Authors: David Essex
The producers were becoming understandably impatient and even though we still didn’t feel entirely ready,
Mutiny!
opened on 24 July 1985, the day after my (extremely apprehensive) thirty-eighth birthday. Thankfully the technical gremlins stayed away,
HMS Bounty
remained afloat, and after all the grief we had been through, the standing ovation at the curtain call sounded like the music of the spheres.
This approbation was reflected in the comments of the guests at the after-show party, with some people saying that it was the best musical they had ever seen, so the newspaper reviews the next morning were a punch in the stomach. They were terrible: the first time a project I had starred in had been utterly savaged.
The gist of the criticism seemed to be that as a mere pop star, I had ideas above my station in attempting both to write and star in a musical, a feat of creative multi-tasking that had previously only been achieved by such luminaries as Noël Coward and Anthony Newley. The slating seemed extreme, gratuitous and unfair, but luckily the public voted with their feet, the standing ovations kept coming and
Mutiny!
sailed on a successful eighteen-month run.
Carlotta was back in America for much of
Mutiny!
’s run and our unrestrictive, kind-of open relationship was on a bit of a break. I found myself growing very close to Sinitta, the young American singer who was the female lead in the production as Fletcher’s girlfriend, Miamiti. She was a great girl, full of life and vitality, and eventually our onstage relationship grew into a real-life affair.
Sinitta and I had a lovely time together, and when we went our separate ways as Carlotta and I hooked up again, we did so with a lot of mutual affection and no bad feelings. It seems a shame to me that her music career has always been defined by her novelty eighties hit, ‘So Macho’. It has been the same mill-stone around her neck as the Wombles have been for the ultra-talented Mike Batt, and ‘
Oh my, thigh high, dig dem dimples on dem knees
’ could have been for me all those years ago, had I been unlucky enough for it to be a hit.
Mutiny!
gave me a huge sense of achievement in having dreamt up, written and performed such a vast project in the West End. Nevertheless, it was a very demanding show to be at the heart of, especially as the looming
HMS Bounty
was such an erratic and unpredictable co-star.
In the end the troublesome vessel didn’t give us too many problems apart from occasionally gently bumping the back wall of the theatre, although once it overshot its stage mark for a crucial scene. This meant that we found ourselves accidentally acting out a burial at sea with our backs to the puzzled audience.
As our ever-professional Captain Bligh, Frank Finlay delivered a magisterial address to the back wall of the theatre: as Frank is slightly short-sighted it is possible he had not even realised that anything was wrong. We might even have got away with it had not one cast member, Bill Snape, slipped on the misplaced set and farted loudly as he fell, triggering a giggling fit among the funeral party, including the Union Jack-covered corpse.
Eighteen months was the longest time I had been in any show since
Godspell
and I must admit that
Mutiny!
took its toll on me. Towards the end of the run, I was definitely beginning to flag: I seemed to have a permanent cold and was pretty run-down.
I remember that Cliff Richard was starring in a musical nearby called
Time
, and one matinee show he brought the whole cast down with him to check out the friendly competition. It was a pity that I was feeling so rough that particular day that I growled through my entire performance like Lee Marvin on downers.
I could easily have lapsed into seeing out the end of the run on autopilot were it not for a very necessary wake-up call. After
one
lacklustre matinee show, an American tourist left a letter on Savoy Hotel-headed notepaper for me at the stage door. It basically said, ‘If you don’t want to be in this very fine show, then why don’t you leave?’ He was completely right: he had detected that I was merely going through the motions, and his comment shocked me back to the top of my game.
Nevertheless, I must admit that I was relieved when the curtain came down on the last
Mutiny!
one Saturday in November 1986. By the following Monday, I was high in the sky and on my way to a distant and wonderfully distracting corner of the globe. It felt very much like time for another solo travelling adventure.
AFTER THE STRESSES
and strains of eight
Mutiny!
shows a week, a trip to India seemed exactly what the doctor ordered. Intrigued by the much-vaunted spirituality of this mysterious, sprawling land, I resolved to see as much of it as possible and headed off with little except a few changes of clothes in my backpack.
I was also determined to stay in guesthouses and B&Bs owned by local people as much as possible. I have spent far too much of my life in anonymous chain hotels and did not want to ape Lou Reed, who once told me that he had decorated his New York apartment like a Holiday Inn so that he would feel at home when he was on tour. I trust he was joking.
When you first arrive in India, all the preconceived clichés seem to be true. The rutted roads are a kinetic chaos, with fume-belching trucks, tuk-tuk taxis, boneshaker bicycles and lowing cows all competing for space. Poverty is rampant, and in the big cities like Mumbai (or Bombay, as it was then) and Delhi, spices and sewage intermingle pungently in the humid air. Yet the country is addictive and fascinating.
Arriving in Delhi, I got my bearings and sampled a local curry or two – basically bones in spicy gravy – before heading
over
to Mumbai. I made friends with two Air India air hostesses and one of them invited me to stay with her and her boyfriend, who allowed me to take my life in my hands and take his motorbike into the city’s traffic. There is no rush hour in Mumbai:
every
hour is rush hour.
There were intriguing sights everywhere I looked. In Mumbai I saw vultures circling over a building occupied by holy men with beards down to their waists and talon-like long fingernails. My hosts later explained that when these ultra-religious men died, their bodies were left in a place called the Towers of Silence for the vultures to devour. The birds were waiting for their supper.
Nobody visits India without seeing the Taj Mahal but the most memorable feature of my train journey to Agra was gazing out of the window of the packed carriage to see countless local men crouching and unloading some generous post-breakfast bowel movements by the side of the tracks. At least the dazzling white temple itself was just as breathtaking as its advance reputation suggests.
My next port of call was the famous ‘pink city’ of Jaipur where my wish for unusual places to stay was more than satisfied. A friendly tuk-tuk driver delivered me to a palace that was run by a maharajah who he said was a little down on his luck and would rent out occasional rooms to tourists he took a shine to.
The palace was like a museum to the long-lost days of the Raj, with elephants’ tusks mounted in the hallway, gold paint flaking everywhere and flea-bitten peacocks roaming the grounds. My red-and-gold bedroom held a spectacularly hard four-poster bed and a zoo’s-worth of stuffed hunting trophies, including a rather baleful-looking stuffed tiger’s head.
I was told dinner would be served in one hour, and after a gong sounded I wandered down to the dining hall. As the only guest, I was the sole occupant of a twenty-person dining table, but that didn’t stop the maharajah supplying ten staff to serve me. The food was good, but the fact that four or five over-servile waiters appeared at my elbow every time I so much as twitched made me feel ridiculously self-conscious.
The next day started well but then declined very, very badly. I trekked off to see some Hindu temples, even riding an elephant on the way, but made the mistake of buying an ice cream from a roadside vendor. Some grotesque projectile vomiting ensued, and by the time I made it back to the palace I had never felt so sick in my life.
For the next two or three days I hardly moved from the rock-hard bed. The maharajah brought a local doctor to see me and he gave me an injection from a giant needle and some brightly coloured pills that sent me off on a long, strange trip into the dark recesses of my mind. The tiger on the wall was by now looking particularly malevolent.
After a ropey few days I recovered enough to head off to Goa, a different experience entirely. This serene coastal area was full of hippies and Portuguese architecture, a souvenir from the former colonial power, and in the women’s looks I saw reminders that Goa had spawned many gypsies and Romany people. I also just about survived a scare when a badly over-crowded ferry sank as we were crossing a river.
My Indian odyssey came to an end in Srinagar at the foot of the Himalayas, a beautiful spot where I rented a floating house-boat.
Vendors
would call in tiny boats, selling anything that you could require, including a tailor who measured me for a shirt and then delivered it later the same day. It was bizarre to sit in this tranquil paradise and hear gunshots from the disputed Kashmir border between India and Pakistan just a few miles away.
Halfway up a mountain in Kashmir I met a holy man dressed in sun-faded orange robes. We sat and talked for hours about life, death and his theories of reincarnation. He told me he felt I was a kindred and much-travelled spirit and asked if I was a holy man in my own land. Maybe I should have told him that I once played Jesus.
India reinvigorated me and I returned to England fully refreshed in time for Christmas with Verity and Dan. Carlotta flew back to London and I began 1987 by recording a musical version of a poem by former Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman for an album that was compiled by Radio One DJ Mike Read. ‘Myfanwy’ was a minor hit.
I was keen to return to music and touring and began work on an album to be called
Touching the Ghost
. The title referred to the nebulous, almost mystical process of songwriting: I have always felt that trying to define where the initial spark of inspiration that builds into a song comes from is like trying to touch a ghost.
Feeling more inclined to work with a producer than produce the record myself, my mind drifted back to my old sparring partner Jeff Wayne and I realised how much I’d like to work with him again. I did not know how he would react, given the fractious experience of
Out on the Street
, but he was receptive when I
phoned
him, and when he jokingly greeted me at the door of his studio with a box of plasters and bandages, I knew we’d be OK.
We picked up exactly where we had left off a decade earlier, as the best friends always do, and making
Touching the Ghost
was a lively and creative process. I was also hankering for a return to the road so Mel Bush assembled one of his trademark fifty-date tours for the autumn.
The jaunt was about to begin when Carlotta dropped the bombshell that she was pregnant.
In all honesty, I was simultaneously thrilled and perturbed by this unexpected revelation. I was excited at the idea of becoming a dad again, and starting a family with Carlotta, but part of me worried how Verity and Dan would take the news. I knew that I couldn’t bear either of them to feel that they were no longer quite as important in my life.
Carlotta shared my concerns: she had become close to both of my kids, particularly Danny, and didn’t want to hurt them. With typical considerateness, she suggested that she return to Rhode Island for the pregnancy while I waited for a moment to break the news. I agreed and she flew back to America.
Carlotta, her pregnancy and my kids dominated my thoughts all through my autumn tour and she and I spoke on the phone every day. After the tour Christmas was upon us, and I decided to wait until the festive season had passed before trying to explain to Verity and Dan that they were not losing a dad but gaining a brother or sister.
It was a good thing that I did, because just after New Year 1988, Carlotta phoned with a scarcely believable, utterly unexpected news bulletin.
‘Are you sitting down?’ she asked me.
‘Why?’ I inquired.
‘It’s twins.’
‘No!’
‘Yes!’
‘Right,’ I said, lamely. ‘Blimey.’
It was a lot to take in but the more I thought about it, the happier I was about it. Bizarrely, this extraordinary news made it a little easier to spill the beans to Verity and Dan. Happy-go-lucky as nine-year-old boys always are, Danny thought the news was cool, although Verity seemed surprised and a little guarded.
The first chance that I got, I jumped on a plane to see Carlotta and check everything was OK. She was fine, although nearly as wide as she was tall, and we headed down to her local hospital for a scan. They had more news for us: it was two boys. I loved the prospect of two more sons, and Verity was relieved to know she would still be her daddy’s only girl.
Back in London, my stalwart PA Madge had a meeting request from a BBC drama producer named Susi Belbin. Mel and I headed down to Television Centre and the charming, husky-voiced Susi asked if I would consider taking the lead role in a sitcom called
The Lock-Keeper
.
Derek had always been understandably keen to keep me away from the cheesier, lowest-common-denominator elements of TV work and I’d always trusted his instincts but the meeting was a good one, and when Susi presented me with a handful of work-in-progress scripts, I promised to go away and read them.
When I did, I liked what I read. The comedy felt whimsical and gentle compared to the crass stereotypes and set-pieces of
traditional
sitcoms. I also thought the lock-keeping hero, Davey Jackson, an easy-going Cockney wide boy with a dodgy past and a gypsy soul, could almost have been written for me. Even Derek admitted the scripts were OK so I decided to give it a go.