However, there was the certainty of what a decision to leave would do to the family. Granny Molly would be consumed with anxiety. Aunt Vi and Uncle George would be livid. Mum might just take it on the chin, but I couldn’t tell what Dad would make of it. Of all the family I was closest to Molly. I strongly sensed that my increasingly frail Granny would regard my leaving Oxford as an insane, suicidal move. Could it somehow rekindle in her a myriad of associations with the loss of her son Alastair? She cared that much about me. But then what if I lost Tim? The thought went round and round in my head and drilled into it like an unmelodic earworm. Finally I made my decision. On July 17, 1966 I wrote to Thomas Boase, Magdalen College’s admission tutor, informing him that I did not want to continue as a History exhibitioner.
I thought my bombshell was received pretty well; a few long faces, a bit of muttering, as far as I was concerned that was about it. I took three school friends to stay at Vi and George’s. They seemed on the sombre side of OK, but pretty soon Vi and I were experimenting with olive-oil recipes in her glorious seaview kitchen. It’s only recently that I learned things were not quite as I thought. First my brother Julian remembered that he had never witnessed such a family row as happened after I told Mum and Dad of my decision. Then I discovered among some of Mum’s papers the outline of her autobiography. It seems I was dead right about Granny equating what I was doing with the loss of Alastair. In her view I was throwing my life away and she felt appalled that Dad was doing nothing to stop it. Vi and George were safely out of the way in Italy. It was difficult and costly in 1966 to make international phone calls, you had to book them via the operator, but they made their views patently clear in letters that were kept from me.
Years later, according to Mum, I was staggered to learn that it was Dad who not only defended me but supported my decision. Apparently he strongly argued that in all his experience with students at the Royal and London Colleges of Music he had not come across anyone with such determination to succeed and that it would be completely counter-productive to put roadblocks in my way. With hindsight this is borne out by a conversation that Dad and I had before I took off with my school friends to Italy. First he reiterated that he would not support my trying for the Royal College of Music. I remember his reason, “it would educate the music out of you,” quite a statement from the senior Professor of Composition at the Royal College and the head of the London College of Music to boot.
Secondly he strongly felt that I should take a course in orchestration. The orchestra, he opined, provided the richest palette of colours in music if you knew how to use it. I was thrilled when Dad said he would fix for me to take a part-time course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. I was fascinated by the tone colours of composers like Britten and how a high romantic like Richard Strauss could take the orchestra to ever more overripe extremes. I remember thinking that learning orchestration is like learning the basics of cooking: just as I knew from Vi how to make a soufflé or a mayonnaise, now I would learn how to make my orchestral ideas a reality. That Guildhall course has stood me in good stead. It is the only academic course I have taken seriously.
MEANTIME TIM WAS SETTLING in at EMI. I suspect he was too busy finding his feet to worry about my decision and I often wonder if he realized just how big a factor he was in my making it. But the fact that he had a toe in the door of the world’s number one record company could open doors for both of us and I was keen to coat-tail. Tim was assigned to the department of one of EMI’s most successful old-time arranger/producers, Norrie Paramor.
Norrie was a supremo of the pre-Beatles old guard. He was the guiding light behind the legendary British pop star Cliff Richard, who has the distinction of having a number one hit in five different decades. Norrie was still a very major force in the British record industry, even if younger musical Turks had overtaken him. But come mid-1966 Norrie’s star at EMI was again in the ascendancy. This was because the cream of EMI’s top producers had left to form an independent company, disgusted by the low pay and derisory royalties (if any) they got in return for making EMI untold millions. Stars like Beatles guru George Martin had had enough.
This left good old reliable Norrie in pole position. And with artists like Sinatra again pulverizing the action with songs such as “My Way,” the top brass at EMI might have been forgiven for thinking they made the right call in letting go the George Martins of this world. So Tim was in the right place at the right time. I suspect that old-school Norrie Paramor saw in the contemporary pop ears of the very personable Tim Rice a presentable way into a young world that was no more his natural habitat. Furthermore Tim wrote lyrics. It wasn’t long before Tim was being allowed to produce acts that EMI wanted to drop, but was obliged to record in order to see out their contracts.
Pop was changing fast in the last half of the 1960s. 1965 had ushered in “fusion,” the idea that any instrument could go with anything. As early as 1964, Sonny and Cher had featured an oboe on “I Got You Babe.” Paul McCartney sang “Yesterday” accompanied by a string quartet. In 1967 Sgt. Pepper took things still further, including adding the merest hint of a narrative structure. By the end of 1968 even the Rolling Stones were recording with the London Bach Choir. I was learning the rudiments of classical orchestration at exactly the time as its marriage with rock was romping all over the zeitgeist.
In that summer of 1966 the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” kicked off a genre that was to spawn perhaps the ultimate Sixties “fusion” single, Jimmy Webb’s six-minute “MacArthur Park” with Richard Harris. Then there was the concept single. The most successful was “Excerpt from ‘A Teenage Opera,’” a sort of mini-opera in itself with a kids’ choir. The “Teenage Opera” never was completed but the idea hugely caught the spirit of the moment. None of this passed me by.
THE UNWANTED ACTS TIM was assigned to humanely lay to rest were pretty dire – with one notable exception. This was a handsome 23-year-old singer called Murray Head. EMI had unsuccessfully tried to launch Murray and had put a fair bit of clout behind him. But now he was “de trop” and Tim was ordered by Norrie to cut his last contractual single. Murray had, however, been cast as one of the leads in a Roy Boulting movie titled The Family Way opposite John and Hayley Mills. Paul McCartney composed the soundtrack and Murray had written a song called “Someday Soon” that was supposed to feature in the film. This was the song Tim recorded.
Murray had a light tenor rock voice, really rather lyrical yet passionate and earthy when he wanted it to be. Tim was very good about letting me meet Murray who must have thought me highly curious. I was hopelessly out of place and felt very shy in his dope-filled flat. But he would often accompany himself on guitar. What struck me was his incredibly musical riffing. It was always melodic and always highly individual. I shared Tim’s belief that given the exposure Murray and the song would get from the movie, Tim might have produced his first hit. Unfortunately this was not to be. Most of “Someday Soon” ended up on the cutting-room floor. But I agreed with Tim. Murray was very special.
1967 dawned with still no Likes of Us script from Leslie Thomas, though I vaguely remember a synopsis appearing that had no relation whatsoever to what Tim and I had written. Hopes of a theatre production pretty much evaporated. I continued to take my orchestration lessons. Mum negotiated that we rented an additional flat at Harrington Court, primarily so she could move John Lill in. To be fair it also had a decent room for my increasingly arthritic granny. There was one spare room which Mum wanted to rent. I suggested offering it to Tim, who accepted, and at a stroke a ménage à trois was created to rival South Kensington’s weirdest. Add me and my turntable next door, Julian on cello and Dad on electronic organ and new meaning was given to the words “bohemian rhapsody.”
AT THE END OF February