and took precedence due to her longevity and level of success. Pleas, entreaties and whatever else fell on deaf ears. Either David topped the bill or he didn’t do it. He didn’t do it and the single stalled at number forty-one. We would have made the forty had it not been for Zodiac Mindwarp’s ‘Prime Mover’ appearing out of nowhere and sneaking into the position above us. Frustratingly, ‘Myfanwy’ stayed at number forty-one for two or three weeks. Was there any consolation in being higher than the new releases from Go West, the Fall, UB40 and the Housemartins? Not really. It’s a terrific testimony to the track, though, that it still spent over two months on the chart and was very popular in Australia. The weird and frustrating postscript is that when Sunday Night at the London Palladium began its next series, David sang ‘Myfanwy’, but it was too late, even though the single leapt back into chart on just that one play. Seemingly still popular, it’s now notched up well over 100,000 hits on YouTube and was selected by Tim Rice as one of his Desert Island Discs, alongside the Everly Brothers, Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones and ‘Once in royal David’s city’. Not bad company.
What did Myfanwy Piper, the subject of the poem, think about the song? I was invited for lunch a couple of times to the Pipers’ house at Fawley Bottom, near Henley-on-Thames. Her husband John Piper, one of the great British artists of the twentieth century and not too well by that time, was nevertheless very welcoming, even showing me dozens of his of paintings that he had stashed away, presumably as yet unseen. The ladies from Myfanwy’s era seemed to retain their acuity and perception. Over lunch she encouraged me to talk about my songwriting and writing in general, while she listened and gave little away. Was she interested in the written word or not? I wouldn’t have known. It was only when we went into the kitchen to make tea that I noticed a well-worn poster on the wall, crudely stuck up with ancient and yellowing Sellotape. The poster proclaimed her to have been a librettist for Benjamin Britten. That generation sure knew how to deal an ace without moving their hands. She was quite kind when talking to the press: ‘I wasn’t mad about previous musical treatments of his poems. I’d rather they were left as they are. But I know many people get pleasure from them so I’m glad. And I’m sure he would have liked it.’
Of course I had wanted Lady Betjeman to approve and, as invited, drove down for lunch in my old MGA to the home of her daughter Candida Lycett-Green in Calne, Wiltshire. I headed off from Radio One in torrential rain and made slow progress on the M4, getting completely drenched as the car had no hood. Normally if it came on to rain, I’d pull over and shelter until it stopped. But I knew Penelope Betjeman was a stickler for punctuality so I simply carried on, got there some ten minutes after the appointed time and appeared on the doorstep looking like the proverbial drowned rat. Ignoring my condition, she informed me in no uncertain terms that I was late and stomped off into the house, leaving me dripping and having to find my own way to the table. The Betjemans’ daughter, Candida, and assorted grandchildren were there and things soon eased. I think they’d all had a telling-off about something. I gradually dried off, ate a hearty lunch and played the demos. They seemed to get a seal of approval. One of the demos was of ‘Hunter Trials’, and Penelope told me that John had gone along to a gymkhana in which their son, Paul, was riding and was inspired to write the poem. As she pointed out, they weren’t hunter trials at all and he completely misused and deliberately muddled the equine terms used in the poem.
Prior to the release of ‘Myfanwy’, the Mail on Sunday was keen to do a piece about my collaborating with the late Poet Laureate and asked Lady Betjeman if she minded doing a photograph. It transpired that she didn’t mind, so off we trooped to her fairly remote house at Cusop in the Black Mountains. There was deep snow that day, so the newspaper hired a 4x4 to get to the property. It was a long hike and we struggled through some pretty deep drifts to get there. She opened the door, looked at the photographer and pointed to the camera. ‘I don’t know what you think you’re going to do with that thing,’ she said and did her stomping off thing. The photographer and journalist were crestfallen, but I was used to the stomping and reassured them. We were all dreaming of a hot meal after the long and arduous journey. We got bread and jam. It did come with tea, though, from an enormous enamel pot that would have served all the Women’s Institute meetings in a 10-mile radius. The photographer was seriously concerned that he wasn’t going to get his picture and on top of that, he was keen to shoot outside. H
e skirted round it a little, knowing that the temperature was below freezing and Penelope Betjeman was well into her seventies. She became impatient with his equivocating and let him have both barrels. She may not have actually pinned him against the wall, but she did so verbally. He was informed, in no uncertain terms, that she’d been up since seven, had saddled her horse, and ridden out some 14 miles in heavy snow and 14 miles back. She wasn’t to be trifled with. The photographer ceased trifling and we trooped outside, sat on a log pile and did a few bracing snaps. In a full-page spread in the Mail on Sunday Penelope rather decently commented, ‘I think it all sounds marvellous, marvellous. It should be very good. Great fun.’ Exactly. The paper was equally generous in calling me ‘an authority on Betjeman’s life’ (hardly, compared to many of the folk in the Betjeman Society who keep the flame alive) and talking up the variety of genres: ‘Latin through rock & roll to Irish Folk.’ The large photo of us sitting on the snowy pile of logs was wackily captioned, ‘Ode Couple … Read and Lady Betjeman’.
Penelope and I corresponded over the next few months, she sending me little notes and copies of odd poems that John had written, including one about the King Alfred tea rooms at Wantage, which she ran at one time. The last communication I received was just before she set off for her beloved Himalayas (or Him-ar-lee-ers as she pronounced them). Her father had been Commander-in-Chief in India, hence her love of the region. She sent a note asking me to join her and Osbert Lancaster for lunch on her return. She never returned, and so we lost another great character from a disappearing generation. At the twenty-fifth AGM of the Betjeman Society I was surprised and intrigued by a comment in the speech of Betjeman’s biographer Bevis Hillier. He made mention of the fact that Lady Betjeman had been ‘rather in love with me’. Life is full of surprises.
Another formidable lady with whom I had to deal in connection with John Betjeman was Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, sister of the Duke of Devonshire and a very close friend of JB’s. I was initially introduced to her at a meeting with Betjeman’s literary executors, which also included Henry Anglesey, who was the godson of George V, and the architectural historian Mark Girouard. The four of us sat around discussing the possible release of an album and even a stage musical. They gave no quarter; it felt like a courtroom and I came away feeling that their response was going to be negative. While I thought Henry Anglesey encouraging and charming, Mark Girouard appeared inflexible and defensive of Betjeman’s works. I was certain that one shouldn’t attempt to canonise a man who was essentially a poet of the people, but who was I to know? All three literary executors had been personal friends and were acting in the manner they considered in the best interests of the estate. They needed clarity on my intended musical and to that end I was invited to Elizabeth Cavendish’s house to explain my intentions. We drank a glass of wine or two and chatted amiably, although my eyes kept being drawn to Betjeman’s battered old bear, Archibald Ormsby-Gore, who was scrutinising me from his perch on the window sill. Either I didn’t explain myself too well, Lady Cavendish failed to grasp my intentions or Archie was distracting us, but she asked me to come back again the following week.
This time she had a friend with her who was introduced to me simply as Peter. Asked to explain how one goes about writing a musical, I proceeded with great aplomb. Apart from juvenile attempts and the heavily plagiaristic comic opera at college, in truth this was my first real crack at a real stage musical. Being a polite and well-brought-up chap, I didn’t simply direct my explanation of how to write a musical to Elizabeth, but also to her friend Peter. I even read the opening pages of the script, which began with Betjeman going through customs at the Pearly Gates. ‘Anything to declare?’ asked St Peter. I used an actual line of Betjeman’s as the response, which he’d spoken during his last interview. On being asked if he had any regrets, he responded that he hadn’t had enough sex. A great line, I thought, so I used it as his reply to St Peter … and, crassly, read it out loud to Elizabeth, not thinking about the close friendship between herself and Betjeman. I still squirm when I think of it… After talking about the art of writing a musical play for an hour I sat back, feeling that I’d acquitted myself rather well. Not smug, but satisfied. Not for long, though. Elizabeth Cavendish turned to her friend and asked demurely, ‘Was it like that, Peter, when you wrote Amadeus?’ I’d spent an hour telling one of our greatest playwrights, Peter Schaffer, how to write. I had the grace to blush.
The executors were not keen on the proposed title for the musical, Teddy Bear to the Nation. Elizabeth Cavendish wrote to me, ‘It is only fair to you to say that in no way will the Literary Executors of John Betjeman allow the suggested title, so by the time we meet can you have thought of a different and more suitable one. This is not something we will be persuaded about.’ Eventually, but only after much deliberation on the part of the executors, I had an agreement. This was good news. The downside was that the musical looked like a ‘no go’ area. I wonder why? The album would eventually be released on various small labels, but has seemed to have found a comfortable home with Angel Air. In the view of everybody involved, it still hasn’t realised its full potential.
Meetings with Betjeman’s publisher, John (Jock) Murray, were always fascinating as the Murray family, from 1768 on, had published such luminaries as Jane Austen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Darwin and Lord Byron. Sherry and cheese biscuits were always on the agenda and of course another glimpse of Byron’s shirt, which was on display. Signed to John Murray (each generation bore the same name), Byron had an instant bestseller when Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was published. In true pop star fashion, he announced, ‘I awoke one morning and found myself famous.’ We discussed Andrew Lloyd Webber’s interest in staging my intended musical at his Sydmonton Festival, but even with Andrew’s enthusiasm it didn’t happen, for some reason now lost in a hundred historic conversations. The tabloids made much of a completely untrue story (nothing new there) that Andrew had been secretly teaching me how to become a ‘superstar composer’. Risible. I can just imagine him peering at me over a glass of 1997 Romanée-Conti in his kitchen and shyly asking, ‘I say, would you like to become a superstar composer?’ The headline was ‘Mike’s Phantom Aide’. The press appeared to be moving me from Lord Reith to Lord Wraith.
In another genre, I was asked to play guitar on a song that the Duke of Kent’s daughter, Lady Helen Taylor, was recording, called ‘Single Girl’, which led to us being erroneously linked by some of the gossip columns. Lady Olga Maitland’s column majored on it at one point. With a marginally folksy feel in the style of Marianne Faithfull as I recall, it was recorded at a studio in Great Marlborough Street, a yard or two from the one-time London abode of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In the end there were questions asked about the release of a single by a member of the royal family and the producer did the decent thing and handed over the tapes. Something must have escaped, though, somewhere along the line, as in 2000 it emerged as one of Ibiza’s ‘hottest tracks of the season’, according to The Times. The track was much changed from the original (essential, I’d say) but the newspaper admitted, ‘Lady Helen’s clipped tones are quite audible on the new version, which is the work of producers, Royal I.’
I did put a musical on stage in 1988, but it wasn’t Betjeman related. I had also been working on a Rupert Brooke musical, over whose title I was still dithering. The papers got wind of it and one of them fired a not unexpected opening salvo. ‘Read fancies himself as a poet, although his literary output has thus far been confined to The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles, a work not known for its lyrical and aesthetic qualities.’ I considered drawing their attention to my two poetry books, The Aldermoor Poems and Elizabethan Dragonflies, and the various poems in the Poets England series, but why bother?
My neighbours in Holmbury St Mary, Richard and Linda Jackson, who ran Hurtwood House School, offered their wonderful theatre space for a week, so with Hugh Wooldridge directing, we were away. Having assembled a fine cast from the school, headed by imported
actor Michael Dore, we were rolling. Well, sort of. The school wasn’t draconian, but it did not achieve its fantastic results by standing any nonsense or rule-breaking. It was ‘one strike and you’re out’. So on a couple of occasions we found a cast member no longer a member of the cast … or the school. I must point out that expulsion by the headmaster isn’t the norm in musical theatre. With regard to the audience, we operated on a ‘pay what you like at the end of the show’ basis and despite that got a sackful of money, which I dumped on the desk of the very grateful and completely surprised PHAB centre in the village. After the final show we had a farewell bash, where I got ceremoniously thrown in the swimming pool fully clothed. Indecent behaviour, you’ll agree. I had been particularly attached to that green pullover with its country motif. The following morning it would have been a tight fit on an Mbuti pygmy, or indeed any pygmy.