Seize the Day (8 page)

During that period of the breakfast show I thought that it might be an amusing interlude to pretend I was learning the guitar. It was inspired by legendary guitarist Bert Weedon’s
Play in a Day
tutorial book and my idea was to deliberately get the wrong end of the stick. It just seemed a mildly off-the-wall thing to do, to get to page thirteen and discover that Bert was wearing cufflinks and that was the reason you weren’t as good as him, or after ten pages notice the guitar strap and realise that was why you’d broken so many instruments … they were simply falling on the floor. The only problem was that after some months of that, people didn’t believe I could play. At one of my group’s gigs, with Monkee Davy Jones in our line-up, a girl came up to me and snorted, ‘You were obviously miming. We know you can’t play.’ Although I’d been giving it my all for over an hour she was unconvinced, walking away with a final, dismissive ‘Everybody knows you’re only just learning’.

Davy sang with my group a couple of times and I saw quite a bit of him socially as he and his then wife, Anita, came to various gatherings when I was living at The Aldermoor, Holmbury St Mary. On one of these occsions he asked me if I’d edit and possibly add to a book he’d written,
They Made a Monkee Out of Me
, handing me bundles of copies of Screen Gems paperwork along with the manuscript. I read it, and assured him that he didn’t need any input from me. It was well written, amusing and spoke from the heart, but tinged with a frustration that none of the guys in the band really made any money out of a group that was meant to rival the Beatles. Davy and I performed a track the Monkees had covered, ‘Cuddly Toy’, on
Saturday Superstore
. I played guitar as we duetted and again someone asked if I was miming while a real musician offscreen performed. Pretending to learn was a reasonable idea, but I did rather shoot myself in the foot. It was a gag that took a lot of living down and I’m still not
quite sure that I have. It did wonders for Bert Weedon, though. He thanked me profusely on many occasions for introducing him to a whole new generation of fans. He told me he’d been performing for a family function at a holiday camp on the south coast, when one very young child came up, looked him up and down, walked round him and then stared up at him, asking, ‘Are you really Bert Weedon?’ He said he was. ‘Oh,’ said the girl. ‘We thought Mike Read had made you up.’ I’d later play a one-off gig with Bert in a band you couldn’t buy or make up.

I also performed with Spanish flamenco guitarist Juan Martín, who has not only played with Miles Davis, but has been voted one of the top three guitarists in the world. Sure, I’d played a bit with him for fun on
Saturday Superstore
, but when he asked me to accompany him for a major gig at the Institute of Contemporary Arts I thought it was some kind of Spanish joke. Not so. He informed me that I was one of the best rhythm guitarists he had performed with. Reason? ‘You’re not the greatest lead guitarist.’ I can live with that. Accompanied by a visual wall we performed ‘Guernica’, inspired by the Picasso painting that he swore would never hang in Spain while Franco remained in power. This was no gig where you could have a laugh, smile at the crowd, pose a little and strut around with your guitar. I have to say it went down pretty well with an audience for whom I was off the radar. I doubt whether many of them had ever listened to Radio One or watched
Top of the Pops
. A delightful lady who I would swear had a virtual ‘Radio Four Listener’ tattoo somewhere and looked as if she’d deposited her trug by the herbaceous border for a second drawled, ‘Have you and Juan been playing together for years?’ More like hours, but I maintained the mystique, such as it was.

With the breakfast show came a series of one-hour specials with the likes of Phil Collins, Wham! and the Everly Brothers. These led to later specials with Queen and Paul McCartney.

For the show
Queen for an Hour
, I was warned that certain areas of discussion with Freddie Mercury were off limits. No one mentioned
any specifics so I was told to tiptoe through whatever minefield I might stray into. No trained sappers at Broadcasting House to go in first to check the ground. However, all uncertainties were dispelled by Freddie, with a casual wave of the hand. ‘Ask me whatever you like, Mike, anything goes.’ The hour’s show has, I believe, been attached to various box sets.

The Paul McCartney special, which would turn out to be a much more comprehensive affair, was spread over a couple of days in the studio with him in East Sussex. Great vegetarian food, I have to say. We ended up with eighteen hours of conversation, Paul debunking myths, and discussing his relationship with John Lennon, the early days of the Beatles and how many of the songs were written, occasionally illustrated with a burst of live guitar and vocal.

Prior to travelling down to Sussex, a BBC informer tugged my sleeve and in a covert voice reliably informed me that Paul was a Wordsworthian pantheist. OK, why not? There’s no reason why a left-handed bass player shouldn’t believe in the pagan concept of a life force in all of nature. It wasn’t too hard to believe that he had Spinoza-type views and I reasoned that if he were indeed a Wordsworthian pantheist, he must have seen the light via the former Poet Laureate’s ‘Tintern Abbey’. Looking in depth at the former Beatle’s left-field animism was going to be a fascinating and illuminating part of the interview. When I asked him about it, he hadn’t got a bloody clue what I was talking about.

Recovering, I asked Paul about the first song he’d ever written, at which he picked up the guitar and launched into it. He’d hardly got into his stride when the excited tones of my producer, Paul Williams, became audible through a layer of supposedly soundproof glass. ‘It’s a first,’ came the voice, ‘it’s a bloody first!’

Paul McC. glanced at me but, ever the professional, refused to be thrown. It became tougher to continue after the door to the studio burst open and the aforementioned producer, cigarette cemented to his lips, bellowed triumphantly, ‘You’ve never played this before in public!’
I’d have said that there was a pretty good chance that McCartney was aware of the fact. The situation deteriorated as an overenthusiastic Williams grabbed the neck of the guitar and began to shake it, repeating his mantra of it being ‘a first’.

Even a world-renowned pop star can’t continue under these unforeseen circumstances. Like someone who’s been electrocuted, Paul W. seemed unable to let go of the guitar and Paul McC. seemed equally unable to shake him off. Paul W.’s ‘dead man’s grip’ made the former Beatle’s strumming sound like a muted, out-of-tune ukulele. The Fab Four had been experimental, yes, but this was taking things a little too far.

Paul McC. took control of the situation. Of course he’d known Paul W. over his years at the BBC and was aware of his eccentricity. ‘Paul.’

‘Yes … yes?’ He was still excitable but had at least let go of the guitar.

‘Why don’t you go back into the control room and do your job and let us do ours?’

He needed no second bidding. ‘Absolutely, right, quite right, yes…’ And as he’d arrived, so he departed, unabashed.

If for a moment I’d thought that Paul McC. was going to storm out diva-like at this untimely intrusion, I’d have been wrong. He took it with a grin and a chuckle, or something that was a kissing cousin to a chuckle. ‘Eccentrics, don’t you just love ’em?’ What a nice chap. Well actually they’re both nice chaps. It was a pleasurable experience making this special, which finished up as an eight-part series for Radio One. It crops up now and then on Radio Two and Six Music.

I was privileged to compere an elite lunch at the Savoy for a special presentation to Paul McCartney, attended by several luminaries including the Bee Gees and Tim Rice. At lunch I was seated next to a delightful gent in his late eighties. We chatted about songs and he asked me about Radio One. He admitted that it wasn’t his station of choice but conceded that it was doing a splendid job for young songwriters, singers, musicians and composers. Eager to let him know that my musical taste and knowledge spread beyond the top forty I
declared, rather grandly, that I often featured an element of light classical music as a ‘bed’ when I was talking.

‘Oh I see … and you have it underneath your voice?’

‘That’s it.’ He caught on fast for a non-listener.

‘Why don’t you play these pieces in their entirety?’

‘Well, it’s a pop music station really.’

‘So you put them on and then talk all over them.’ I could sense the change in his tone.

‘Yes,’ I admitted, rather lamely I thought.

‘I see, these tunes aren’t on your official playlist?’

‘Well … no … I just put them in when I feel like it.’

‘And which tracks do you use?’

I use
Coronation Scot
a lot. Do you know it?’

The old boy nodded. ‘And does someone make a note of this extra music so that the composers get their money from PRS?’

I think I might have winked at this point. I know I wasn’t vulgar enough to nudge him. ‘Well, you know, when I remember.’

‘You will remember, every time.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I said, you will remember every time. Not only am I the chairman of PRS, but I also wrote
Coronation Scot
.’

If only Sir Vivien Ellis had introduced himself before kicking me into touch.

Having said that, there were times when I was comparably wicked and, what was worse, there would often be an element of premeditation. Andrew Lloyd Webber and I set up one rather elaborate wheeze at the expense of impresario Robert Stigwood. Back in the mid ’60s, Stigwood had blown all his money on marketing and promoting a young singer called Simon Scott, who was cast in the mould of Cliff Richard. He had busts made of his protégé, paid for the front page of the
New Musical Express
and probably explored many other avenues in order to break the new singer. It didn’t happen and it cost Stigwood dearly. Unaware as he was of the phenomenal success that was
about to come his way with the Bee Gees, it must have irked him that Simon Scott didn’t make it.

The single had been a small hit, but nothing to set the world alight. I actually liked the song and had recently played it, so hit upon the idea, with Andrew, of pretending that, after all those years, the single was finding popularity with a new generation. On the day that Andrew was due to collect Stigwood at Heathrow and take him to lunch and a meeting in Mayfair, the traps were set. I’d had giant posters made that had been strategically placed on the route. These were to be subtly pointed out. With the car switched on to Radio One, I organised with Mark Page, who was doing the lunchtime show that day, to play the single at a specific time. Stigwood was apparently speechless. I had it played again later. Andrew had been sent a ‘new’ copy of Simon Scott’s bust which was prominently on display during lunch. It was, in fact, an original from the ’60s. Stigwood couldn’t get his head around it: Radio One playing the song, new busts, new posters and a whole new marketing strategy. Not only was he baffled, but he still owned the track and wondered, as an impresario would, who the hell was behind this new campaign when they didn’t even own the product. I assume that the word ‘litigation’ might have been playing on his lips by the time he and Andrew hit the cheese course. What fun.

There are hundreds of tales I could tell, but too many for one book. However, I couldn’t write about my time on the breakfast show without mentioning one particular song and the stories that surround it.

I am genuinely baffled that people are still fascinated by the saga thirty years on. When asked about it (three or four times a week on average) I offer the choice of truth or myth. The truth might be less interesting, but the myth clearly isn’t the truth. A tough call for any media journalist or presenter. The truth is, I had no plans to ban ‘Relax’. It was a good dance track that powered along. It was well produced and had firmly established Frankie Goes to Hollywood in the top ten. I’ve heard some rather splendid yarns that involve Anglo-Saxon words at whose meaning I can only guess and actions that would enhance
the CV of a demented cage-fighter. For these outrageous tales to have even a grain of truth, there would have had to have been at least a hundred people with notebooks and a variety of recording equipment squashed into the Radio One studio. They would also have had to blag their way past Reg, our commissionaire. Not an easy task; Reg and his ilk had kept the Nazis at bay forty years earlier, so upstarts from a red-top on a mission were a pushover. No, the studio in Broadcasting House that morning, as I ploughed my way through the top twenty, contained only me, until Adrian John glided in behind me with a brace of teas from the canteen on the eighth floor. In those days the chart came out at lunchtime on Tuesdays, and we always repeated it on a Wednesday morning, but there was never time to fit all the tracks in. I had ten minutes left and four or five songs, as I remember. I was pondering what to drop, when Adrian pointed out a phallic picture and a few choice words on the back of the Frankies’ record, including the claim that they’d make ‘Duran Duran lick the shit off their shoes’. Hmm, hadn’t spotted that. Well, maybe if I was going to drop something, I’d drop that. It’d be in tomorrow’s show anyway. I don’t recall saying that I was going to ban it; after all I was a BBC employee and had no power to ban anything.

In the meantime, the video had been circulated. My Radio One producer, Paul Williams, arrived home to find his two young daughters watching a couple of sections of the video over and over again, and was horrified when he saw what they depicted. At the same time, it had arrived at TV Centre and found its way to the
Saturday Superstore
office. Our editor, Chris Bellinger, told me that the programme couldn’t be seen to be anywhere near it and as one of the faces of children’s TV, neither could I. Directed by Bernard Rose, the video was set in an S&M-themed nightclub and featured simulated sex, urination and a few other choice scenes that of course they couldn’t show on
Saturday Superstore
or
Top of the Pops
. The song had already been played on both the radio and TV, but in the light of the video it was reviewed. The BBC, I believe, also took the overt advertising
campaign into account. I have no idea who took the decision to ban it, but I know who took the rap. The Frankies’ manager, Paul Morley, quite rightly exploited the situation for all it was worth, with me cast as Wicked Witch of the West. Fair enough, I’d have done exactly the same in his position. The myth that it went from nowhere to number one that week is, of course, exactly that, as was the story of me smashing it violently against the studio wall or uttering a string of expletives that would have made Johnny Rotten blush.