by Mike Read
Some writers like to work together and kick ideas around while others work independently of each other, returning with their latest contribution as and when. The song I wrote with Andrew Lloyd Webber in the summer of 1997 was one of the latter. I was having lunch at Sydmonton to discuss something or other and after we’d watched Venus Williams doing amazing things with yellow balls at Wimbledon, Andrew mentioned a couple of songs he had that needed lyrics. If he sent me his rough instrumental could I have a go at some words? I could indeed. Nothing turned up for a couple of weeks so I assumed he’d forgotten. I was pottering around a local mill that had once been the home of the composer John Ireland, when, by interesting coincidence, Andrew called to say one of the tracks was in the post. With Peter Ainsworth, then an MP, I’d been suggesting turning the mill into a South Downs musical museum, for the likes of Ireland, Havergal Brian, Hubert Parry, William Blake and Edward Elgar. The excuse that was given for not being able to do it was that the surrounding area was landfill and therefore the ground (and the mill) could be unsafe, apart from any noxious gases that might emanate from the area. That, however, didn’t affect the tune from ALW. I pounced on a good title almost immediately, ‘No Smoke without Fire’. The lyric took shape, but I really needed to play with the tune and add a middle eight. I knew Andrew well enough to ask him if I could move his melody around where necessary and he readily and graciously agreed. I was definitely pleased with the result and did a pretty good demo, much in the style of UB40. Andrew loved it too, which was good news, and decided to have it performed at the next Sydmonton Festival, along with his workshop for Whistle Down The Wind. It went down very well and Andrew was confident that our song was going to be a huge hit. Any congratulations from those present that came my way were tempered by experience. Andrew was so busy that today’s great idea might well slip down the chart of priority within a week or two, plunge even further after a month and then slide under the radar and off into the ether. I didn’t want to be right, but I was.
Fast forward to the launch of Tim Rice’s autobiography. After the event, Andrew and I headed back to his London house to watch an England match. It won’t have escaped the more astute among you that there is a theme here, with songwriters inviting me round to watch football. The screen was so large that at times I felt that I was playing in midfield, especially after a glass or two from Andrew’s cellar. After the game we listened to some Bollywood music of which he had become enamoured, before he treated me to some tunes on the piano from his forthcoming musical The Beautiful Game. Andrew is a great writer of melodies, no doubt about that.
A month or two later I had calls from a couple of friends, delighted that the song I had written with Andrew was in his new musical. Was it? No one told me. Someone played it to me. That was it, all right, with different and to my mind inferior lyrics (no offence to the hugely talented Ben Elton, whose name was on the credit) but the same re-structured melody. I mentioned it to Tim, who wasn’t unduly surprised, and I wondered if Andrew would bring it up. He never has. I’ve seen him on many occasions since then, but not a squeak. My publisher suggested suing him. I laughed. Not that ‘hollow, mocking laugh’ used by crime writers to create an atmosphere, just a normal laugh with no hidden agenda. I wasn’t going to go down that road, for several reasons: I’ve known Andrew for ever, he wouldn’t have done it deliberately, it would cause a rift in an old friendship, it was only one song in a musical that wasn’t one of his blockbusters, and frankly I didn’t mind. The original ‘No Smoke without Fire’ still sounds good. When Andrew stages Pyrotechny, The Musical, the song will come into its own.
Like me, Andrew is a big Bobby Vee aficionado, Bobby having performed at various of his functions in the ’90s, but the press jumped the gun rather by announcing that I planned a musical about the early ’60s US heart-throb. They announced that Bobby would play himself in the show, but in reality it had got no further than drawing-board stage, with him and me kicking round a few ideas. The idea was for Bobby to have been the pivotal narrator with a young singer portraying him from the day he stepped in for Buddy Holly and through the ’60s. Back when I bought his records, I never imagined I’d get to meet him, let alone to be able to call him a friend and that he would call me whenever he was in the UK. A lovely man, with a lovely family, though sadly he’s not in the best of health now.
I’d also been a fan of Ricky Nelson’s records. He sang in a range that was achievable by chaps such as myself, and had dozens of hits and a great image. He’d also been a child star on his parents’ long-running TV and radio series across the States, Ozzie and Harriet. Tragically, he died in a plane crash on New Year’s Eve 1985 when only in his mid-forties. The news came through on the car radio while driving back from a party with Janet Ellis, whom I went out with a few times. I was so shocked that I cried. She was probably shocked that I did. Later I began work on an idea for a stage musical on Ricky, using the title Teenage Idol. By 1995 The Buddy Holly Story was in its seventh year as a stage musical and had grossed an incredible £100 million worldwide, so there was clearly a market for shows like this. While the Bobby Vee one hadn’t worked out, perhaps this one would. While I was working on it, Andrew Lloyd Webber, also a Ricky Nelson fan, said that he’d like to stage it at Sydmonton. Again, we had a lot of press coverage up front, including a double-page spread in the Daily Express, where I gave my reasons for choosing this subject: ‘The story has it all … fame, success, glamour and tragedy. It’s a gripping subject. In America, by the end of the ’50s, not only young people adored him but their parents did as well.’ It seemed reasonable. He was a pop star at seventeen and sold millions of records.
I took a gamble on the unknown Richard Sharp, then just twenty, in the lead role and Tony Rivers and his boys as the backing vocalists, also singing radio jingles. We rehearsed in Chelsea with director Nicola Treherne and got up to speed before heading off to Andrew’s for the show. It was a busy weekend for me as the Sunday morning service at the local church (as part of the Sydmonton Festival) featured the choir performing my setting of Rupert Brooke’s war sonnets. Ricky Nelson – Teenage Idol was well received by an audience that included Charlie and Martin Sheen, George Martin and Don Black. I’m sure it was daunting for Richard, who’d never acted before in his life, but he pulled it off and the piece was a success. As I’ve never been certain what to do with it after Sydmonton, that remains its only performance.
One musical play that didn’t even make it to the stage was my adaptation of Alan Sillitoe’s classic Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. I used music from the period and met with Alan, who liked the adaptation and gave me permission to go ahead. That was good news. More good news was that Bill Kenwright called, wanting to stage it. But back comes that old phrase, ‘life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans’, and somehow it slipped away, despite me renewing the rights to stage it for several years. I did write a title song, with Chris Eaton, but despite being a strong song, that too remains on the shelf, hopefully waiting for its moment to shine. I’m convinced that ‘shelf’ will give way one day under the not inconsiderable strain.
I mentioned the Rupert Brooke sonnets as in 1996 there was action on the Rupert Brooke front. Imagining I’d need music for the film, I had set Brooke’s five war sonnets to music. I’d written a film script and there was a heck of a lot of interest from production companies, with letters flying backwards and forwards and meetings galore. Pleased with the result after a few months, I’d asked Ralph to work on the arrangements, which turned out splendidly. From there we played my demos to the head of music at King’s College, Cambridge, Stephen Cleobury, who agreed that the King’s College Choir could record them. I organised the recordings to be filmed, fondly imagining the choir to be dressed accordingly, looking angelic and with candles guttering to throw wild and fanciful shapes across the fan vaulting of King’s College Chapel. I hadn’t reckoned on casual dress – rock T-shirts, jeans and trainers – but we filmed everything anyway, including Stephen t
icking off one lad whose shirt was hanging out. The cameras were still rolling as he reluctantly and sullenly made his way outside, only to re-appear with it tucked in in a token manner. Henry VI had first instigated a choir here in the mid-1400s a few years after what was initially known as Our College Royal of Nicholas opened its doors to scholars, and here we were more than 500 years later with microphones suspended at every angle. What would Henry (incidentally our youngest-ever king, at nine months) have made of that? Stephen Cleobury made me realise how lucky I was to be having my songs recorded here when he reminded me how much of the music sung in the chapel was by greats that had long departed such as Mozart, Bach, Tallis and Taverner. The Eton College Choir later performed the Brooke settings from the chapel for a BBC World Service programme, in which I was one of the readers of the secular and non-secular narrative linking the pieces.
In the mid ’90s, Simon May had been commissioned to write the music for a new comedy film, Caught in the Act, and he asked me to come up with some ideas for a title track. I needed no second bidding and soon knocked up a demo that included a basic melody for Simon as a starting point. It failed to start, although listening to it years later, it’s pretty damn good. As happens with films, the idea for a title was sidelined and instead there would be an opening operatic dream sequence. Fine, getting onside with a soupçon of W. S. Gilbert wouldn’t be a problem. What was a problem, though, was this. They wanted the lyrics in Italian. ‘Sorry,’ said Simon, ‘but that’s what they want. I’ll have to find an Italian lyricist.’
‘I can do it.’
‘I didn’t know you could speak Italian.’
‘You give me the tune and I’ll give you a great Italian lyric.’
‘If you’re sure.’
I was sure. I didn’t actually say that I spoke the language, simply that I was capable of writing the words. The nearest I got to speaking it was ordering a Four Seasons at Pizza Hut. Undeterred, I lashed out £6.99 on a Collins Italian dictionary and a few quid on a teach-yourself publication, Beginners’ Italian. I made a list of all the words that might come in useful, familiarised myself with the way tenses were constructed and knuckled down to it. I decided that ‘Ci vediamo’ (‘We’ll Meet’) might be a good title and that as the opening sequence was an over-the-top spoof that I could easily get away with a cheesy, over-the-top lyric. Bizarrely it flowed quite well, with lines like ‘Nella luce della luna’ (‘In the moonlight’) and ‘E in tutti il mondo | Tutte le stelle scintilleranno (‘And all over the world | All the stars will shine’). It was heady stuff, you must agree. Had I been born in Venice in 1823 I might have paddled the operatic gondola big-time. As it was, the opening sequence was shot in Wimbledon, with my moving lyric, ‘Non vedo niente solo te’ (‘I won’t see anything but you’), ringing out across SW19. It sounded jolly clever in Italian. In English it would have sounded ghastly. Before submitting my lyric, I’d run the whole thing past an Italian acquaintance who pointed out certain errors that might lead to his country declaring war on me. The film won the Jury Award of Excellence at the Laguna Festival in the USA. Probably because of an all-star cast that included Lesley Phillips, Nadia Sawalha and Sarah Crowe, rather than my Italian lyric.
In 2000, I re-visited a musical show I’d previously put together featuring music and news through the centuries, Journey through Music, to raise funds for a new clock in Pulborough village close to where I was living. We bounded like eager musical puppies through the centuries, playing a variety of instruments usual and unusual, and extolling the virtues of folk, blues, jazz, skiffle, pop and the like. It’s only clock & roll but we love it.
Another show I regularly compered and often sang at was Songs from the Shows, organised by the aforementioned Michael (‘Your Majesty’) Reed and staged in his rolling acres in the shadow of his historic mansion Prince Hill House. I was normally consigned to some fun song from the West End, but I once got to read a serious piece, in the form of Rupert Brooke’s ‘The Soldier’. In World War One uniform I strode purposefully out to centre stage. Move over, Sir Larry. But I was baffled at the audience’s response to my incredibly moving declamation of Brooke’s classic poem. They were laughing. I mean really laughing. Many couldn’t contain themselves. Tears of mirth fell from their eyes, as did the scales from mine, eventually. Other things nearly fell as well. In my rush to change, I’d forgotten to do up the buttons on my trousers and a piece of shirt was sticking through the large gap. The seriousness of the poem made it all the more hilarious for the crowd. I even had my own room at Prince Hill House as a host of folk stayed on the show weekends. After one spectacularly late night, I stirred at some unearthly hour as the grey fingers of dawn were afoot. (Mixed metaphor intended.) Was that a figure squatting at the end of my bed? It was. Were they naked? They appeared to be. I might not have been fully compos mentis but it was definitely female. And … oh no … going to the toilet.
‘Stop … don’t do it … not here.’
‘But answer came there none.’
She squatted, soaked the carpet and was gone. Like a relief in the night.
For one of the shows (with trousers securely fastened) Michael and I wrote a millennium hymn, ‘2,000 Years’, which was performed brilliantly by the local choir, and also another Italian song emerged. I used the same trick – non c’è problema. I was becoming an old hand now. This time I checked my past participles and adjectival agreements with a waitress in an Italian restaurant in Devizes, as you do. The song, ‘È stato amore’ (delicious with a glass of Perrier-Jouet), along with ‘Ci vediamo’ (on or off the bone), could become the foundation for my first Italian album. No, wait! There’s a third I’d completely forgotten about. When we had the group Amber on the go, way back when, Dave, our drummer, and Martin, our bass player, had this wheeze that it might be easy to get a recording deal in Italy. Not only did they have a contact there, but Martin’s father was a director of KLM Airlines, which enabled them to procure a couple of very cheap flights. They said that songs with English lyrics were perfectly acceptable, but it might be the icing on the cake if we had one in Italian. I don’t remember forgoing food to buy an Italian dictionary back then, and there was no internet, so I have no idea how I managed it. Their destination was Milan, so I wrote a song with a title that might impress, which when translated meant ‘People of Milan, we love you’. I didn’t know the inhabitants of the city, nor was I cognizant of their behaviour, but suddenly I felt close to them. I’m not even sure of the spelling now, but it phonetically it was something like ‘Milanese noi amore, Milanese noi amore, noi piacca on y giorno, tutta cosa da qui et buono’ and so on. Heaven knows what it meant after we got past the title, but with a little brushing up, a following wind and the English-Italian dictionary it could be the third track on my ever-growing Italian CD. Of course we didn’t get a deal from the Milan record company, who obviously saw through my rather thin and weedy plan, but the guys did come back with a case full of free airport sugar and condiments, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
In the mid to late ’90s I began to write the songs that would become the second Betjeman album. There was no real plan or sense of purpose, they simply started emerging and were written on a beaten-up guitar, lying around at Alison’s flat, that wouldn’t even tune up properly. It’s odd that I used a severely impaired instrument when I had plenty of good ones, but that’s how it goes sometimes. It’s not the guitar, it’s what’s inside your head that’s important, and indeed whether you can extract it to satisfaction. I was introduced to producer Jon Sweet, who got what I was doing straight away, so it seemed natural for him to work with me on the album. Most of the demos were done in his studio at Yeovil and there was a feeling that something really creative was happening. There was a vibe, as they say in more cosmic moments.
Again, as we were working we talked about who could sing certain tracks, but as with the first album I’d only approach an artist if I felt that the song was absolutely right for them. The power and pace of ‘Narcissus’ seem
ed ideal for Marc Almond and to my delight he delivered a really dramatic and highly polished performance. Colin Blunstone bravely took on two songs, ‘In Memory’ and ‘Peggy’, and was sensitive and unique as always, while the late Paul Young, of Sad Café and Mike and the Mechanics fame, was equally superb on ‘Greenaway’. Leo Sayer rushed into the studio having hardly had time to listen to his song properly, but pulled out the stops to sing in a very different style for him, amid trumpets and Spanish guitars. Richard Sharp (who you’ll recall from Ricky Nelson – Teenage Idol), still relatively unknown, really delivered on the Byrds-esque ‘Pershore Station’.
The melody for Cliff’s song, ‘November Night’, I wrote at Jon Sweet’s house on the morning of the funeral of the Princess of Wales. I woke while it was still dark and felt this compulsion to get up and write. By the time Jon emerged I’d completed it. I played it to him and he agreed that it was right up Cliff’s street. He was an ideal judge, having written ‘Ocean Deep’, one of Cliff’s most enduring songs. Cliff got into the spirit of it and we shot a moody-ish video for it at a church at Bakewell in Derbyshire followed by a slap-up tea with what we were told were Bakewell puddings, not Bakewell tarts. It was worth going, for that knowledge alone.
The album also included another version of ‘Myfanwy’, this time sung by Gene Pitney, and again we did a video for it. It was meant to be set on the Cherwell at Oxford, but due to Gene’s commitments, we had to make it on the Granta at Grantchester. Thanks to my friend Robin Callan I was able to use the Orchard Tea Garden, bag a punt and shoot on that section of the river. Here was the guy who’d had hits with ‘Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa’ and ‘Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart’ singing in the garden where Philby, Burgess and Maclean had plotted over tea, where Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Lytton Strachey and Rupert Brooke discussed literature and where Wittgenstein and Russell wrestled with the problems of the day. Another moment to add to the tableau of the Orchard’s rich history.