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Introduction by Jim Liddane
Born in Bristol, England, and as I write - still the sole British songwriter to be a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall Of Fame - Roger Cook started out as one half of the hit duo David & Jonathan, an act wich scored international hits with such songs as "Michelle" and "Lovers of the World Unite". After they disbanded, Roger formed Blue Mink, a band best known for such recordings as "Melting Pot" and "Banner Man", before embarking on a solo career under the name Roger James Cooke, releasing such albums as 'Meanwhile Back At The World' and 'Alright'.
As a songwriter for other acts, he scored dozens of hits, including "You've Got Your Troubles" (The Fortunes), "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing" (The New Seekers), "Good Times, Better Times" (Cliff Richard), "Softly Whispering I Love You" (The Congregation), "Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart" (Gene Pitney), "Home Lovin' Man" (Andy Williams), "Blame It On The Pony Express" (Johnny Johnson & The Bandwagon), "Something Old, Something New" (The Fantastics), "Conversations" and "Something Tells Me Something's Gonna Happen Tonight" (Cilla Black), "I've Got You On My Mind", "When You Are A King" and "My Baby Loves Lovin'" (White Plains), "Gasoline Alley Bred" and "Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress" (The Hollies); "Freedom Come, Freedom Go" (The Fortunes), "Doctor's Orders" (Sunny), "I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman" (Whistling Jack Smith) and "Like Sister And Brother" (The Drifters).
In 1975, Roger Cook left England, and moved to live in Nashville, where he immediately hit both the country and pop charts with songs like "Miracles" (Don Williams), "I Just Want To Dance With You" (George Strait and Daniel O'Donnell), "Talking In Your Sleep" (Crystal Gayle) and "Love Is On A Roll" (Don Williams). In addition to owning his own music publishing operation in Nashville, he has produced two musicals, 'Beautiful And Damned' (with Les Reed) and 'Don't You Rock Me Daddio' (with Joe Brown).
Larry Wayne Clark interviewed Roger Cook for the International Songwriters Association's publication "Songwriter Magazine".
Prologue
On the morning we’re scheduled to meet, moments before I’m about to walk out the door, I receive an anxious phone
call from Roger Cook.
He’s called to ask whether we can reschedule. Seems he’s having a bit of a songwriter’s emergency. Cook and
co-writer Henry Gross (best known for his ‘70s pop hit 'Shannon') have written a song that Art Garfunkel is slated to
record the next day, backed by teen heartthrobs ‘N Synch. One problem: Garfunkel has a handful of concerns about the
lyric though he loves the song. Can they do an eleventh-hour rewrite and fax it up to New York, where the session will
be happening? Can they? For Garfunkel and ‘N Synch? You got it. ('That’ll be my next year’s income,' explains Cook.
'Maybe the next two years.')
He’s calling me from the Gross residence, where the two have been working on the rewrite since 8:30 that morning. I
tell Cook that, as excuses go, this is a whole lot better than 'the dog ate my homework,' wish him well with the revisions
and agree on a late afternoon meeting instead.
He lives on a sleepy street in Franklin, a picturesque town rich in Civil War history located 20 minutes south of
Nashville. It’s a lovely home, built in the ‘20s, with a wraparound verandah and a garden in which Cook takes great
pride ('herbs, tomatoes, lots of Impatiens'). The house is spacious and comfortable, high-ceilinged, appointed with
antiques. It’s obviously a work in progress, daily visited by workmen who have shortly before quit for the day. Cook,
friendly and easy-going, looking tanned and fit and younger than his 58 years, leads me into the kitchen and offers
refreshments. We settle down with chilled glasses of Chardonnay.
Outside two girls - 10 and 15 years old - are playing, attended by a nanny. At various times in the next hour and a half,
they will come into the house and one of them will be heard playing a distant piano. Two dogs - an elderly golden
retriever named Belle and a basset hound named Herbie - investigate the visitor with great relish.
Roger Cook is obviously a man comfortable within his environment as well as his own skin. He’s the working-class
lad from war-ravaged Bristol who discovered that wealth and applause could be his for a song - and songs poured out of
him as water from a faucet. He’s a natural tunesmith with a flair for breezy, singer-friendly melodies teamed with simple
words that stick to the brain forever.
'I’d like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony...'
'I see that worried look upon your face
You’ve got your troubles, I’ve got mine'
'I don’t believe virginity’s
As common as it used to be...'
Snippets of his hit songs can bring the memories swirling back for those of us who were listening during the past 35
years of popular music. And the hits continue right up to the present day, at least in country music circles.
Cook found success early, during the heady days of the ‘60s British pop scene. After singing with a series of vocal
groups that went nowhere, he found a true partner in singer-songwriter Roger Greenaway. Recording as 'David &
Jonathan' they enjoyed success on both sides of the Atlantic, scoring a U.S. hit with their cover of Lennon and
McCartney’s 'Michelle.' More importantly, they discovered a knack for creating songs together, which eventually led
to their quitting the road and devoting themselves to full time songwriting.
Consequently the Cook-Greenaway imprint became almost instantly ubiquitous and, over the next several years, the
hits tumbled out at an impressive rate: 'You’ve Got Your Troubles (I’ve Got Mine)' and 'Here Comes That Rainy Day
Feeling Again' for The Fortunes, 'Long Cool Woman (In A Black Dress)' for The Hollies. And of course one of the
most irresistible pieces of ear candy ever, The New Seekers’ 'I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing,' which went on to
gain even greater fame as a long-running Coca-Cola advertising theme. Cook and Greenaway won the Songwriter Of
The Year award in England in 1971 and again in ‘72.
By the mid-70s, now a wealthy man, Cook had begun to tire of the British music scene. America beckoned. He settled
in Nashville, where the second great partnership of his career unfolded. Cook had met British-born Canadian-raised
singer-songwriter Ralph Murphy in London, where both worked for the same publishing firm. Cook persuaded Murphy
(then in New York) to join him in Nashville where they launched Picalic, an independent publishing company. Thanks
to a catalogue of excellent songs and the tireless efforts of the two partners, the company prospered. Cook himself had
huge hits with Crystal Gayle’s 'Talking In Your Sleep' and Don Williams’s 'I Believe In You.' The Bristol boy had
taken America by storm.
If the ‘60s had been a dizzy time in pop music, the ‘70s were the Music City’s wildest days...parties, cocaine,
free-flowing booze and frolicsome bed-hopping...the truth in Nashville was a quantum leap removed from the haybale
corniness of 'Hee Haw.' Cook and Murphy did not need to be asked twice; they became eager participants in the
festivities.
But all parties must come to a stop. Cook saw two marriages hit the rocks; eventually cash flow problems brought the
curtain down on Picalic Music. Cook endured for three more years but the fun had gone out of it. Married now to his
third wife, Kitty, he returned to England only to find that it was no longer home either. In 1995, the Cooks once again
uprooted and headed for the States. Signing on as a staff writer for a young, assertive publishing company called
Island Bound, Cook once again saw his songs glide easily to the top of the charts as superstar George Strait released
first 'One Night At A Time' in 1997 and 'I Just Want To Dance With You' in 1998. Both went to Number One.
A hitmaker in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, Roger Cook had now shown himself to be a force to reckon with in the ‘90s. In
1998 he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall Of Fame.
Disarmingly candid and down to earth, Cook happily shared his philosophies of life, love, friendship and of course
songwriting during our time together.
Where exactly are you from?
Born and bred in Bristol, England. I was born in the time of The Blitz. The Blitz just destroyed the town centre in
Bristol - all the old 12th, 13th, 14th century buildings got destroyed. ‘Cause the docks came right into the centre of the
city. And we had an aircraft works called Filton; they make the Concorde still. They were legitimate targets so the
Germans bombed the crap out of Bristol. And I was born during all of that.
That’s something that’s hard to understand for people over here, except maybe for those who remember Pearl
Harbour.
I remember when I was growing up, until I was maybe, oh, 16 or 17, they didn’t rebuild ‘cause Britain was broke. That
war broke Britain’s back and there was no money around to rebuild the city centers. For years as a kid, I’d go downtown
and it was just blackened stumps of buildings everywhere, looked like the centre of Berlin almost. And slowly in the
mid-‘50s they started to rebuild and eventually built a new town centre for all the shopping and that.
Was there music in your family?
My father was a musician; played anything he put his hands on. My mother played the piano. All of us children sang.
Three of the others actually played guitar and sang. Several of the family could’ve gotten into it professionally but they
didn’t take it that far. You’ve gotta have that tunnel vision. I had that, you know—nothing was gonna stop me.
What did your dad do?
My dad, before the war, was a banjo player. Banjo bands were big; there’d be three or four banjos playing in one band
[does a surprisingly good imitation of a Dixieland style banjo]. But then the banjo lost its popularity and he had to get a
real job, which he did. He went and started working for the aircraft factory.
How big a family?
There were seven of us, living in a tiny house - you can’t imagine - a tiny little terraced house. And there was no money
around until, shoot, until I started making money, I suppose. We never had a car. There was no phone in the house, no
refrigerator; there wasn’t any hot water till I was about 14 years of age. My mother used to put a copper[pot] on the
stove and get it hot, and her and my father would carry it between them to the bath and fill it up. And - I won’t belabour the point - but my eldest brother used to get in first. He had the first bath. Then I got in. The water was just a
little grey but it was alright. But by the time it got to my youngest sister, it was just scummy water. It was horrible!
Anyway, the truth is, all around us, everybody was poor. But everybody ate well, everybody ate what they needed. So
we all grew up skinny and hard. It was a neat way to grow up, actually. I didn’t know I was poor until later.
When did you get the fire in your belly to do something with music?
I always sang. When I was 10 or 11 I’d be going in for boy soprano contests, trying to win talent contests here, there
and everywhere. And I sang in the church choir which gave me this great grounding for harmonies. I found the love of
music there.
And when I was 15 my brother formed a harmonica band so I learned to play harmonica, bass harmonica. That was the
first time I got up in front of people in a band of any kind. Then when I was about 17 I met some lads and formed a
group called The Sapphires. We all discovered our love of singing, you know, and I got to arrange the harmonies. And
it was when I was 18 I wrote my first couple of songs for that band, in 1958.
We stayed on the road for about two years, The Sapphires. We had a good time, went all over England, all the air bases
and that, you know, doing shows. And then they broke up and I formed another band called The Londons, can you
believe that? Me and two girls. We did a lot of TV work.
Still based in Bristol at this time?
Yeah. Meanwhile I was having to learn to do a real job so I learned how to paperhang and paint, you know, doing
house contracting and stuff. Then The Londons broke up and I was left with just the one girl, Julie here [indicating old
photo] from The Sapphires. And we won a TV contest and actually ended up doing a couple of summer seasons and
making a record which got released on EMI in England. This was 1962. It was a useless record but back then it was
great.
Who were you modelling yourself after musically in those days? Were you listening to American stuff?
Oh yeah. In England, that’s what we did. The big American songs got covered by British artists. That went on a long
time till Cliff Richard came along and a guy called Tommy Steele, who actually started singing original British songs
written by people like Lionel Bart. And out of that came The Beatles. The Beatles, as you know, came from skiffle.
Originally there were thousands of skiffle bands, The Beatles being one, and they made the transition from skiffle -
which was Lonnie Donegan’s music - to adding an electric guitar and an amplifier. That was the huge difference.
Overnight you had rock ‘n’ roll.
It was Buddy Holly and The Crickets that made everyone want to have more than one person singing in the band.
Couldn’t have just a lead singer anymore. ‘Cause we thought The Crickets were singing, doing the bom-de-bom-bom-
Oh-Boy! But it wasn’t, it was four guys they hired to come in and do the do-wops. But we didn’t know that. So it was
Buddy Holly and The Crickets who forced bands to have more than one singer, to sing backups.
When did The Fortunes begin happening in your life?
That was 1965.Roger [Greenaway] and I were on the last tour with a band called The Kestrels; they were the last band
I joined before Roger and I started working together. It was Roger’s band basically, a doo-wop band. I took over the
bom-bom-bom-ba-bom-bom-ba-bom [sings 'Blue Moon' bass riff] - did all that - and we stayed together for about nine
months. And then one of the guys wanted to have a solo career. Roger said, 'well, that’s that' - in the middle of a tour
we were - he said, 'that’s that, we’ll break up.' And he said, 'Rog, you stay with me, we’ll work something out.'
So we took some dancing lessons; we were going to go on the road, dancing and singing. And we started writing a
song at the end of this Kestrels tour. It was 'You’ve Got Your Troubles (I’ve Got Mine).' We wanted to do it ourselves,
you know. A publisher of ours took it to George Martin and said, 'these boys write for me and they sing pretty good,'
and George heard it and said, 'yeah! I really like them, tell them to come in.' So we went to see George Martin and he
said, 'I’d like to produce you boys, I like your sound.' Of course he had The Beatles, he had Cilla Black, Gerry and The
Pacemakers, all those people. This was like meeting God.
Meanwhile, without our knowing it, the song had gotten to this band called The Fortunes - at least their producer Noel
Walker got hold of it - and they had gone in to cut this record. And we were very unhappy about it...well, we were
unhappy for about half an hour. Then we heard their record and it was so obvious that we had written what was about to
become a huge hit. I mean, the hair standing up on your arms, all that stuff. We weren’t too worried then about the artist
thing.
So we were still with George; we went in the studio and he cut several other things with us. Then we ended up cutting
'Michelle.' We had a big hit with that. Then Roger and I wrote a song called 'Lovers Of The World Unite' which was
a big hit in England too. Huge hit.
So David & Jonathan went out and we earned really good money, great money for those days, you know.
Where had you first met Greenaway?
Well, I’d known him from Bristol from the mid- to late ‘50s. His band and mine were like head to head, trying to win
all these talent contests and that. So we were kinda, you know...
Rivals?
Big rivals. Then they got called up into National Service - they were all about a year older than us and they got called
up at the age of 18. And that just put a stop to their career for two years. And we were all expecting to get called up too,
all of us boys, but then five months before I was due to go in and do my two years service, the Korean war ended and
they ended conscription. We were so happy. We actually ended up playing bases where they [members of The Kestrels]
were serving. They came to see us.
Eventually Greenaway and I got together in 1964 and wrote our very first song. We didn’t write half a dozen songs
that didn’t make it - the first song we wrote was a world hit!
'You Got Your Troubles' still sounds great. Was that counterpart section in the last verse part of the original
song?
Yeah, we wrote that.
So you were riding pretty high.
Oh man. We had two or three hits that year. We wrote a whistling tune called 'I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman,' which
was a hit all over the world, you know. Probably the last whistling hit ever. Guy named Whistlin’ Jack Smith. Then we
had a Top Five hit with Gary Lewis and The Playboys called 'Green Grass Round My Window.' Then we had 'Lovers
Of The World Unite,' big European and British hit for Roger and I. Then we decided David & Jonathan were coming
off the road. We weren’t able to write as much as we wanted to and that was becoming a problem. So we came off the
road and started having two or three hits a year then; we were really getting very strong.
And then, I don’t know why, we suddenly got very hot, 1969. I think we had six or seven hits that year and the
following year we had 11 hits, with three of four of them big American hits. The following year we had another nine
hits. There was a two and a half year period we were never out of the charts. We woke up one Christmas morning, we
had Number One, Number Two, Number Four and Number 33 on the charts.
Were you in Bristol all this time or did you eventually move to London?
I moved to London in 1965. Lived there till 1975.
So this was the time of Swinging London?
Absolutely. This was pre-Flower Power and, like, England ruled the waves. And if you wrote a hit song in England,
chances were you were gonna have a hit song around the world. It was bloody marvellous, man.
Always working with Greenaway?
Yeah. We had an awesome time. And then in ‘75 I just suddenly started to get very bored; it started to get very
formulated on the radio in England. Roger and I had just come off being Songwriters Of The Year for two consecutive
years. I wanted to do something else and I thought I could live in America. So I came here. I spent three months in New
York, which I really liked. Spent six weeks in L.A.
Were you married now?
Oh yes, I was married and had three children. I said to my wife, 'I’ve gotta go, I’ve gotta find out whether we could
live there.' And she understood. She wasn’t happy about it at the time but she understood. And I came over. I didn’t
really want to bring up a family in New York, although I loved the town musically. Went to L.A. and I could just never
get hold of it, it wasn’t tangible.
And then somebody said to me, 'why don’t you come out to Nashville, you know, for a week?' I said, 'I’ve got
nothing in common with Nashville, I’m a pop songwriter.' And this guy said, 'oh you’ll love the musicians, you’ll love
the people.' So I came out just for a week, and that was it. I met all these people and I heard all these songs being written
here, and I said, 'wow! I think I could come here and write and be happy.'
Then I went home and said to my wife, 'how about moving to Nashville?' She said alright, so we packed
everything—animals, all our furniture, antiques, everything—into a big van, just lugged it all over the Big Pond.
Bought a big farm out in the country. Big mistake. Within, like six months, my wife had a nervous breakdown from the
silence of it. After being used to London, you know. So that was a big mistake. We ended up splitting up anyway.
I worked really hard at it for two years and couldn’t get a hit in this town. And then one day I wrote a song with a guy
called Bobby Wood, 'Talking In Your Sleep.' Crystal Gayle. And that transformed my career overnight here. It was a
pop song but it was cut country.
Marvellous song.
Thank you. Well anyway, overnight we had the BMI Song Of The Year and suddenly I was an entity in town. I was a
hit Nashville songwriter.
Did you set out purposely to write that song without rhyme, was that a conscious decision?
Oh yeah. I’ve done that lots of times. In fact, it’s something I really like to do. It sets you free. You’re unfettered when
you don’t have to rhyme. You just concentrate on nice words, you know. More songwriters should do it, but not many
do.
You have to choose your words really well to make them memorable...
You have to paint pictures, yeah.
It’s interesting that both you and Bobby are currently enjoying something of a renaissance [Bobby Wood is a
co-writer on the Garth Brooks/Trisha Yearwood duet 'In Another’s Eyes' and LeAnn Rime’s 'Commitment,'
both sizeable hits]. He had a bit of a dry spell there.
Well, I did too. I had...well, I had a lotta problems. It’s hard to write when you got problems. I kept writing but I was
writing 'guess-what-I-mean-by-this' kind of songs.
Enigmatic stuff.
Yeah! So, for three years before I left here I couldn’t get a hit. And then I went back to England [in 1989] and I did
get a hit, with a guy called Daniel O’Donnell. And I had two re-releases that were huge smashes. An old song called
'Something’s Got A Hold Of My Heart,' which was Number One for five weeks in England. And another song called
'Softly Whispering I Love You,' an old hit from the Sixties which was re-released. So while I was in England I had
three hits, you know. Which was really nice. So that kinda kept me going.
But I never had a gig in England, I never had a [writing] job. It had become such a young industry; I guess it probably
always was. Here I was pushing fifty—everybody saying, 'yeah, Cook, he wrote great songs, what’s he doing now?'
Not really interested. I’d done it, I was gone, just like the generation of writers I grew up with. And I thought, 'sod
that,' you know. I woke up one day and Kitty and I, we looked at each other and I said, 'what are we doing here, why
don’t we go back home?' Nashville being home. So we came back here and, within a year, I had a big Number One.
You strike me as a lucky guy in some ways...
Damn lucky!
I mean, obviously you’ve got an enormous talent and you work hard -rewriting a song at 8:30 this morning, for
instance - but still, I think you’ve got the old horseshoe right where you need it.
I don’t know what we’d do without luck. I tell you what, you look at anybody, they could have turned left in their
career but they turned right. Whether it’s a Paul Simon or The Beatles - The Beatles never had to get together. They
never had to be going to the same art college together. It’s just [snaps fingers]...
Unpredictable.
Isn’t it though?
Talk about one of your partners in crime, Ralph Murphy. Where did you meet him?
Ralph was signed to the same company I was in the early ‘60s, Mills Music. And he had some success in Europe too
as a songwriter, good success. And when he went to live in America - which he did in about 1973, he moved to New
York - he went to work for Mills Music there, as a plugger and kind of general manager. He was still writing all that
time. He was my friend, my big buddy, in New York. I used to always pop in to see him.
Then when I decided to settle in Nashville I had more money than, you know, more money than I could use at the time.
So I said, 'I’m not gonna sign as a writer anywhere, I’m gonna form my own publishing company.' I called Ralph up
and said, 'Ralph, why don’t you come down and we’ll do it together? Let’s be partners in a venture together.' ‘Cause he
had the expertise. He had the everyday running of a company down, which I didn’t have. I was kind of a novice to it. So
he came down to join me and we had a very successful company; we had about 14 Number Ones.
Picalic is still talked about as one of the outstanding independent companies.
Well, we couldn’t keep going. We were into the banks and then, one day, BMI and ASCAP got together and made this
pact: no more advances [to publishers against future royalties]. They just informed us and overnight 50% of the
publishers in town folded. All the big companies bought up all the little companies. We hung on for about two more
years, Ralph and I, but in the end the bank wants their money. We were about $300,000 into them—sitting on a worth a million and a half or more, even back then in the ‘80s, you know. But they forced us into selling the company.
We had to settle for half of what it was worth. Buyer’s market.
Sold it to EMI?
Screen Gems, who got bought by EMI. It’s just fishes in a tank, really, around this town. They bought all these songs
and I was with Screen Gems for three years before I went back to England. They inherited me with the buying of the
company. And nobody called me or took me out to lunch in three years! It’s like I was a forgotten person. It really hurt
my feelings.
And you’d had big hits!
Yeah. Well, maybe I had it coming, you know, my ego needed deflating a little bit so’s I could find out where ground
zero was again and rebuild. But I went downhill for a few years, just wasn’t interested in writing anything commercial.
I know it sounds weird but I wasn’t. I’d done it for 20-odd years by then and I couldn’t have cared less. I had an income;
I’d had a lot of hits.
I didn’t really get hungry for hits again until the last year I spent in England, after I went over there for five years. And
then I suddenly thought one day, 'I’m hearing all these songs in my head, you know, and I can’t get them cut here in
England. There’s no way. Where can I go?' So Kitty and I came back here.
Where had you met Kitty?
She’s an Indiana girl I met about 20 years ago. We were eyeing each other but she was going out with my best friend
then and I was going out with her best friend. And then about 12 or 13 years ago, I was in the club one night - I was
separated from my second wife and she was separated from her husband - and we just got to talking. I was looking into
her eyes and I said, 'one of these days...' And she said, 'well, when?' And I thought, 'I stand a chance here!' So I
called her up within two days and we started going out and eventually got married. That was our little one that just came
in [referring to the 10-year-old girl who entered and left the kitchen moments earlier]. My baby. That’s the fruit of our
loins.
Just the one?
Yeah, and Kitty had a daughter already so I’ve got two children at home here.
And you had three from before?
Three others, grown, from the first marriage. I’ve got three grandchildren. My daughter Katy has just been signed to
Curb Records [as a pop artist] here in town. She just made a record. Katy Cook. In fact she’s coming in today from
London to shoot a video here. She’s a beautiful girl.
You seem to have a really strong melodic sense that draws from different sources...you mention the church. Your
comic song that I heard the other night,'Razor Blade Of Love'—that sounds like British music hall.
That’s pure music hall. But the great thing about growing up in England when we were kids - and the Beatles reflect
this, the Stones - was that we had one radio station, the BBC. And they had three separate channels. [Radio] One was
the only one where you heard pop music, but they never had any real pop music programs. You’d be listening to pop,
then the next record would be a classical record. Then you might hear a Scottish jig. So in an hour, you might hear three
pop records. But what was great about it was that, growing up, musically we heard everything - from light comedy to
Beethoven, Mozart, Duke Ellington, bluegrass music, the blues. So we had it all in our heads. I pity kids growing up
now and listening to the radio and they’re plugged into one station and it’s all [does a rap/hip hop imitation].
Melody seems to be taking a beating these days.
Well, the singers don’t have the ranges. But, you know, you can listen to some stations and hear some of the young
bands and they’ve got really good pop melodic ideas. It’s actually getting better out there. There’s more acoustic guitars
coming back into the line-ups now, it’s not all dance music or rap.
And then there’s ‘N Synch, Back Street Boys, which is pure mid-‘60s pop but with today’s musical backing.
How did you meet John Prine?
We met because he came to cut a record at Cowboy’s [Jack Clement’s legendary studio] - Bruised Orange it was - and
I was in and out of Cowboy’s all day long. And [Prine] was a bit of a hero of mine ‘cause two of his songs I loved,
'Hello In There' and 'Sam Stone.' When I got to meet him we were a bit shy around each other at first, you know, as
you can be, but then my girlfriend (who became my second wife) became very good friends with the girl who would
become his second wife. And because they were so close John and I were thrown together a lot. We found out we both
liked to play dominoes, we both liked to smoke dope and do other things We both liked to write songs at four o’clock in
the morning, you know, after a session of Jack [Daniels] and cokes. And we started writing songs, really good songs.
Wish we’d had a hit with all of ‘em.
Your first hit together was 'Love Is On A Roll' for Don Williams.
And of course the second one was 'I Just Want To Dance With You' [George Strait hit]. They all had something—
they were very catchy tunes and they had the little wrinkles on ‘em lyrically that you get with John and myself. Nice cute
ideas that sounded good. I’m really proud of our friendship. I really rate him high, I think he’s a great songwriter.
How did you end up playing ukulele rather than guitar?
I was singing with doo-wop bands so I never needed an instrument, ever. And then I was doing a pantomime - do you
know what a pantomime is? - they have them in England. It’s a Christmas show where you have 'Widow Twanky' or
'Puss-in-Boots' or...it’s probably just in England.
Anyway, I was doing a pantomime and there was this tall, lanky guy with glasses - John, his name was - and he said,
'do you wanna buy a ukulele?' And I said, 'I don’t know.' He said, 'I’ll teach you four chords if you want to' and I
said 'how much?' He said, 'six quid' and that was about a third of my wages, you know. I said, 'ohhh...I don’t know.'
Then he showed me. And I so enjoyed having this instrument in my hands and I thought, 'I could write songs on this.'
So I bought it for six quid. It was a great investment.
So how wild and crazy did it get back in the ‘70s here in Nashville?
As crazy as you can imagine.
Ralph told me he remembers you giving away a car.
[trying to remember] I drowned a car. I drowned my Rolls-Royce. We were too wild...
I don’t know if it was a Rolls-Royce. Apparently you gave one to [British drummer] Tony Newman?
Oh! I gave my 1956 Cadillac to Tony Newman. Which he drove for 11 years and then gave me back in ruins. Totally
ruined [laughs]. I’ve got it out in the garage now - all painted up, primed and ready to go.
Okay, now what about that Rolls-Royce?
I drowned a Silver Shadow. We had a flash flood here and I was trying to take back streets, trying to avoid all the
rubbish. I’d gone through a lot of big puddles, and suddenly I was in this puddle and it was up to here and I thought,
'I’ve gotta get out, I’m gonna drown!' I let the windows down, let the water in around me, pushed the door open, swam
away and watched my car going ‘round in the water with the lights on. Beautiful Silver Shadow, just brought over from
England.
Anyway, I waded to a woman’s house (her house was under water too) and she let me make a phone call. And they
said, 'there’s hundreds of [drowned] cars, we can’t get to you till morning.' I said, 'this is my Silver Shadow!' 'Sorry
buddy, first come first served.' Very democratic. So it was 12 hours under water, anyway, all the leather, all the veneer,
motor seized up...my lovely left-hand-drive Silver Shadow.
It was as wild as you can imagine. Just imagine yourself with all the money you could ever use and all the drugs in
town you could ever use...just crazy. And broken marriages, you know. Broken marriages do more damage than they
seem to at first. Once you lose that anchor—going home at night, the family thing—it’s kind of...
Harlan Howard says divorce is the best thing for a songwriter.
Oh, it’s great for a songwriter, yeah. You can’t write about that stuff unless you’ve gone through it. He might be right.
What role did Kitty play in getting you anchored again?
I remember [when] we first got together, it must have been about 1986-87, and she was still a little crazy then herself.
But she was a nurse. And we went out one day and I remember going to the country. And she said, 'you don’t look
great, really, you look terrible. You’re not gonna live long, you know. The way you’re going at it, your days are
numbered.' I said, 'what do you mean?' She said, 'your liver’s gonna give out, something’s gonna give out, you’re
gonna die.' And the fact that she was a nurse, I think, really worried me. I thought, 'really? Is that what’s gonna happen?
I’d hate to die in my early 50s.'
So that was the point when I started cutting back. And one day, about a year before we got married, I gave up
cocaine.‘Cause that’s the craziest thing, cocaine. Leads to Jack Daniels and coke at night...then you take one to bring the
other one down, another one to go up again...before you know it, it’s four o’clock in the morning and you’re a mess.
And I did this for years, you know. But every songwriter’s got some kind of story like that; he’s been up and down. The great thing is, if you hit bottom
and you’ve got any resiliency in you at all you’re gonna bounce. And I went all the way down.
Well, you look great!
Yeah, I’m feeling good. I’m a good boy now. We sit down in the evening, Kitty and I, I’ll have a glass of wine with
my meal, and that’s it. From about 6:30, 7 o’clock on I don’t drink anymore. I don’t go out, I don’t leave the house. We
get up at 6 in the morning, you know; I’ve got a healthy life. It’s not really that boring.
How prolific are you?
I write a song a day.
Really?
Yeah. Over 200 hundred songs a year I give my publisher. I write at least four songs a week. I don’t write on
weekends.
Along with that goes a lot of ordinary songs, you know, but when you’re that prolific you’re gonna come up with half
a dozen songs a year that really are great songs. And if one of them gets recorded, that’s my income, you know; that’s
my living.
How did the affiliation with Island Bound Publishing happen?
Well, I called Ralph from England - he was still here of course - and said, 'look Ralph, Kitty and I are thinking of
coming back. I don’t want to start another publishing company - for one thing I can’t afford it, you know, I went broke
the last time - do you think I could get signed in town?' He said, 'leave it to me.' He got back to me and said, 'I’ve been
talking to some people. There’s a company called Island Bound - you’ll love them, it’s like a Picalic-sized company, you
know, about six signed writers, couple of good hustlers, young people at the top who are really good. Good ears. I think
you’ll get a good deal with them with a really healthy draw.' And there’s a really funny story with this too.
When I came over he arranged a time for me to go and see them. I gave them a call and went over and I thought I
recognised the building but I wasn’t sure. I got in there and was talking to Julie [Daniel, Island Bound co-owner] and
told her what my expectations were, you know, and she said, 'great, we can meet those, everything’s fine, we’d like to
sign you, we’re really excited about it.' After that she said, 'we’ve got a [writer’s] room upstairs—would you like to go
and see it?' She took me up. It was a real nice room, lots of window space, and I thought, 'I’ve been in this room
before!'
Before I married my second wife I went out with what is now my wife’s best friend - I told you I had a girlfriend and
my best friend had a girlfriend? well, this was the girl - and she lived in this flat. I had slept, smoked dope, made love
and everything in this room I was standing in. It’s a big town, Nashville, why I should be taken to this room is kinda
wild. I’d already written songs in the room! Isn’t that wild? I couldn’t believe it. I said, 'yeah, this room’ll do just fine,
you know.'
That is a strange story.
Yeah. The chances of my ending up in this same room I’d lived in and slept in in Nashville for about three years, you
know—it’s unbelievable. She could have taken me to another room and I might not have ever recognised the building.
Here we are on the brink of a new millennium, and you’ve been having hit songs over a span of four decades. It’s
quite remarkable.
I can’t do anything else. But you know what? It’s not like a job where I’m gonna retire from it; I love what I do. I love
being a songwriter.
You must if you’re writing 200 songs a year.
It’s so much easier now...you write songs for 40 years, it’s gonna get easier. What’s hard to come by is really unique
ideas. But I guarantee they come more to me at my age than they come to young guys, you know. Unique, off-the-wall
ideas.
What’s your favourite Roger Cook song?
I don’t know. Some of my favourite songs...like every songwriter, some of my favourite ones have never been
recorded, you know. The one I have the most attachment to, I guess, is probably 'You’ve Got Your Troubles.' That’s
because it was my very first hit and it changed my life. I’ve written songs that were better constructed or have more
genuine lyrical content but I’m really proud to get up and say, 'this is a song I wrote in 1965; it was a hit around the
world and you might know it.' And people say, 'yeah, yeah.'
It’s kind of a young man’s song too; it’s got a sweetness to it that can’t be manufactured.
It’s also saying, 'hey Buddy, don’t bother me, I’ve got my troubles,' you know. That was fresh in 1965. And like you
said, that counterpoint that came in at the end - that was something you only heard in music halls. The next time you
heard a pop song that had it was within about a year when the Beatles put out 'Help' and they put a counterpoint in it.
I still like to think that John actually heard our record, you know...
Did you get to know the Beatles?
Yeah. Absolutely. Couldn’t help it - same producer, same studio. And Paul used to book us; Roger and I used to do
backup vocals for groups he used to produce.
You sang some studio backups for Elton John, I read somewhere.
Did the first three albums, yeah. We did quite a lot of session singing, Roger and I. Then one day that got boring too,
so I got out of it. In fact, I passed all my work over to Elton John. I said, 'call this guy, he’s got a great pop voice.
'
All these circles within circles. I watched Elton John on TV the other night singing 'Stand By Your Man' on a
Tammy Wynette tribute.
I saw Graham Nash the other day, got to talking to him. Of course he’d left the Hollies before I wrote 'Long Cool
Woman (In A Black Dress)' with Allan [Clarke]. I said, ' I found the actual original lyric with all the scribbl- as I’d
even changed pens - and I was thinking of framing it and sending it to Allan.'
Do you still enjoy Nashville as much as ever? It’s obviously grown and changed a great deal.
I’m enjoying it. I’ll tell you what, I’ve been here 25 years and I’ve got 25 years’ worth of friends. You make better
friends when you’re in your 30s; you’re a little more careful about who you let into your life. Consequently you make
friends that last. Not like the hot and cold friendships you make when you’re younger, in your 20s. I’ve made
friendships here that will last for the rest of my life, you know.
[Afternote: Art Garfunkel did indeed record the Cook-Gross song. ‘N Synch, unfortunately, did not participate.]
Copyright Songwriter Magazine, International Songwriters Association & Larry Wayne Clark: All Rights Reserved
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