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At this moment, it appears that it is just over here that you're not in the limelight?
I never give anybody any songs for England - they don't seem to like middle of the road songs very much. It's a strange market over here. I don't know if I'm crazy, but I think there is an MOR market. If someone like Barry Manilow does the right album, it sells a bomb here. Neil Diamond used to do albums and sell here. Michael Bolton is MOR, really, and he sells millions.
I think there's a huge MOR market here but people seem to be afraid of it; record companies just don't go for it. They seem to be embarrassed that anyone over 25 buys records! Yet the biggest demographic of all is the Elvis Presley generation - 50-year-olds. I saw this marvellous thing on telly the other night, about a guy who's head of a very respected research company. He was talking about the new TV franchises and about the advertisers and the markets they're going to cater to, and he was saying that anybody who ignores the over-50's market does so at their peril.
An artist you've been strongly associated with, Tom Jones, surely proved something with his big hit song from the show "Matador". What was that if it wasn't MOR?
That was great, the "Matador" album, but since then, he seems to be looking for something else. With all due respect, I think he should just be looking for great songs, great ballads. If you do a great ballad, no matter what people think, everybody buys it. I mean, "The Power Of Love" (Jennifer Rush) was the biggest record of the year - everybody bought it. And the second biggest record of the same year was "I Know Him So Well" (Paige/Dickson). Both songs very big MOR ballads.
Let's go back. How did you get into songwriting?
I met this boy called Tommy Bruce and I spent my last few pounds making a demo of him singing an old Fats Waller song, "Ain't Misbehavin'" - and he had a hit (No.3, UK, 1960). Suddenly, I was his manager, not knowing anything about the business.
But the important thing was, I was in the business - and when people ask me what to do to become a songwriter, I always say, "Try and get into the business in any capacity, then you're a step nearer to it".
So Tommy had this one hit, didn't have any more, and I lay in bed one night thinking, "I'm sure I can think of a song for Tommy". And I thought of this little song called "You're My Little Girl", luckily remembered it the next day, put it on the tape recorder, got it written out by one of Tommy's band, and it was cut as a B-side. I'd written my first song! Then I began to write with various backing groups.
The first person I wrote with was Peter Lee Stirling, who later became Daniel Boone (two UK hits, early 70's), and was originally Peter Green, and he was with a group called The Beachcombers, who became The Bruisers, who backed Tommy Bruce! And my first chart thing ever was a thing called "Blue Girl" for The Bruisers, which I wrote with Peter (No.31, UK, 1963), and my first significant hit was "Don't Turn Around", also written with Peter, which The Merseybeats did (No.13, UK, 1964). And then my first international hit was "Here It Comes Again" for The Fortunes - I was writing with Les Reed by then.
You were introduced to Les Reed by a music publisher - Stuart Reid. Did you hit it off straight away?
Certainly, as far as writing went - socially we weren't that close. But there's something happens when he plays that piano. It's almost like a faith healer touching somebody. They say a faith healer touches you and you feel the heat. When Les plays the piano, I feel the heat. He can play "Chopsticks" and make it sound like a symphony.
You used to get together on Sundays, I think
Yes, at Les's little house in Woking (Surrey). He had the sweetest wife, June, who made us endless cups of tea - which is just what a writer needs. He wants to be fussed over and looked after! Les's company published most of our early material and it was called Donna Music, after his little daughter. And he had a little picture of this three-year-old girl on all the sheet music, like a little logo.
How long before you had that first hit with Les?
Before we had a hit? Oh, three or four years, I would think.
You were getting things recorded before that?
Odd things, yes.
Who did the demos?
Les did most of them and they were ridiculously simple by today's standards. Les would do a piano track and put a voice on it, maybe double-track the chorus, maybe do some harmonies on it. If he felt ambitious, he'd put the piano on twice - once just playing rhythm, then a second layer, more floral.
If Les was the publisher, what would happen next?
Well Les had a deal with Francis, Day & Hunter (since bought by EMI), so technically, they were the promoters, but we fixed the records, really, because we had a relationship with people like Gordon Mills (who managed Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck). Les knew Gordon from his old days in the John Barry Seven and I knew him as a poker-playing friend - he was part of our gang.
I always remember Gordon coming to one poker game and saying, "I've found this singer in Wales and I'm going to manage him". I said, "Shut up and deal, Gordon!" Well, it was Tom Jones. Gordon took me to see him in some grotty little hall somewhere and I said, "He's too good to be commercial. His voice is too good". Because he was right against the grain at the time. Bobby Vee was a big star then, with this pretty voice, very delicate and very smooth - and here was rough, tough Tom!
What can you recall about your 'breakthrough' song, "Here It Comes Again"?
It was a piece of luck, as a lot of things are. Usually, Les and I would work together, build the song from scratch, but this time, Les had done the tune separately. The Fortunes had just had a big hit with "You've Got Your Troubles", a fabulous Cook & Greenaway song, and Les had done the arrangement, so we were in the pole position to present them with their next song.
Your song had a similar feel to "You've Got Your Troubles"
Of course - it was tailor-made for them. They'd done this little bit of counterpoint singing in "Troubles", so we put a bit of that in our song ... it was just tailor-made.
What was your feeling when the song happened?
I thought, "I've cracked it, wonderful, I'm rich!" And then the following year (1966), Les and I wrote and wrote and wrote and didn't have any hits. We had stuff coming out every week, or it seemed like it; but for maybe 18 months, we didn't have any hits. Then we had a slew of them.
Yes - in 1967 you had a rather famous Sunday afternoon where you wrote three big hits and ended your barren spell: "Everybody Knows" (The Dave Clark Five), "The Last Waltz" (Engelbert Humperdinck) and "I'm Coming Home" (Tom Jones).
Yes, we did have one magical afternoon. What I remember particularly is that we were writing "Everybody Knows" and we couldn't find a middle eight. As it turned out, there wasn't one; the song was finished and we didn't know it. It was the most utterly simple song. So we're struggling over that, and it's getting dark in Woking, and we have another cup of tea, and Les starts telling a story about how, when he was young, he always knew when the village dance was over, because he could hear the compere in the distance saying, "Take your partners for the last waltz". And he knew his Mum and Dad would be home soon.
There was a long pause and I said to Les, "Has there ever been a song called 'The Last Waltz'?" And 20 minutes later, words and music were finished.
Did you think, because it flowed so quickly, that it had to be a hit?
No. I'm always surprised that anything's a hit. I'm a born pessimist. I've had songs I've been so excited about and nothing's happened. A song called "So It Goes", from "American Heroes", is the best song I've ever written and nothing's happened to it yet. What I remember about "The Last Waltz" is making the demo and people laughing at us. It was 1967, everybody was into flower power and smoking dope and tripping out - and we were doing a waltz!
One source quotes over 500 covers of "The Last Waltz"
I've heard it in every language there is. One record came back in Japanese and it said on the back: "Written by Earry Mason". Instead of a 'B', they'd put an 'E'. But hearing it sung in Japanese, Swahili ... it's really strange.
Was that your biggest song in terms of covers?
Either that or "Delilah".
That, too, is said to have over 500 versions.
Well it's possible, because you could have five or six different versions in one country - like France. Les and I often had different versions of the same song in the Top 50 somewhere. I once had 26 per cent of the German Top 50!
"Delilah" was about jealousy. Are you often inspired by a theme?
Normally, it would be a line, especially a title line, that would be the inspiration for me. For "Delilah", I was inspired by "Jezebel", the old Frankie Laine hit (pre-UK chart). I used to love "story songs" when I was a kid. I did a thing called "Drive Safely Darlin"'
Tony Christie?
Yes. Which was a story with a sad ending: "A stranger stood there in the rain and I knew without a glance/He said, there's been an accident - she didn't stand a chance/Drive safely darlin". Tony Macaulay always says that if the song had had a happy ending, it would have been a much bigger hit. (No.35, UK, 1976).
How come you were suddenly writing something called "Les Bicyclettes De Belsize"?
Absolutely weird, that was. They asked us to do the score for a film with that title - a beautiful, arty film, no dialogue, about a boy on a bike, who falls in love with this girl on a poster. So Les and I do four or five songs, and the day comes to present them to the moguls, and they say, "Great. Wonderful songs, boys - but where's the title song?" So I said, "With all due respect, you just can't write a song called "Les Bicyclettes De Belsize. It's not possible". And they said, "We must have a title song. We're in the studio tomorrow. Please!"
So Les and I walk back up Charing Cross Road (London), quite depressed, go into Francis, Day & Hunter, find an office with a piano, get two strong cups of tea - our drugs! - and that afternoon, we wrote it. And ironically, it was the only song in the movie that meant anything. The others were lovely songs but none of them sold, while "Bicyclettes" is now a standard. So that was a lucky break. We were forced to write it.
Isn't Sinatra supposed to have recorded - but not released - one of the others -"Julie"?
Well I don't know if he ever actually cut it, but I think he was going to. Then Simon Dee (English DJ/presenter) did a cover version of it and they say that stopped Sinatra doing it!
Another big Engelbert song for you was "A Man Without Love". Was that written with Les?
No, that was a big Italian hit and Gordon Mills said, "Do a lyric for Engelbert and make it romantic". Then Gordon brought me another one from Italy and said, "Do a lyric for Tom and make it sexy". And that became "Love Me Tonight".
Your partnership with Les Reed broke up around the end of the sixties and you bounced straight into Tony Macaulay...
That's right and we did "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" for Edison Lighthouse.
I read that that was written at a party.
There are lots of stories about that song! You find this happens - you don't mean it to, but you forget what happened and you make up your own stories! As I remember, it was written on the end of my girlfriend's bed when she was ill!
You didn't have so many hits with Tony.
No. If we're talking about collaborators, we must mention Roger Greenaway, because I had several very big hits with Roger. For The Drifters we wrote "There Goes My First Love" and "Can I Take You Home Little Girl?", and we also wrote a No. 1 country song for Tom Jones called "Say You'll Stay Until Tomorrow", which was a very under-rated song. It was number one in the number one country chart and even writers in New York can't get into that! So for somebody from Wigan!.... I was quite proud of that. I remember I cut some country sides in Nashville with The Jordanaires (Elvis's legendary back-up singers) and this producer said, "You can't write country music! You have to live here for 20 years to know what it's all about!" And straight after that, I had a country number one with Joe Stampley.
Continued
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