Seize the Day (30 page)

I was sure. I didn’t actually say that I spoke the language, simply that I was capable of writing the words. The nearest I got to speaking it was ordering a Four Seasons at Pizza Hut. Undeterred, I lashed out £6.99 on a Collins Italian dictionary and a few quid on a teach-yourself publication,
Beginners’ Italian
. I made a list of all the words that might come in useful, familiarised myself with the way tenses were constructed and knuckled down to it. I decided that ‘Ci vediamo’ (‘We’ll Meet’) might be a good title and that as the opening sequence was an over-the-top spoof that I could easily get away with a cheesy, over-the-top lyric. Bizarrely it flowed quite well, with lines like ‘
Nella
luce della luna
’ (‘In the moonlight’) and ‘
E in tutti il mondo | Tutte le stelle scintilleranno
(‘And all over the world | All the stars will shine’). It was heady stuff, you must agree. Had I been born in Venice in 1823 I might have paddled the operatic gondola big-time. As it was, the opening sequence was shot in Wimbledon, with my moving lyric, ‘
Non vedo niente solo te
’ (‘I won’t see anything but you’), ringing out across SW19. It sounded jolly clever in Italian. In English it would have sounded ghastly. Before submitting my lyric, I’d run the whole thing past an Italian acquaintance who pointed out certain errors that might lead to his country declaring war on me. The film won the Jury Award of Excellence at the Laguna Festival in the USA. Probably because of an all-star cast that included Lesley Phillips, Nadia Sawalha and Sarah Crowe, rather than my Italian lyric.

In 2000, I re-visited a musical show I’d previously put together featuring music and news through the centuries,
Journey through Music
, to raise funds for a new clock in Pulborough village close to where I was living. We bounded like eager musical puppies through the
centuries, playing a variety of instruments usual and unusual, and extolling the virtues of folk, blues, jazz, skiffle, pop and the like. It’s only clock & roll but we love it.

Another show I regularly compered and often sang at was
Songs from the Shows,
organised by the aforementioned Michael (‘Your Majesty’) Reed and staged in his rolling acres in the shadow of his historic mansion Prince Hill House. I was normally consigned to some fun song from the West End, but I once got to read a serious piece, in the form of Rupert Brooke’s ‘The Soldier’. In World War One uniform I strode purposefully out to centre stage. Move over, Sir Larry. But I was baffled at the audience’s response to my incredibly moving declamation of Brooke’s classic poem. They were laughing. I mean really laughing. Many couldn’t contain themselves. Tears of mirth fell from their eyes, as did the scales from mine, eventually. Other things nearly fell as well. In my rush to change, I’d forgotten to do up the buttons on my trousers and a piece of shirt was sticking through the large gap. The seriousness of the poem made it all the more hilarious for the crowd. I even had my own room at Prince Hill House as a host of folk stayed on the show weekends. After one spectacularly late night, I stirred at some unearthly hour as the grey fingers of dawn were afoot. (Mixed metaphor intended.) Was that a figure squatting at the end of my bed? It was. Were they naked? They appeared to be. I might not have been fully
compos mentis
but it was definitely female. And … oh no … going to the toilet.

‘Stop … don’t do it … not here.’

‘But answer came there none.’

She squatted, soaked the carpet and was gone. Like a relief in the night.

For one of the shows (with trousers securely fastened) Michael and I wrote a millennium hymn, ‘2,000 Years’, which was performed brilliantly by the local choir, and also another Italian song emerged. I used the same trick –
non c’è problema
. I was becoming an old hand now. This time I checked my past participles and adjectival agreements with
a waitress in an Italian restaurant in Devizes, as you do. The song, ‘È stato amore’ (delicious with a glass of Perrier-Jouet), along with ‘Ci vediamo’ (on or off the bone), could become the foundation for my first Italian album. No, wait! There’s a third I’d completely forgotten about. When we had the group Amber on the go, way back when, Dave, our drummer, and Martin, our bass player, had this wheeze that it might be easy to get a recording deal in Italy. Not only did they have a contact there, but Martin’s father was a director of KLM Airlines, which enabled them to procure a couple of very cheap flights. They said that songs with English lyrics were perfectly acceptable, but it might be the icing on the cake if we had one in Italian. I don’t remember forgoing food to buy an Italian dictionary back then, and there was no internet, so I have no idea how I managed it. Their destination was Milan, so I wrote a song with a title that might impress, which when translated meant ‘People of Milan, we love you’. I didn’t know the inhabitants of the city, nor was I cognizant of their behaviour, but suddenly I felt close to them. I’m not even sure of the spelling now, but it phonetically it was something like ‘Milanese noi amore, Milanese noi amore, noi piacca on y giorno, tutta cosa da qui et buono’ and so on. Heaven knows what it meant after we got past the title, but with a little brushing up, a following wind and the English-Italian dictionary it could be the third track on my ever-growing Italian CD. Of course we didn’t get a deal from the Milan record company, who obviously saw through my rather thin and weedy plan, but the guys did come back with a case full of free airport sugar and condiments, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

In the mid to late ’90s I began to write the songs that would become the second Betjeman album. There was no real plan or sense of purpose, they simply started emerging and were written on a beaten-up guitar, lying around at Alison’s flat, that wouldn’t even tune up properly. It’s odd that I used a severely impaired instrument when I had plenty of good ones, but that’s how it goes sometimes. It’s not the guitar, it’s what’s inside your head that’s important, and
indeed whether you can extract it to satisfaction. I was introduced to producer Jon Sweet, who got what I was doing straight away, so it seemed natural for him to work with me on the album. Most of the demos were done in his studio at Yeovil and there was a feeling that something really creative was happening. There was a vibe, as they say in more cosmic moments.

Again, as we were working we talked about who could sing certain tracks, but as with the first album I’d only approach an artist if I felt that the song was absolutely right for them. The power and pace of ‘Narcissus’ seemed ideal for Marc Almond and to my delight he delivered a really dramatic and highly polished performance. Colin Blunstone bravely took on two songs, ‘In Memory’ and ‘Peggy’, and was sensitive and unique as always, while the late Paul Young, of Sad Café and Mike and the Mechanics fame, was equally superb on ‘Greenaway’. Leo Sayer rushed into the studio having hardly had time to listen to his song properly, but pulled out the stops to sing in a very different style for him, amid trumpets and Spanish guitars. Richard Sharp (who you’ll recall from
Ricky Nelson – Teenage Idol
), still relatively unknown, really delivered on the Byrds-esque ‘Pershore Station’.

The melody for Cliff’s song, ‘November Night’, I wrote at Jon Sweet’s house on the morning of the funeral of the Princess of Wales. I woke while it was still dark and felt this compulsion to get up and write. By the time Jon emerged I’d completed it. I played it to him and he agreed that it was right up Cliff’s street. He was an ideal judge, having written ‘Ocean Deep’, one of Cliff’s most enduring songs. Cliff got into the spirit of it and we shot a moody-ish video for it at a church at Bakewell in Derbyshire followed by a slap-up tea with what we were told were Bakewell puddings, not Bakewell tarts. It was worth going, for that knowledge alone.

The album also included another version of ‘Myfanwy’, this time sung by Gene Pitney, and again we did a video for it. It was meant to be set on the Cherwell at Oxford, but due to Gene’s commitments,
we had to make it on the Granta at Grantchester. Thanks to my friend Robin Callan I was able to use the Orchard Tea Garden, bag a punt and shoot on that section of the river. Here was the guy who’d had hits with ‘Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa’ and ‘Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart’ singing in the garden where Philby, Burgess and Maclean had plotted over tea, where Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Lytton Strachey and Rupert Brooke discussed literature and where Wittgenstein and Russell wrestled with the problems of the day. Another moment to add to the tableau of the Orchard’s rich history.

Gene had recorded the vocal in the States, calling me up every twenty minutes so that he could get his head around Betjeman words that belonged to a time long gone. Much of the lyric would have baffled many Englishmen, let alone a boy from Connecticut. I explained more lines with every call. What a professional: not for him just singing them, he needed to understand them. At last he felt that he’d cottoned on to ’20s Oxford-speak. ‘Hey Mike, I got one. I worked it out. You ready?

I was indeed, ready.

‘The line “Tom and his 101 at nine”.’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s a cricket score, right?’

I had to disappoint him. I felt bad. He’d been so sure of it. I guess I could have pretended, but that’s not my way. ‘Sorry, Gene, it’s not.’

‘I was so certain. What the heck is it then?’

‘Well, the Tom in the poem is Great Tom in St Aldate’s in Oxford, which is the main entrance to Christ Church. The bell is rung 101 times for the 100 original scholars at the college, plus one, which was added in 1663. It’s rung at five past nine every night, corresponding with what was nine o’clock in old Oxford time.’

‘You sure it’s not a cricket score?’

Another wonderful singer taken far too soon.

One of the most atmospheric tracks on the album turned out to be ‘Youth and Age’. We pitched the demo very high as I felt that’s
where it should be, so my thoughts strayed to counter-tenors and one of the finest at the time in my book, Andreas Scholl. The young German singer had recorded a stunning version of the old ballad ‘Barbara Allen’, which I’d been playing a lot on the Classic FM breakfast show. I then decided that a classically trained singer might make it too rigid, but how many pop singers had a voice in that range? I didn’t exactly smite my head with the palm of my hand Homer Simpson style and shout ‘D’oh!’, but suddenly I knew exactly who I wanted. I’d always loved Yes and the unique voice of their singer, Jon Anderson. I was given an address in the States for Jon and duly, with little hope to be honest, sent him a demo of the track. A week or two later a note from Jon snaked out of my fax machine (what sweet old-fashioned things they seem now) saying that he loved the song and would record it next time he was in England. That time came round and he arrived at the studio, full of apologies that he wouldn’t be able to sing it as the key was too high, but if I lowered it he’d come back next week and do it. I wasn’t going to let him go. He might not come back. I thought with the speed of a good guy in a radio serial trussed up by the villain with little chance of escape. ‘It would help…’ I began, not exactly sure where I was going. ‘It would help … if … you … er … that is, it’d help me … if … er, you could possibly … just go through the vocal in the current key so that I can see how much I need to lower it.’ Genius. We ran through it once, the key was perfect and Jon sounded fantastic. He surely couldn’t have doubted himself.

Jon Sweet thought we should get his vocal down quickly in case there was some sort of problem we didn’t know about. The purity of his tone gave us goose-bumps. I heard what was needed. ‘We must get him to do a trademark three-part harmony in the B section.’

‘No, we’ll put that on later.’

‘It won’t sound the same. Jon harmonising with himself will have a magic we won’t be able to get.’

‘Best not to ask him, it might be pushing him too far.’

I was about to ask anyway and pressed the talkback button to speak to him, but he got in first. ‘Mike, I think it’d sound good if I did a three-part harmony in the B section.’

Another result, especially as ‘Survival’ by Yes, with Jon on vocals of course, is my all-time favourite song.

I was very surprised that Don McLean agreed to sing one of the songs on the album. His own songs were of such a high standard that he rarely recorded other people’s numbers, but he was up for it and I was delighted. We had to fit in with his UK tour schedule which meant taking the Stones Mobile to Liverpool. Don’s agent, Malcolm Feld, did warn me that Don was very much his own man and we might or might not get a recording from him that day. The latter began to look very much more likely. He didn’t appear to be leaving his hotel. Apparently he was watching TV.

‘What do we do?’

‘You could call him,’ said Malcolm, with some hesitation.

I tried to interpret the hesitation part. Then I called Don. ‘Hi Don, How’s it going?’

‘Hi Mike, yeah, good, just hanging out looking at some TV.’

Had he forgotten? Had he changed his mind? Maybe he just wasn’t in the mood.

‘Nothing much on in the afternoon, Don.’

It wasn’t a lie: even fifteen years back, there wasn’t the choice there is now.

‘No kidding? What kinda stuff do they show?’

‘Oh, children’s shows, cartoons for the very young and probably a chunk of horseracing from some distant course like Kelso.’

‘That doesn’t sound too good. What else is happening?’

‘Well, we’ve got the Rolling Stones Mobile here, we could always record that song you wanted to do, “Farewell”. Better than being influenced by sub-standard TV.’

‘Too right. I’m on my way.’

Don treated the song as if it were his own. He made it appear
effortless. And to think we nearly lost him to the 3.30 maiden handicap at Kelso. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

The remaining song, ‘Distant View’, I ended up singing by default, as we couldn’t find a singer that really fitted it. I think I got away with it.

This second album faced an early and enormous hurdle, unwittingly brought about by the second Betjeman charity evening, in aid of the Children with Leukaemia Trust (see
Chapter 9
). I’d already had one or two very pleasant meetings with Betjeman’s agent, Desmond Elliott, over tea at Fortnum and Mason at which I kept him abreast of the album’s progress. We would discuss his early connection with Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber and their first attempt at a musical with
The Likes of Us
, nibble on a few splendid gateaux, and get outside several pots of Earl Grey. OK so far, but the invitations to the charity evening went out while I was away at a tennis centre for a few days and by a complete oversight Desmond failed to receive his. When I returned from pounding tennis balls for a few hours a day I was too busy with the show to check that everybody had received their invitations. We’d got the great news that some twenty radio stations would be featuring the album and that many of those had even made it album of the week. Everyone involved felt that this was going to be a major success. Then the sky fell in. Desmond Elliott had stopped the album he’d been so keen on a week or two earlier dead in its tracks. My baffled and bemused solicitor was contacted and the project slithered to a halt. Toys were not only thrown out of the pram, they were thrown in my direction. At first he refused to take my calls, despite an apology for the oversight with regard to his invitation. When I did speak to him, he was sharp and bad tempered, insisting that I should stop calling him Desmond and refer to him in the future as ‘Mr Elliott’.