Angus arranged various promotional stunts for Tim and me and the Evening Standard joint winners ranging from a day at Royal Ascot to a night in Mark Birley’s newly opened Annabel’s. This may have made good copy for the Standard, but was hardly likely to ingratiate our hopeless single on the record-buying public. Amazingly Tim swung it that we got a second chance with Ross. The song was titled “1969” and the lyric was about someone having a trippy premonition, “a Chinese band marched by in fours,” that sort of thing. The chorus went “Hey, I hate the picture, 1969.” Tim the soothsayer didn’t predict 1969 to be a bundle of laughs. This time the tune was only partially by me because we decided to make something out of Beethoven’s “Für Elise.” I added what I thought was a rather hooky chorus and a spooky descending tritone linking section. This time the arrangement by ex-Shadows drummer Tony Meehan was far closer to my intentions and I don’t find it totally unlistenable to today. The B-side, “Probably on Thursday,” had a really lovely wistful lyric even if, like so many of Tim’s songs, it told a pessimistic story: “You’re going to leave me, possibly on Wednesday, / Probably on Thursday.” Twenty years later I rewrote the melody of the verse and recorded the song with Sarah Brightman.
That summer we wrote a song for Joseph that we thought might just be a pop hit. Most pop lyrics emanating from the Summer of Love displayed a somewhat opaque side – witness that legendary pop-synth fusion album Days of Future Passed by the Moody Blues or any of Donovan’s hits. The song was “Any Dream Will Do” and the lyrics were no exception. But more of this anon.
A STOCK CHARACTER IN pop showbiz films is the record company postboy. Invariably this character delivers mail to the top executive brass and refuses to leave their offices until they listen to some act he’s discovered. Just to get him out of the door, the top brass reluctantly go to one of the act’s gigs. The act, after various cliffhanging story twists, turns out to be pop’s answer to the Second Coming. EMI had such a postboy. His name was Martin Wilcox. I don’t know if he ever blagged his way into the top honcho’s offices. But he did get as far as Tim Rice. The act he was peddling had a suitably Sixties name, the Tales of Justine. Its guiding force was a teenager called David Daltrey, naturally presumed to be a distant relative of Roger Daltrey of The Who, but I’ve never seen any proof. He lived in Potters Bar in Hertfordshire, not that far from Tim’s home in an area that by 1967 was a sprawling monotone London suburb. Maybe as an escape David had written songs with titles like “Albert (A Pet Sunflower).” He also had a pleasant singing voice and was friendly with an outfit called the Mixed Bag, who did competent cover performances of current hits.
Tim managed to get EMI to sign the Tales of Justine, “Albert (A Pet Sunflower)” was the first single and Tim winged it with his bosses that I arranged it. Albert owed a debt to British music hall, so I stuck a Sgt. Peppery brass band on top of the group which made the record rather fun. We all thought it was catchy enough to be big. Tim and I also signed the band up to ourselves as managers – we called ourselves Antim Management – and we added them to our roster of one, Ross Hannaman, who had ditched her previous team, possibly because she’d had a brief fling with Tim. Unfortunately Ross’s stay with Antim didn’t last long. She shacked up with the begetter of “Excerpt from ‘A Teenage Opera’” Mark Wirtz who immediately issued a press release informing the world that we would hear a new Ross Hannaman. In fact we heard nothing at all, the pair got married and were divorced two years later.
Antim Management was undeterred by Ross giving us the heave-ho. Being cutting-edge representatives of our clients, we now designed and printed up some psychedelic sleeves for the Tales of Justine’s “Albert.” One night after hours we inserted all the promotion copies into these sleeves. Our theory was that since no EMI single ever had special promotion covers, radio producers and reviewers would think EMI’s entire might was behind this release.
Unfortunately the head of EMI’s promotion department, a thirtyish guy called Roy Featherstone, was extremely unimpressed as was the British public. Sales were zilch. Roy gave Tim a hell of a roasting. I was therefore pretty scared when I got a message from Granny at Harrington Court saying that a Mr Featherstone had called and wanted to see me in his office. I was unprepared for a smiling Roy Featherstone and the offer of a cup of coffee when I quivered into his office two weeks later. Tim had recorded quite a few songs with David Daltrey and I had done all the arrangements. Mr Featherstone said he thought the songs were OK, but the arrangements were terrific, particularly one called “Pathway” where I had experimented with all sorts of effects. He would like to help me get a few more arranging gigs with other artists. This was the first time anyone in a record company had noticed my music, even if it was only my orchestrations. The timing couldn’t have been better because Tim had just hit me with news that had left me axed as if by a pole.
Norrie Paramor announced that, like George Martin and the other top EMI producers before, he was leaving EMI and setting up on his own. He wanted Tim to go with him as his key man. It was an offer Tim could not refuse. Nor should he have done but it was clear that Norrie, despite hints from Tim, did not envisage a role for me in his new venture. Furthermore he employed instead ex-Westminster boy Nick Ingman as arranger and composer with whom Tim was to write B-sides and the like. Ironically Nick had been the lead singer of the group that performed “Make Believe Love” at my Westminster concert for Peter and Gordon.
I was very alarmed. Tim was turning 23, had a job with real prospects and entrees into songwriting. I was 19, had chucked up Oxford for Tim and a musical that was never going to be produced. At least Roy Featherstone had thrown me a sort of lifeline and in fact I was to have a great relationship with Roy. But it was not until ten years later. My only real lifeline was a Friday afternoon school concert.
FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 1968 was a grey, drab, drizzly day but not over-cold for the time of year. Around 2 pm a gaggle of two hundred or so parents, mostly mothers as it was a weekday afternoon, gathered with no particular sense of anticipation in the rather cramped entrance hall of Colet Court School. Conversation centred on their fervent hope that this special end-of-term concert of Joseph and His Amazing (Technicolour) Dreamcoat was short enough for them to drive their children home before the weekend rush hour. One young mum commented that Johnny Cash was marrying June Carter that afternoon, US time. They were probably surprised, after they were ushered onto those hard low chairs you only find in school halls, by what was on the stage.
Lloyd Webber and Rice had fielded the entire Antim Management artists’ roster. Stage centre was a pop group rig, drums and amplifiers manned by Potters Bar’s very own cover band, the Mixed Bag. Seated next to a mike stand was no less than Potters Bar’s star vocalist and songwriter, David Daltrey. There was an elephantine keyboard contraption looking like an electronic organ which I had badgered the school to hire called a Mellotron. These now long-extinct dinosaurs were a forerunner of the synthesizer and much loved by the Moody Blues. They didn’t generate their own sounds but used a cumbersome battery of pre-recorded tapes. Seated in serried ranks was the school orchestra, augmented by a few student mates of mine from various colleges of music. Behind all this were two groups of boys. The first batch were the 30-strong school choir and the second the three hundred or so kids who couldn’t sing or were tone deaf or both. Some of these had tambourines. Lurking backstage was Tim, gearing up for an Elvis impression as Pharaoh. So there was a mildly curious buzz from the parents in between anxious glances at watches, hoping the whole thing would crack on and finish PDQ.
The headmaster, a suave traditional cove called Henry Collis, ascended the stage and made a brief speech which decidedly hedged its bets on the forthcoming entertainment. He then introduced Alan Doggett in a fashion that suggested that if things went tits up it was all Doggett’s fault and he needn’t turn up on Monday. Alan bounced on stage, sporting a natty bow tie, raised his conductor’s baton and off we went, straight into the story at bar one because the now signature trumpet fanfare introduction didn’t exist in those days.
Joseph and the Amazing (Technicolour) Dreamcoat (the word “Technicolour” included a “u” and was for some reason billed in brackets) was away to the races.
THE CONCERT WAS A total blast. The mummies, particularly the yummy ones,