Authors: David Essex
Nevertheless, through all of this I always assumed that Maureen and I were simply going through a bad patch and would survive it, and this idea was strengthened when she told me that she was pregnant. We were both delighted: surely another child could only bring us closer together again?
Jeff had meanwhile been beavering away on
War of the Worlds
and called to ask if I wanted to be involved. It was an extremely tempting offer. Jeff had persuaded the Welsh Hollywood legend Richard Burton to narrate his concept album, and my old friend and
Godspell
colleague Julie Covington to sing on it.
I flew back to London and went back into Advision, where I was incredibly impressed with
War of the Worlds
. Jeff had done a typically amazing job on the music and arrangements and his father Jerry and stepmother Doreen’s dialogue brought H G Wells’ narrative to life. It was an honour to sing the part of the Artillery Man on the record.
Richard Burton was filming in Los Angeles so Jeff and I flew out to record his contribution. We were both fairly nervous about working with such a Hollywood god and had prepared for our meeting meticulously. Before we left London, I read out Richard’s lines so that Jeff could time and record the music to play beneath his dialogue.
Out in LA, filming commitments meant that Richard blew out our first two recording-studio appointments. When he finally
arrived,
Jeff eagerly explained that he had prepared the music for him to read over, both for the atmosphere and to let him gauge the time of each speech. In his glorious, rich baritone, Richard declined: ‘No music, thank you. I’ll just read it.’
We were in the presence of a master. Richard was a genius, a consummate professional, a walking party and great company, and I’m proud to report that we became friends. His fondness for a drink would invariably trigger a torrent of brilliant theatrical anecdotes.
He had me in tears of laughter when he told me about playing a Shakespeare season in Stratford-on-Avon with his fellow Welsh actor Hugh Griffiths and spending a long liquid afternoon toasting Hugh’s birthday. That evening, his role in one of the Bard’s dramas required him to wear chainmail.
Caught short on stage after his long pub session, Richard had no choice but to pee quietly down his leg and on to the boards. The audience never noticed, but the same couldn’t be said for Sir Michael Redgrave, who strode on stage to deliver a bare-footed soliloquy and found himself paddling in Burton’s hidden golden shower. Richard said Sir Michael had never forgiven him.
The War of the Worlds
enjoyed phenomenal success when it was released in 1978, topping charts around the world and going on to spend more than four years in the British album chart. It was quite a compliment when Richard Burton claimed he was as proud of his platinum disc as he would have been of an Oscar.
For my part, I had rather more pressing matters on my mind, and was soon even prouder than Burton. On 20 April 1978, Maureen gave birth to our son, Dan, at the Queen Charlotte
Hospital
in Hammersmith. It was the first and only time I was present for the birth of one of my children, and that may be a good thing, because I hardly covered myself in glory.
I was there encouraging Maureen all the way through, but just as the baby emerged, there was a split-second when neither of us knew what sex it was and we just stared at the midwife. As she beamed and told us, ‘Congratulations – you have a little boy!’ my knees inexplicably buckled beneath me and I crashed to the floor like Peter Sellers at his zaniest.
Bouncing back to my feet, I told the bemused occupants of the delivery suite, ‘Sorry – I’ll be back in a minute!’ and bolted to the next room, where I decided to call family and friends to tell them the good news. You had to dial nine to get an outside line from the hospital phone, but nobody had told me and I was obviously in no state to work it out.
I thus diligently spent the following twenty minutes attempting to dial my parents’ and Derek’s numbers, only to be interrupted by the hospital receptionist on the line asking if she could help me. ‘No thank you, I’m trying to make a phone call,’ I would reply politely, before repeating the entire process. Clearly fatherhood does strange things to the brain.
We chose the name Daniel partly because Maureen has Irish antecedents, including an Uncle Danny, but mostly just because we liked it and I thought Dan Cook sounded like a good, strong, manly name. Certainly more manly than his dad, who the next evening cemented his reputation as the Frank Spencer of the delivery ward.
I have never been a big drinker, and after a lively evening with Steve Colyer and a couple of other music-biz friends wetting the
baby’s
head, I returned to the Queen Charlotte. Overcome by happiness and, more to the point, lager, I snuck up to Maureen’s ward, climbed in bed with her fully clothed, and passed out.
Understandably, the ward sister found it hard to keep a straight face as she admonished me the next morning. I guess that I should think myself lucky she never phoned the
Sun
to tell them all about it, as would probably happen today.
NOBODY HAS EVER
looked as cool as Che Guevara. As a teenager, it was his moody visage that hung off my bedroom wall, not that of Bobby Moore or Martin Peters. I can’t claim that I was ever steeped in the intricacies of Latin American revolutionary politics but somehow the image of Che, like that of Jimi Hendrix, seemed to epitomise the radicalism of the sixties, the era of change.
After years of solo music work, guesting on the lavishly theatrical
War of the Worlds
album and meeting Richard Burton had rekindled my interest in the theatre. So when Derek and Mel got a call asking if I might be interested in appearing in a new Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber musical called
Evita
, it was a bit of a no-brainer.
There was already a buzz about the show, with its rock opera concept album in the charts and my good friend Julie Covington enjoying a hit with one of the lead songs from the production, ‘Don’t Cry For Me Argentina’ (although she turned down the chance to play Eva Perón, which went to Elaine Paige). I went to meet the director, big-name Broadway producer Hal Prince, who had produced or directed
West Side Story, Fiddler on the
Roof
and
Cabaret
. He told me his vision for the show, I sang him ‘I Think I’m Going Out of My Head’ and he asked me to play the part I coveted: Che.
I accepted eagerly, but then had to fight for my vision of the role when rehearsals began in May 1978. Hal, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber all felt that I should play Che as a young student to reflect the reality of him being a lot younger than the Peróns, whereas I wanted to capture the Che that everyone instinctively imagines: the iconic, romantic, bearded revolutionary in battle fatigues. Thankfully, I won the day.
Where
Godspell
had been an intimate ensemble piece, stitched together by a cast who felt like a family,
Evita
was a far more lavish and starry production. One similarity, though, was that John-Michael Tebelak had been laissez-faire to the point of being comatose directing
Godspell
, and now Hal Prince showed an equal lack of interest in directing me.
Hal channelled his energies into working with Joss Ackland and Elaine as the Peróns and gave me enormous freedom to interpret the role of Che as I saw fit. I would wander on stage, deliver my lines and wander off. The only feedback I remember Hal giving me during the entire rehearsals came when he told me, ‘You are marvellous when you’re angry.’
This suited me as I researched and read more and more about Guevara. It was impossible not to be drawn to this fascinating icon, a poet and asthmatic whose ideals led him to abandon his medical studies and take up arms as a guerrilla opposed both to the tyrants in his native land and in Cuba, where he famously instigated the revolution alongside Fidel Castro.
Che seemed a role that I had been born to play and I like to think that I brought quite a presence to it. It helped that my Romany ancestry had given me the same kind of blue-eyed, dark-haired looks captured in his classic portrait, and my naturally laconic nature lent an edge to his idealistic intensity. There was no need for histrionics: if anything, I under-acted, to draw people in.
I steeped myself in Che to the degree that I consciously didn’t socialise with Joss and Elaine, fine actors and good people both, in case it diluted the onstage antipathy between us. As the first night neared, the rehearsals became overwrought and there were quite a few tantrums: thankfully, none of them involved me.
The first previews of
Evita
at the Prince Edward Theatre piqued already strong media interest near to fever pitch and the opening night on 21 June was a success beyond our wildest dreams. The audience loved this huge, passionate, melodramatic production and it felt as if the standing ovation at the curtain call would never end. Hal Prince might have left me to my own devices but his vision for the overall production had been immaculate.
The critics largely mirrored the audiences’ approbation, with Derek Jewell of the
Sunday Times
declaring
Evita
to be ‘quite marvellous’ and praising Andrew Lloyd Webber’s score as ‘an unparalleled fusion of twentieth-century musical experience’. They were also highly complimentary about my interpretation of the brooding, enigmatic Che. We were off to a flyer.
Meanwhile, now I was free of CBS and their sinister creative control, Derek and Mel had been shopping around for a new record deal for me. They negotiated an agreement with Phonogram
Records,
who suggested that my first single for them should be a song from
Evita
.
This seemed an eminently sensible idea, and the very talented Mike Batt came in to produce ‘Oh What a Circus’, backed with another of Che’s tunes in ‘High Flying, Adored’. The single was both high flying and adored, and went to number three in the chart: my first Top Ten hit in three years.
As Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber productions tend to be,
Evita
was a society event as well as a glittering spectacle, and the beautiful people of show business, music and even royalty all beat a path to its door. During my six months in the show, my cramped post-show dressing room attracted some venerable names keen to offer their congratulations.
Princess Margaret came back to tell me, ‘What’s good about your part is you’re not on all the time.’ This comment could be taken in two ways, and I very much hope that she meant it as a compliment. Her remark to Elaine Paige was even more gnomic: ‘It must be awful, dying every night.’
I would never have imagined Bob Dylan to be a fan of opulent West End musicals but he materialised in my dressing room to announce that he’d enjoyed the evening a lot. It probably meant a bit more to me, though, when he added ‘…and “Rock On” is really good, man.’
Yet in truth I often found something inescapably awkward about these brief backstage audiences with the glitterati. Maybe it was partly because I had only just come off stage and was still in my revolutionary, anti-Establishment Che mindset, and my shyness obviously played a part as well.
Fundamentally to blame, though, is an inverted snobbery bound up in my East End roots. It is hard to explain away except to say that faced with a legendary figure whose presence is expected to inspire awe, my reaction can be a strange, nebulous resentment. So Steven Spielberg is in the audience – so f****** what? It’s the same rebellious urge that still, even today, makes me feel itchy in posh restaurants.
So while it was nice of charming Hollywood royalty Cary Grant to tell me I had incredible charisma, his words kind of went in one ear and out the other. Katharine Hepburn came and went in a flurry of whispered ‘Wonderful, darlings!’ and although I know I met Ingrid Bergman at
Evita
, I don’t really remember a thing about it.
American cinema legend and
My Fair Lady
director George Cukor was a lovely guy, your perfect granddad, and we met up again later once or twice. I have also stayed in touch with John Travolta, who had just had a huge hit in
Grease
. It was funny to remember that, at the height of Essex Mania, I had briefly been touted for that role.
There was talk of me having further involvement in
Evita
but it came to nothing. Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber thought of using Elaine Paige and I to open the show in New York, but eventually it was decided to cast American actors.
A few years later, Oliver Stone was scheduled to direct the film of
Evita
and he and I met up to discuss his hard-hitting vision of the movie and how I might play Che. I was very impressed with Stone’s no-nonsense demeanour and his work-hard, play-hard attitude led to a couple of lively nights out.
Unfortunately, Oliver got bumped from the project in favour of Alan Parker, who made a weak film that I thought totally lacked the revolutionary fervour that the story demanded. To be frank, I thought it was pretty crap, although Madonna was a good Eva Perón and didn’t deserve the snippy reviews she inevitably got.
Still, I picked up a flurry of British theatre awards for
Evita
and thoroughly enjoyed my time on the show. A proper old-school trouper, I even laboured through a week’s performances with German measles. Typically prurient, the
Daily Mail
warned any pregnant theatregoers to sit at the back of the circle.
Evita
was still a hot ticket when I bowed out from the show on 4 November 1978, to the extent that tickets for that night were changing hands for £500 on the black market. It had been a thrill and re-established me in the theatre world. So, with typical contrariness, I set about returning to music and cinema.
AFTER THE SUCCESS
of
That’ll Be the Day
and
Stardust
, Derek and Mel had been offered quite a few film roles for me to consider. They were a decidedly mixed bag. The chance to star opposite Joan Collins in
The Stud
held little appeal. There is a distinctly Victorian aspect to my nature, and I had no wish to do soft porn: after all, when I had filmed sex scenes in my previous films, I had always kept my underpants on.