Over the Moon

by David Essex

  All of my dad’s surviving family and friends came to his funeral in the East End. I gave an address, but I honestly cannot to this day remember a word that I said. A choir of children from my primary school, Star Lane, sang a hymn as his coffin was carried through the church, and he was laid to rest in the East London Cemetery. I was proud that the day was as dignified as my dad had always been.

  22

  WAS THAT MY LIFE?

  LOSING YOUR PARENTS may be one of those rites of passage in life that everybody has to go through but it is not easy. The wounds heal very slowly. The hardest part is the eerie moments when you forget they have gone and suddenly remember the awful truth with a jolt, like aftershocks of the initial seismic shift. I had a lot of those in the months after my dad’s death.

  Living with me and Carlotta, Mum slowly and bravely began to rebuild her life. She was only sixty-nine but like many of her generation there was no question of her ever meeting anybody else, or even trying to: that was it, for her. But I think being around Bill and Kit’s youthful energy certainly helped her to recover.

  For my part, I was still labouring through She Stoops to Conquer at the Queen’s and had a very bizarre experience a few days after my dad’s funeral. Pulling into the nearby Soho Square to look for a parking place, I became aware of a spooky silence then saw two men crawling on the pavement in suits and ties.

  From nowhere, a man jumped in front of my car, pointed a gun at me and ordered me to get out. I later learned that he had snatched somebody’s bag and when the police had cornered him in Soho Square, he had produced a gun. I had blundered into the middle of a standoff.

  I was in no mood to surrender my car to him and so pointed it at him and hit the accelerator. I was trying to move him out of the way, not knock him down him, but the wing clipped him on the leg. As I pulled away he fired a shot at the car, and then another. I swerved quickly down a side-road and as I swung around and returned near to the theatre to try to park, I saw my assailant again. This time he was running, with a noticeable limp.

  At the interval of that evening’s performance I had to go to the stage door to talk to two plain-clothes policemen. I told them all that I knew and played the incident down to the hordes of journalists that were also crowding the stage door, although this didn’t stop a rash of POP STAR’S HIJACK DRAMA headlines the next day. The police arrested and charged the gunman a few days later.

  She Stoops to Conquer ended its run shortly afterwards and I was not sorry to see it go. It had not been the happiest of times and the drudgery of doing one show for so long made me loath to take on any more long theatre runs. I decided that, for now at least, a few weeks of The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe each Christmas would do me fine.

  This didn’t mean I wasn’t still open to new work avenues and experiences, and in the mid-nineties Mel commissioned me to write the music for a Russian ice ballet company production of Beauty and the Beast that he was staging at the Royal Albert Hall. The writer, David Wood, had supplied a storyline that I would flesh out with songs and a score.

  This venture hadn’t got off to the most auspicious start as its launch press conference and photo-shoot had coincided with my spell in the Hospital for Tropical Diseases recovering from the Tick Typhus fever that I had picked up in Malawi. Nevertheless, I had been determined not to let Mel down and had defied doctors’ orders to lurch groggily into the limo that turned up at the hospital to pick me up.

  The launch was at an ice rink in central London, and I have a vague memory of smiling wanly for photographers and even managing to complete a few circuits of the rink with some Amazonian Russian skaters before the limo returned me to my feverish sickbed. Maybe those doctors had had a point.

  The ballet was finally staged in 1995 and Ian Wherry helped me to produce and arrange the soundtrack. This involved lengthy conversations with artistic director and choreographer Tatiana Tarasova, an animated and autocratic Russian who possibly felt a pop musician was a little beneath her.

  Tatiana’s English was exactly as fluent as our Russian, which meant that our meetings were conducted via a somewhat mousy, browbeaten female interpreter. ‘What kind of music would Tatiana like for this scene?’ I would ask the interpreter, and after much shouting and gesticulating from Ms Tarasova, an answer would come back: ‘She say she want monkey-up-a-rope music.’

  My suggestion of appointing a director to give some shape and organisation to the production was overruled, and composing the music was a fraught process as the dance scenes constantly lengthened and shortened at Tatiana’s whim. Nevertheless I was proud of the score, which I think features some of my strongest ever songs, and with Olympic gold-medal skaters whizzing around the ice, Beauty and the Beast was a gorgeous spectacle.

  The night of the Albert Hall grand charity gala opening came round far too quickly, and with our monkey-up-a-rope music still in a state of flux, Ian and I got virtually no sleep in the week leading up to it. On the big night my fatigue battled with nerves, not least because the troublesome portable ice rink had lately developed a habit of melting in rehearsals, nearly submerging the skaters.

  Thankfully, the ice remained frozen, the skaters were poetry in motion and the score seemed to go down well. A Russian TV crew even compared it to Tchaikovsky. The reception at the end was tremendous and Tatiana and I were ushered out on a red carpet on the rink to take a bow, which is apparently the normal etiquette in ballet circles.

  The deafening applause ran its course and then for no obvious reason rose in intensity again, augmented with whooped cheers, which baffled me. I glanced behind me and was perturbed to see TV host Michael Aspel stepping gingerly over the ice towards me carrying a big red book.

  I knew what he was going to say before he said it: ‘David Essex – This Is Your Life.’

  I had always told Derek and Mel that I did not want to be the subject of this programme, in the unlikely event that I was ever asked, but my managers had clearly overruled me and now there was nothing I could do about it. The die was cast. Feeling mildly delirious from sleep deprivation, I was whisked to a waiting car and on to BBC Television Centre, where I was locked in a dressing room.

  As midnight passed and I sat secluded in this bare cell, the thought occurred that it was not unlike being taken prisoner. My wait ended after a couple of hours when a make-up lady arrived to hide the lines and bags under my eyes and I was led to the studio.

  As I walked into the brightly lit room, the experience was akin to my whole life flashing before my eyes in one shifting mosaic. My family and friends were arranged all around the studio, including some people I had not seen for years. I might have always been sceptical about this programme but clearly this was going to be quite a night.

  The first people on were my mum, Verity, Dan and Carlotta, which was how it should be. My old West Ham youth team pal Frank Lampard was one of the next guests up. He recalled our kickabouts under Avondale Court and said that he reckoned I could have made it as a professional footballer had rock ’n’ roll not come along. I was far from convinced but it was a lovely compliment.

  Michael Aspel slickly led the studio audience through my life and career, with Sir David Puttnam appearing on video to reminisce about That’ll Be the Day and Stardust. I got a goodly selection of knights of the realm, with Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber praising my performance in Evita. Even good old Sir Peter Hall put in an appearance.

  Yet the night’s highlight by far was a surprise piece of film footage. Following in their father’s footsteps, Kit and Bill had recently joined the West Ham academy, and the This Is Your Life producers had filmed them nutmegging Rio Ferdinand and skinning Frank Lampard Junior before Billy curled the ball around goalie Luděk Mikloško and into the top corner of the net. It was so cool, and I had the world’s broadest beam at the end of the show when Kit and Bill appeared in the studio on the shoulders of World Cup-winning former Hammer Geoff Hurst.

  There was one major omission from the show. Derek Bowman, the mentor who had show
n such faith in me right from the days when I was the wet-behind-the-ears drummer in an East End pub band called the Everons, and who had opened my eyes to the infinite possibilities of show business, was not there.

  Derek had been spasmodically ill for quite some time, suffering from high blood pressure and a range of other ailments, and was in hospital, where his dignity counselled against sending This Is Your Life a video message from his sickbed. He was not to leave that bed. On 1 June 1995, he died.

  Derek and I were alone in his hospital room in the early hours as he passed away. As he left me, I softly sang the words of a song I had written for him many years previously called ‘Friends’:

  Friends, you and I we are friends,

  Friends right up to the end

  We are friends, friend

  Friends, right through the thick and thin

  If we are out or in

  We are friends, friend

  And every road you walk along

  I’ll be by your side

  Every dream you dream

  I’ll try to materialise the vision in your eyes

  A dream, you and I had a dream

  But so many dreams we’ve seen

  We’ve seen fade, fade

  But there’s someone, he really cares

  Someone that’s been so true

  I love you, friend

  I thought of the day he had told me in the Arts Theatre Club in Soho that he thought I could be a solo star, and of the evening he turned up to meet my parents, a contract under his arm. He had given me all he had and my career would not have happened without him. Quite literally, I owed him everything.

  I spoke at Derek’s burial a few days later and it reminded me again what a selfless man he had been. Having dedicated his life to his mother, his sister and me, there were no descendants, no children or grandchildren gathered in the church; just a snatch of distant relatives such as his cousin, the actor Ron Moody.

  It was a hugely upsetting experience and I couldn’t get through my eulogy without breaking down. I knew one thing: there had been too many deaths of dearly loved ones around here lately.

  23

  OLD BIG ’EAD TAKES A REST

  I DON’T KNOW if it was partly an unconscious reaction to my mentor and guiding light Derek passing away, but in the mid-nineties I began for the first time to think about the possibility of retirement, or at least semi-retirement. Certainly I think that losing both my dad and Derek in such a relatively short space of time made me more aware of my own mortality.

  For a while it seemed to me that I had done most of the things I had wanted to: films, theatre, albums, huge concert tours. It felt like time to take a break and I was having such a brilliant time hanging out with Carlotta, Bill and Kit, watching my boys play football and being part of their lives 24/7, that I pulled back a bit from the frenzy of showbiz.

  In any case, when it came to music it seemed like the decision had been made for me. Ever since the turn of the nineties, radio stations had ignored any recording I had made. This was crystal clear when Cover Shot hit number three and I listened to Radio One’s album chart rundown. When he reached the top of the chart, the DJ acknowledged my album but never played a track.

  I guess Radio One have their job to do and they are all about youth and the shock of the new, which means my generation of artists don’t get played. Status Quo and Cliff Richard have made a big fuss about being ignored by Radio One and I see their point but it’s not something I have a chip on my shoulder about. It is just the way things are.

  Yet it is frustrating as an artist to make records year-in, year-out that nobody hears and it’s dispiriting when a well-meaning member of the public asks me ‘Have you stopped making music?’ After all, the fact that my tours sell out means that people must still be interested. It’s a shame, but not worth getting bitter about.

  So in the mid-nineties I continued to plug away making albums like Living in England and Missing You and touring, as well as going on the odd adventure. In 1996 I returned to Africa under the auspices of Comic Relief on a venture that was awarded the less than gracious title of Balls to Africa.

  Because of my experience of Africa, I was made the captain of a football team of celebrities that included Frank Skinner, David Baddiel, Nick Hancock, Angus Deayton, Ainsley Harriott, Karl Howman and John Leslie. Our coach was ex-Arsenal manager Terry Neill, whose sole instruction to us was, ‘If you see someone in the same coloured shirt, pass to them.’ I guess it’s all you could expect from a Gooner.

  Terry turned up in a full Lawrence of Arabia outfit one night in Burkina Faso when a sandstorm blew up. We were also taken to meet some village elders, who ordered a dance ceremony in our honour. The native dancers’ beaded fringes went horizontal as they shimmied before us, leading the reliably irreverent Frank Skinner to turn to me and whisper: ‘Ooh, it’s a car wash!’ It was impossible not to laugh, even in a country where rainfall is a rare and precious commodity.

  The football highlight of our trip was a game against the Ghana women’s national team, which we managed to shade 4– 3. I was reasonably pleased with my performance, despite being woman-marked by a combative opponent not unlike a female take on Alvin Martin.

  Back home on the domestic front, Bill and Kit were now settled in school in England and Carlotta and I decided to get married. This entailed Maureen and I finally getting divorced first: as we had been separated for seventeen years by now, it was probably about time. Maureen was also happily settled with her current partner, Jeremy, who has always been great with Verity and Dan.

  A natural free spirit, Carlotta was fairly lukewarm about getting married, and in truth so was I. Both of us were perfectly happy as we were, but in some quarters there is still this ridiculous, old-fashioned stigma about having unmarried parents, and we didn’t want Bill and Kit to suffer from that.

  For the second time in my life, it was a low-key registry office wedding with no reception and no honeymoon. It was a happy day, though, and my best man was Mick the Greek, a security man that I had first met on Mutiny! By then he was more like a brother to me, as he still is today.

  So the second half of the nineties were very much about family as my music career ticked over in the background. It was hard to believe but 1998 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of ‘Rock On’, and Phonogram marked the occasion with a Best of collection. As I also released a new album, Here We Are All Together, I played not one but two tours that year.

  The following year I put out I Still Believe – even if Radio One clearly no longer did! – and another fifty-four-date tour climaxed at the Albert Hall. Yet my major news event of 1999 saw me receive a summons from Buckingham Palace.

  The New Year Honours List brought the news that I had been awarded an OBE, or made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, for my music and charity work. This entitled me to use the letters after my name, although my kids soon made it clear that if I did anything so presumptuous, they would be referring to me, Brian Clough-style, as Old Big ’Ead.

  You are allowed to take three people to your investiture, which was an incredibly hard decision, but I settled on Mum, Verity and Dan. Incredibly excited, my mum bought a new hat for the auspicious occasion, and it was one of the very few times I had ever seen Danny suited and booted.

  We felt on top of the world as we drove into the palace grounds on the big day. They say pride comes before a fall, though, and my elation was temporarily punctured when an attendant took one look at me driving the car and asked if I was there to drop somebody off.

  Her Majesty the Queen herself was giving out the gongs that day, rather than the Prince of Wales who sometimes stands in, and before the ceremony I mingled with the other lucky OBE recipients. They were a fascinating and talented bunch, from senior medics who had cured fatal diseases to architects who had designed life-saving third world dams, and to me their achievements all seemed so much more worthy than mine.

  When the time came we filed into a large state room and
I waited nervously to renew my acquaintance with HRH. As my name was called, I stepped forward and bowed my head before the Queen.

  She took my hand, shook it and at the same time pushed it away, which apparently she has to do as often people are so awestruck to meet her that their brain freezes and they cling on to her hand for ages, gawping and pumping her arm furiously.

  ‘The VSO is a marvellous organisation and you fully deserve this,’ she told me as she pinned my OBE on me. Oddly enough, although it had been awarded for my charity work and my music, she didn’t say a word about the latter. It was almost enough to make you think that she hadn’t got any of my albums.

  It had been a fantastic day, and for a patriotic man and a royalist like me it had been incredibly special. Mum, Verity, Dan and I posed for family portraits in the Buckingham Palace grounds afterwards and they all looked as proud as I felt.

  I might have been moving in the highest of social circles that day but you never forget your roots and when Britain’s Gypsy Council asked me to become its patron soon afterwards, I was honoured to accept. The Council is a body that seeks to improve people’s understanding of the travelling community, which I think is a very worthy aim. To this end, they made a video in which I met and chatted with some Romany gypsies, sang a few songs with them around a campfire and poked around a traditional caravan.

  Even today, when prejudices such as homophobia and racism have largely been eradicated, there is still far too much negative feeling towards gypsies, especially in Eastern Europe, where they suffer terrible persecution. Even here, people will regularly toss ‘pikey’ and ‘tatter’ about as casual insults.

  I won’t pretend I am steeped in gypsy life and lore nowadays but I will always feel closeness with that community. When the Dale Farm furore kicked off last year, the Daily Mail called me for ‘my reaction’. I didn’t give one: it was far too big a topic to be captured in a glib soundbite. I just agree with what my mum always said: ‘A land without gypsies is a land without freedom.’