Authors: Mike Read
I thought that Yoko might be demanding, challenging and difficult, but not a bit of it: she was charming, helpful and caring, even knocking on my hotel door to make sure that I was happy with everything. I was. Who wouldn’t be? The line-up was like a who’s who of music and included Lou Reed, The Moody Blues, Roberta Flack, Terence Trent d’Arby, Wet Wet Wet, Herbie Hancock, Al Green, Sarah Vaughan, Joe Cocker, Foreigner’s Lou Gramm, Deacon Blue, Cyndi Lauper and the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. The incredibly talented Dave Edmunds was the musical director, leading a top band.
Lou Reed, I remember, knocked out fair old versions of ‘Mother’ and ‘Jealous Guy’.
The venue was the Pier Head, where a 45,000-strong crowd gathered, flanked on one side by the River Mersey and on the other by the Liver, Cunard and Port of Liverpool Buildings. It doesn’t get much more Liverpool than that. Yoko told everyone that ‘John was committed in his life and music to spreading peace and harmony in the world in his generation and generations yet unborn’.
Yoko got a leading US designer, Michael Hoban, to make around a dozen top-quality leather jackets for the occasion, with ‘Lennon’ hand sewn, also in leather, on the back and a bird symbolising peace over the lettering. I was really made up to be given one of these items, as apart from its rarity value and the great memory it evoked, Michael’s other clients included Elvis Presley, Elton John, Diana Ross, Paul McCartney, Sammy Davis Jnr, the Rolling Stones and Tina Turner! Not bad for a guy who’d been the leader of a teenage street gang in the ’50s. I still have the jacket, but I’ve never found an appropriate event at which to wear it.
In 1992, alongside Kim Wilde, I launched the Panasonic Rock School (the
TSB Rockschool
’s successor), the national schools rock and pop contest, at London’s Rock Island Diner with the previous year’s runners-up, Project X. We had the ‘X’ then, and the judges as well as the national contest, so you could say it was a blueprint for
The X Factor
. Bizarrely, the press seemed to question whether encouraging young bands was the right thing to do in the light of several major artists having died of Aids. Citing Liberace, Freddie Mercury, Alan Murphy from Level 42 and Billy Lyall, an early member of the Bay City Rollers, they mentioned what a great job the Terrence Higgins Trust was doing and suggested pamphlets to read. Surely the implication wasn’t that music was to blame? Kim and I were press-ganged into busking in Piccadilly to publicise the event and encourage hundreds of young bands and singers to enter. Rather obviously I played guitar. Rather less obviously Kim played saxophone.
Although I’ve attended a few Royal Variety Performances, I’ve never performed in one. However, Keith Chegwin and I were the opening act for the Children’s Royal Variety Show one year, doing Mick Jagger and David Bowie’s version of ‘Dancing in the Street’ with matching all-white guitars. There were two or three attempts at starting the show, as the electrics failed more than once, plunging Keith, me, the audience and Princess Margaret into darkness. Chatting with her after the show, she was fairly gracious about the protracted start.
I love steam trains, so was delighted in 1994 to be asked to host a Steam weekend for Channel Four, live from the Bluebell Railway in Sussex. It would have been tough enough had we recorded it and the weather had been clement, but it hammered down all weekend, was completely live and jam packed with people. It was almost impossible to see the director signalling to me. Joe Brown did the ‘cooking the breakfast on the shovel in the cab of the engine’ trick that he’d done in his pre-rock & roll days as a fireman for British railways and his daughter Sam played on the platform with her band. With a delightful blend of a ton of water and live electrical equipment, how the hell there wasn’t mass electrocution I don’t know. David Shepherd exhibited his wonderfully atmospheric railway paintings and a rather spiffing steam weekend was had by all. There have fortunately been other TV shows I’ve done from railway engines, including one from the footplate of Sir Nigel Gresley and another from an engine they named
Saturday Superstore
. Having an engine bearing the name of a TV show you present is almost as good as having one with your own name on.
W
ORDS AND MELODIES
have always been a powerful and all-consuming passion. I have a pretty high percentage recall over where I first heard songs, my emotions on hearing them and how they affected me. In my infancy, a song was a song. Music appreciation was a blank canvas: there was no cool involved, nor any peer pressure, artist bias, hype or expectations. I understood at a very tender age (actually all ages are pretty tender one way and another) that it was the perfect marriage of words and music that made a great song. A sizzling tune with trite words rendered it quite useless to me, as did a strong lyric with journeyman crochets and quavers that even a small baboon could have written. Perhaps I was a strange child. On those golden summer pre-school days I’d trail my mother around the vegetable garden, prior to pea-shelling and cherry-picking duties, and catch strains of her singing ‘Me and Jane in a Plane’, ‘Mairzy Doats’ or ‘Papa Piccolino’. How could I possibly imagine that in the year 2000 I’d be discussing the origins of ‘Mairzy Doats’ with the song’s 87-year-old writer, Milton Drake, and talking about his brother Ervin’s bestselling ‘I Believe’? It was wonderful to hear first-hand how these songs had come about.
My paternal grandmother was not too shabby on the piano when she put her mind to it, while my maternal grandmother, Grandma Mitchell, had a pretty good singing voice. Her repertoire comprised songs from not only her youth, but my great-grandmother’s. Snatches of ‘Lily of Laguna’ and ‘I Wouldn’t Leave My Little Wooden Hut for You’ wove themselves around the household amid her tribe of barking dogs, whistling kettles, washing machines and a cleaning lady who made me squeal with delight by kicking her shoes up to the ceiling. Kids love stuff like that, simply because it’s not what adults normally do. I had no idea where these places like Laguna were, except that they sounded too exotic to be anywhere local. My grandmother was no one-trick pony in terms of her set list, as was shown by the more raucous ‘Kelly from the Isle of Man’, with ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World’ being her showstopper.
My maternal grandparents always had piles of sheet music lying around, in case anyone fancied bashing something out on the piano. This was where, well before reaching double figures, I discovered a treasure trove of Stephen Foster songs such as ‘Some Folks’, ‘The Old Folks at Home’ and ‘Oh! Susannah’. At home we too had a much-used upright, as well as a totally unused baby grand. The radio was always on and, bizarrely, we did have an early jukebox. My two favourites were ‘Mutual Admiration Society’ and ‘Music, Music, Music’. We were sadly lacking in the sheet music department, but one of the few pieces we did have was ‘On the Gin Gin Ginny Shore’. With retrospective wisdom, I ascertained that it was a Walter Donaldson song extolling the aquatic virtues of Virginia, but at what can only be described as a forgivable age, I thought it was about Virginia Water, which was not too far from us in Surrey. Not a cataclysmic mistake, I’m sure you’ll agree, but I compounded my error by singing the words to the tune of ‘Davy Crockett’, thereby brilliantly discovering songwriting and plagiarism simultaneously. Let’s be honest, it saves time.
Let’s bring in my maternal grandfather at this point, for he too had a not insignificant part to play. He opened my ears to what is,
somewhat scornfully, referred to as ‘light classical music’. He was naughty. When my grandmother’s attention was diverted, his guilty pleasures included reading comics, eating crisp sandwiches, dressing up to amuse me and listening to radio detective serials. I had no idea then what the stories were about (I know now, for I have dozens of them on CD) but it was the theme tunes that captivated me. The theme to the radio serial
Paul Temple
was a real winner and evoked the atmosphere of steam trains long before I knew the tune was called
Coronation Scot
, or that one day I’d sit next to the composer at lunch. Sadly I never met my favourite light classical composer, Eric Coates, the man responsible for such classics as
By the Sleepy Lagoon
(the
Desert Island Discs
theme),
The Dam Busters March
and my all-time favourite,
The Knightsbridge
March, but at least he has a trio of blue plaques.
Now songwriting at an early age is one thing: you hit a few notes on the piano, tell the singer to get on with it and wait for the royalties to pour in. Simple. Performing, however, I found a little trickier. The first time I attempted to entertain my family I exposed my inability to hold a note. As my sterner critics eagerly pointed out, the weak point in my armoury appeared to be breathing. Not that I couldn’t suck it in and pump it out as well as the next chap. I have a fine pair of bellows. It was the control that was beyond my grasp. My debut, a soul-stirring classic from the other side of the water called ‘Roll the Cotton Down’, failed to set the crowd alight. Many cried tears of mirth, but I had no aspiration to be a comedy turn. I was the romantic, angst-ridden, misunderstood songwriter and performer, and the small but unappreciative family audience needed to realise that.
My cotton-rolling period gave way to the more English ‘Out of Town’, a song suggested by my tap-dancing teacher, Auntie Joan. Dancing lessons were held in a spacious wooden-floored room in our house, with Auntie Barbara on the upright, plus ever-present cigarette and a glass of something medicinal. I was one of Auntie Joan’s ‘tinies’. Joan and Barbara weren’t my real aunts, but they were
in fact Julie Andrews’s aunt and mother respectively, Joan Morris and Barbara Andrews. For a while I was rather proud to be thought of as ‘tone deaf’, following Auntie Barbara’s frustrating declaration one afternoon. I could overcome this. I had passion, enthusiasm and youth on my side and they must count for something. In fact as late as 1998, and not having performed it since the age of six, I was able to bring both a smile and tears to Auntie Joan’s face when I sang ‘Out of Town’ to her word for word in her nursing home, not long before she died. Auntie Barbara would continue to be supportive in my attempts at writing songs and performing. She was both encouraging and influential and I remain indebted.
As a lad I clearly had an open mind musically. Not for me the juvenile devotion to Pinky and Perky covers, in an almost undetectable range, nor the blinkered fascination for bland ditties accompanying children’s stories. As well as the areas already covered, my appreciation also included cowboy themes like ‘Riders of the Range’, ‘Davy Crockett’ and ‘Home, Home on the Range’, in tandem with Celtic classics and hymns. In among the obvious and much-loved standards such as ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘I Vow to Thee, My Country’ were such aisle-rocking nuggets as ‘Glad That I Live Am I’, ‘Non nobis domine’, ‘For All the Saints’ and the moving (spiritually, topographically and geographically) ‘Hills of the North, Rejoice’. I still enjoy delving into
Hymns Ancient & Modern
, once even spending a happy quarter of an hour absorbed in its pages while visiting Charlie Brocket and waiting for him to emerge from the shower (I know, I know, I only take five minutes too). Freshly scrubbed, the strapping former Army officer glanced at the gargantuan volume of hymns and exclaimed in a surprised voice, ‘Crikey, I’ve got that book too.’ I gently explained that it
was
his and that I wasn’t in the habit of toting the world’s heaviest copy of
Hymns Ancient & Modern
around the country with me in case chums were showering when I arrived.
Before I move on from early musical influences, and while we’re in the Army camp so to speak, my father’s repertoire also had a
profound effect on me. It featured novelty numbers from the uniformed men at the front, like ‘Ginger You’re Barmy’, from a PC LP also containing ‘Kiss Me Goodnight Sgt Major’, ‘They Were Only Playing Leapfrog’ and a song I imagined was called ‘Aura chickerau, chickeracka roona’, which I learned to sing (and still can when called upon) if not to spell. Heaven knows what it means. There was also a smattering of hymnal material. My father was also a keen whistler. He was good, if inclined to embellish a little rather than cracking on with the melody. If I had to select a couple of high points in his repertoire, I’d have to plump for the theme from
Moulin Rouge
and ‘Oh Mein Papa’. Although a boy chorister, I rather suspect his whistling talent came from being pretty adept on the harmonica. A lifelong golfer, even in his more mature years when one guesses his handicap had slipped from a career high of six back into double figures, he habitually attempted to smuggle a mouth organ into his bag of clubs for golfing holidays. My mother of course would always rigorously check the bag for instruments and remove any she found. Another would be substituted. She thought it ridiculous and demeaning to whip up a tune on a mouth organ at the nineteenth hole, after a round of golf. Mind you, she didn’t think much of the golf either. I don’t recall her thoughts when he created a nine-hole putting green in the garden, complete with realistic mini-bunkers, but I loved it, although the grass tennis court was also a heck of a pull as well, despite not being particularly even.
Beyond the putting green and the tennis court were the Sherwells. They were American. I’d never seen Americans before and my first thought, as I glimpsed them through a screen of fir trees, was that they looked much like us. They turned out to be ‘OK’, as their two sons, Robert and Michael, taught me to say, and again, the family furthered my musical education. As well as giving me masterclasses in lengthy songs from the New World, with a minimum of twenty-nine verses, they were a conduit to important aspects of life that, until then, had no place in mine. They had streamlined bicycles that you
couldn’t get in England, they ate waffles with maple syrup, their family had a Dodge automobile and they read American comics. While my compatriots, and I, were reading the
Beano, Dandy
and
Eagle
, I was also learning to speak the US vernacular through the antics of Sad Sack, Huey, Dewey and Louie, Nancy and Casper the Friendly Ghost. The back pages were crammed with attractive offers, but there were bewildering boxes to fill in, including one that said ‘My mom agrees’, and another requesting your zone and zip code number. I had neither. We argued over which Dennis the Menace was the real McCoy. US Dennis was freckly with blond hair while the UK Dennis, of course, had black spiky hair and not a freckle in sight. The Sherwells also had a pretty American nanny whose voice wafted over from their orchard as she sang the first version I’d ever heard of ‘Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes’. Her version remains the most abiding for me.
Yet another style of music that cast its spell on me was that of the Sea Scouts band. They held their annual fete in our garden, which led to my not very secret ambition to be a Sea Scout. The fact that I couldn’t swim was of no matter to me. Their music, which I could hear a mile away, heralded the opening of the fete and I loved it. There were exciting stalls like Pick a Straw and Bowl for a Pig, but I was always seconded to Ye rather tame Olde Wishing Well, which didn’t do much except yield small amounts of wet money … presumably to pay for Ye next year’s Olde Wishing Well. The fact that it was neither old nor a well didn’t stop the good folk of Walton-on-Thames exchanging their loose change for a wish. Years later, I discovered that Madame Notlaw, the fete’s rather scary gypsy fortune-teller, wasn’t genuine either. Neither the deep, masculine voice nor the fact that her name was ‘Walton’ spelled backwards stopped me from believing. It taught me about the cycle of life more than the Book of Ecclesiastes ever did.
The Sea Scouts fete was the first time I heard rock & roll. Heaven knows what the group was called and heaven knows what the rest of
their repertoire was, but the song I remember was ‘Party Doll’. Call me naive if you wish, but I was raw, inexperienced and short-trousered and knew nothing of this devil’s music. I was more into the songs of adventure, derring-do and wholesome love of one’s country that we sang at school, in the vein of ‘The Ash Grove’, ‘Sweet Polly Oliver’, ‘The Minstrel Boy’ and ‘Westering Home’. However, ‘Party Doll’ was my induction into rock & roll, although I had no idea it went under that name or indeed why a bunch of older boys were singing about a doll. A wet subject, I thought. I had much to learn.
I’d appeared in plays, some with music and some without, while still in single figures, playing Lysander in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, in which I wielded a wooden sword against Demetrius. A better golfer than carpenter, my father nevertheless made me the silver-painted weapon for the on-stage scrap. To Pa, a chip was not so much a piece of wood, more a shot with which to get out of a bunker and onto the green. I was apprehensive about appearing in front of an audience. My mother caught me in the bathroom with my head in a basinful of cold water. She observed for a minute before demanding an explanation. I admitted to being nervous and was trying to catch a cold so that I wouldn’t have to perform.
I navigated Shakespeare’s lines; the sword got broken but not my spirit. I graduated to local shows, junior variety concert parties and the like, more often than not with Mater producing. I even convinced her to let me perform some music with a few friends after I’d learned my first handful of chords.
‘Do you know enough songs?’
‘Yes, yes. Please … we’ll rehearse.’
‘I should think so. You’ll still be acting in a few sketches in the first half.’
I was fourteen and incensed, as fourteen-year-olds are. ‘I can’t do that.’
‘What do you mean, you can’t do that?’
In my mind I was already a rock star. ‘It’ll spoil my image.’
Cue my mother’s shrieking and the wrath and frustration of the misunderstood teenager taking himself just a tad too seriously. It didn’t deter me from acting, though, as I played juvenile roles in adult productions of plays such as
I Capture the Castle
and
Dear Octopus
. I fondly imagined that I might land a child’s role on
The Adventures of Robin Hood
as Nettlefold Studios where the series was made was in my hometown of Walton-on-Thames. As kids we’d find rolls of discarded film in the adjacent woods around Ashley Park and sometimes would stumble across a scene being shot. One of my parents’ friends, Gilbert, was an art director at Nettlefold and for the Robin Hood series. Through him, my mother was able to take me on set on a couple of occasions. Ostensibly for my sake, but I rather think as much for hers, for I feel she had no small crush on the handsome Richard Greene. To have had a small part as a child of Sherwood Forest would have been the ultimate, but as history relates, Robin stayed loyal to Maid Marion and my mother went back home to see whether my father’s golf clubs had returned home. Robin and Friar Tuck did at least sign my autograph book, Alexander Gauge writing, ‘lots of luck from Friar Tuck’. Almost until the time I would lurch into Radio One I was appearing in one play or another.