Authors: Mike Read
I wanted the album out, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to grovel. If a man can’t accept an honest apology in good faith he’s not much of a man in my book. His unreasonable and intransigent stance made the release of the album impossible at that time, despite a year’s hard
work, creativity, time, money and an opportunity for John Betjeman’s wonderful poems to reach younger generations. By the time the album was released, much later, the momentum had been lost. I feel I should balance my opinion by stating that he was very highly thought of in the industry but we can’t all see eye to eye.
From poetic rock I lurched headily again into clergy rock as my musical settings of Rupert Brooke’s war sonnets were featured along with Elgar, Parry and Betjeman during an Armistice evening at the church of St Andrew and St Mary in Grantchester. Never commercially released, they’ve certainly had live airings from four or five choirs.
In 2002 I worked with five really talented Russian girls, two of whom were gifted classical pianists. They were here doing some shows and recorded three of my songs, ‘City to City’, ‘Moscow Nights’ and ‘The House of Usher’. Great tracks but as they weren’t in the UK permanently it was tricky to know what to do with both the songs and the girls. I recorded them under the name of Russia, with the ‘R’ turned backwards. I guess I must have misguidedly thought that it looked vaguely Russian. It did to me, but probably not to Russians. They performed at both of Cliff Richard’s Christmas shows that year, the Tennis Foundation dinner at Hampton Court and the big bash with tennis and music at the Indoor Arena at Birmingham.
Early in 2004, while still languishing in Australia following
I’m a Celebrity
and enjoying summer barbecues at Peter Andre’s family home, I thought it might be an idea to record something with a jungle feel. I didn’t recall anything similar from previous series and wondered why no one had thought of it. Now when you’re watching
I’m a Celebrity
from the relative safety of your sofa, it’s not uncommon for the sound to be muted and an apology to slide along the bottom of the screen. ‘Smut,’ you might think, ‘scandal.’ There is clearly a dark, unfathomable reason why this deeply personal conversation is not fit for transmission. Not so, say I. It’s usually because the happy campers have launched into a campfire sing-song and no one wants to pay for the right to broadcast the music. Simple as that.
It was during these quiet moments that Razor Ruddock would trawl the Gilbert O’Sullivan songbook and treat us to his gruff but passable bass rendition of something like ‘Alone Again’. This was a man who’d accidentally floored the odd referee and broken the occasional leg… Who was I to argue with his impeccable taste? One of Razor’s ambitions was to be on
Top of the Pops
, and Charlie Brocket concurred, with something along the lines of ‘I say, what a spiffing idea.’ How could I deny my two new acquaintances?
The idea didn’t exactly come to me in the Versace Hotel bathtub, but I seem to remember that I was within feet of it, which almost makes it a ‘Eureka’ moment. Hank Mizell’s ‘Jungle Rock!’ I could re-write the lyric to include a bunch of indigenous Australian animals and do a deal with a record label. I was sure they’d bite (a record company, that is, not the animals). I called Woolworths (and no, it wasn’t our fault they went under) and they went for it, with the promise of a follow-up. I found a studio, got the track down and the song was ready for release by the time we touched down in Blighty, with our version of ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ as a second track and the
I’m a Celebrity
theme as a third. Top value! When we first performed it on
This Morning
, Peter Andre was part of the gang, but his label also planned a release so he had to put all his marketing and PR into that.
We got plenty of TV, including a morning show that Terry Wogan was presenting and
Top of the Pops
, and a bucketload of radio plays. Our studio performance for
This Morning
was brilliantly edited into a video for the single, complete with odd creatures … yes, and animals from the jungle. I took to the road doing signing sessions, being joined at some by Charlie. We were delighted when it made the top thirty and I was able to inform Charlie that he was now the second most successful peer of the realm in the history of the singles chart, sandwiched between (Lord) David Dundas and Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel, Christopher Guest (Baron Haden-Guest). The single loitered on the listings for a heady five weeks, before sliding off to the great archive in the ether.
We performed at various charity events, including the Chase Children’s Hospice, CLIC Sergeant Cancer Charity and the Cliff Richard Tennis Foundation. We also performed at the Roy Castle Foundation Dinner in London, where, much to the delight of Razor, Cliff joined us on stage for the performance, while former jungle boy Uri Geller swelled our ranks for yet another charity gig. Of course Uri played spoons, promising to bend them at the end of the song and also to break one of my guitar strings simply by staring at it. On cue, the spoons bent and the string broke.
For the follow-up we recorded our version of Mungo Jerry’s ‘In the Summertime’. No new lyrics needed here, apart from amending the line, ‘Have a drink, have a drive’ and changing ‘We’re not dirty people’ to ‘We are jungle people’. OK, it may not be Byron or Keats, but it worked. We had a riot making the video at Brighton (see YouTube to gauge levels of riotousness) and the CD slipped into the chart at number seventy-two. It slipped out again the following week. At least it charted, gave us a second hit, pushed the Jungle Boys’ number of weeks on chart up to six and gave the song its first appearance on the chart since 1970. It also appeared briefly in the ringtone top twenty. Listen, all charts count, trust me. There was no third single. Jungle Boy mania, if it ever existed outside our own minds, was over. The screams subsided and lovers of good music were blissfully unaware of the group’s passing.
In the spring of 2004 I appeared in a short run of the stage musical
American Patrol,
alongside John Altman as Glenn Miller, but of course wrote none of the music. Later that year I found myself directing, rather than writing, a stage musical. I’d been asked by Mike Bennett, one-time member of the Fall and a damned fine actor, if I’d take the wheel of his satirical musical play,
White Wedding
, a look back at the ’80s. It was certainly different and received many plaudits,
Blues & Soul
magazine calling it ‘a comic triumph!’ Thank goodness it was
meant
to be funny. I wasn’t absolutely sure that I understood it, despite getting good reviews, including plaudits from, of all periodicals,
Lloyd’s
List
: ‘More power to the elbow of such companies when they allow full rein to the skills of directors like the prolific Mike Read.’ ‘Mr Newsagent,’ I said, marching into my local shop, ‘add
Lloyd’s List
to my regular order as well as the
Beano
. It’s a ripping good read.’
In 2003 I teamed up with my pal Trevor Payne, the singer/director behind the phenomenally successful show
That’ll Be the Day
, to put together a musical on Cliff Richard. It would feature a wagonload of hits woven together by a fictional story. In this case the storyline was based around the eve of Cliff’s eightieth birthday, as he and his butler, (Bruce) Welch, plan the festivities and go through a list of songs for possible inclusion in the celebrations. As Cliff muses over various highlights of his long career, the story goes back in time to include scenes from
Summer Holiday, Oh Boy!,
Eurovision,
Blind Date, Sunday Night at the London Palladium
, Wimbledon and more. The action, apart from the retrospective scenes, took place at Cliff’s residence, the Keith Richards Health Farm.
We featured four Cliffs with me playing Lord Cliff, initially in a platinum wig, until the heat forced the producers to march me to the hairdressers to have dozens of streaks put into my own hair. We did a lot of TV, radio and press, but even more rehearsing, under the eagle eye of Trevor Payne and the pitch-perfect ear of our musical director, Steve Etherington. The dancing was the worst. I’ve never been a natural dancer. I’ve not even been an unnatural dancer. It took weeks of gruelling, cruel and agonising dance routines until I could get away with it.
I’d had plenty of amateur dramatic experience as a kid with audiences that were not too discerning as they comprised friends, relatives, schoolmates, local burghers and those enforced by a three-line whip or press gang. We’d generally be playing to about sixty-seven people and a few rows of empty chairs. We’ll find our way back to Cliff the Musical in a moment. Even while at Radio One and Classic FM, I was still treading the odd board. I once played Pharaoh in a production of
Joseph
at Dauntsey’s School in Wiltshire, dressed in giant blue
suede shoes, an unfeasibly large fake quiff, a drape jacket and other extraordinary garb. Despite being in this insane outfit I was still
working
while not on stage. During rehearsals I dodged off to interview legendary rock & roll songwriters Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman down the line. With Potiphar and co. bashing out a song over and over again, the quietest spot I could find was in the middle of the cricket square. Trying to conduct a sensible interview with a 2-foot plastic quiff dangling in front of you and 2-foot-long clown shoes making you look incredibly foolish was pretty tricky. The weird thing was that Pharaoh was based on Elvis and here was I as Pharaoh, talking to two guys who’d written countless classics for the King. Cliff also recorded some of their songs and my next stage appearance would be
Cliff the Musical
playing to theatres that could hold 1,000 or 1,500, and those that turned up would have forked out serious money.
We did our press/dress opening night at Blackpool Opera House. Now that place was cavernous and could seat almost 3,000 happy holidaymakers. The history of the place was daunting. This stage had been graced by the likes of George Formby, Arthur Askey, Morecambe & Wise and the Beatles. As I stood in the wings trying to give an impression of a relaxed thespian, for this was only the dress run and surely just a handful would turn up, Colin, one of the show’s producers sidled up and whispered, ‘About a thousand in already.’ Thanks, Colin. Five minutes later he was back. ‘Well over a thousand now.’ Stop it, Colin. He’s clearly on a roll. ‘Quite a few famous faces in.’ Colin, this may get physical. He can’t keep away now. ‘Shane Richie and his family are in.’ At that moment, the stage manager announced ‘Curtain up in five minutes’ and bloodshed was narrowly avoided.
I was nervous but there were no hitches and I got away with it. We moved on to play a week at the Liverpool Empire. More history. More to live up to. More stars from yesteryear who’ve trodden these boards: not surprisingly George Formby and the Beatles again, but also Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Laurel & Hardy and even Roy Rogers & Trigger. I knew I wasn’t yet on top of the part – if only a
small amount of their confidence lurked in the drapes, footlights and dressing room I’d be fine. Maybe it did. After two or three performances I settled into the role and began to feel comfortable. I reasoned that most people had come, not to be critical, but for a fun night out. I also realised that sometimes even the costumes were getting a laugh, so I let the part breathe. There was no rush to deliver the lines if they were chortling at my blue velvet Eurovision suit with the white ruffled shirt. I started adding lines. All my radio work was ad-libbed and that’s what the audience were used to, so why not? I let them laugh at the suit for a few seconds and then came out with a random one-liner. ‘I think you’ll find it’s called fashion’, ‘We even have one in your size, sir’ or ‘What’s funny … is it the wrong colour?’ Not side-splitting stuff I grant you, but right for the occasion.
We marched around the country, taking in places like the cavernous Sunderland Empire, Manchester Opera House and the Derby Playhouse. We could have kept touring the show year in, year out, but the producers, and I guess the cast to an extent, were wooed by the prospect of a West End run. The Prince of Wales was due for refurbishment, but there was a three-month period free prior to that. The deal was done and initial ticket sales were excellent. Then two things happened. The congestion charge was announced, with the prophets of doom predicting that it would herald the death of the West End, and there was an escalating terrorist situation with the media reporting expected attacks on London. The capital was so empty at times that you could have roller-skated down Piccadilly. Well, you could if you had roller skates. I remember signing programmes after the show and ladies saying things like ‘My husband was so worried about me coming to London with all the bomb threats’. Those two factors seriously affected our ticket sales and the producers panicked. We had the option of going to another London theatre at the end of the run, but they decided against it. As people got used to the congestion charge and the threat of terrorism diminished, sales picked up again, but it was too late to find another theatre and the Prince of Wales closed for refurbishment.
In the provinces we got good press. In London we got mixed reviews. The piece, however, was written and tailored to suit the audiences, not the critics. The
Evening Standard
devoted the whole of page three to the show, saying that it was OK if you were the sort of person who liked a cup of hot chocolate and a biscuit before you retired early. It was meant to be a barbed comment but actually hit the nail on the head. We were catering for a specific audience. If it had been sharp and edgy and had made the public feel uncomfortable, we would have been aiming at the wrong demographic. In fact we had it right. The
Daily Mirror
let its hair down, the banner headline proclaiming, ‘Effervescent, irresistible and sure to be a success. Sod it, this is FUN.’ The
Daily Express
was also jolly decent: ‘The show is a total hoot. The music sounds great, the girls are gorgeous and a superb band doubles for the Shadows … it’s Cliff-tastic.’ Quite.