Jonathan King
I worked so hard on it, but in the end, I simply didn't know what else to do. Anyway, I called Jonathan King. I told him, "I've got this song called 'Una Paloma Blanca"', and he said, "Oh yeah, I know it, I tried to pick it up myself". And I. said, "Really? Well why don't you record it?". All he said was, "You must be joking. It's just not me, it's not Jonathan King". And I went over to see him, pleading; "Jonathan, it's a hit song. Please record it". And finally he said, "OK, but I'm doing an album, and I will only put it on the album".

After he'd done it, he called me and said, "We might have something here. How is the George Baker record going?" and I said, "It's not. Nobody wants to know", and of course, by now, it had been out six weeks. So Jonathan said, "OK, we'll go with it".

So Radio Two started to play it, I got Thames Valley, Radio 210 to go with it for a couple of weeks after hustling them like crazy, and Jonathan, being Jonathan, started to get a lot of airplay, and it all began to happen. Warner Brothers said, "Wait a minute. We've got the original".

This guy Theo was calling everybody, and I ended up with both versions in the Top 5. Then Bob Barratt called me up from EMI and said, "We want to do a parody on this with The Wurzels", and they'd just come off a Number One. That's how it flowed for me in 1975, and even when I went over to Holland to thank everybody for "Paloma", I found "Mississippi"!

Pussycat and "Mississippi"
In Holland, Theo Roos called me into his office, and said, "I'm going to play you a record, and I want you to have the publishing. You may have some difficulty with it, it's  another  Paloma Blanca I'm afraid". And I said, "Theo, you couldn't give me another Paloma Blanca if you tried".

Anyway, he played it to me, and I  listened to it, and I thought, "That's a great hook, and by the time he played it to me, it was already starting to happen in Holland in a big way, and was starting to take off in Germany, so I thought, "This man was right before, the song has hit me in the same way, so I'm going to go with it. I don't care if I have the  same  problems  as  with Paloma". This time, he told me that he'd done a deal for the record with Rod Buckle at Sonet in the UK.

I knew Rod  from a long time back, and so I knew I had an ally  this  time. 

Nevertheless, we  had  the  same  problems again.  So  again,  I  called Jonathan  King,  and  said, "Jonathan,  you  won't believe this", and he said, "Don't tell me,  you've  got  another  hit song for me", and I said, "I have, and it's a smash, I've had it out for ages, and it's called  'Mississippi'  and  he said,  "I've  heard  it.  You're right, I'll do it".

So again, he recorded  it,  and  it went straight into the charts, but this  time,  there was a big thing about the record being hyped,  which  I  know it wasn't, but Jonathan promptly withdrew his record within ten days of it being released, and the Pussycat version went to Number One.



I know Jonathan put a lot of records into the shops, and I think what happened is that somebody suspected that some customers were saying, "Can I have Mississippi?" and no one was sure whether they wanted the Pussycat version or the Jonathan King version.

Anyway, although it was still a big hit for me, it upset Jonathan, and rightly so,  because I  know myself  that  he would have taken it to Number One.

Typhoo Tea
Paloma is still drawing in income, which is fantastic. It is on several albums and this year. is going to be on the new Typhoo Tea advert on television, which is going to regenerate a lot of interest in it. It's like "Beautiful Sunday", it's very simple, or like "Mississippi" which is also a very simple song with a great hook. Every now and then, those songs come up, and when they do, they're big hits, and you can't knock songs like that. Around 1975 and 1976, they flowed for me, one after another. Mind you it was hard work.  Many  people  thought Paloma could not make it, and when  it  did,  quite  a  few important  people  told  me "You've done it with Paloma but you're wrong about Mississippi", but I had that feeling again.

Funnily enough, I was in Germany in 1982 doing a TV show and somebody played me a really rough cassette of a song, and I just knew it would be a smash. The song was "Da Da Da" by Trio. I could not get the publishing but in fact, I recorded it here with an English guy and we got it into the breakers, but then the Trio version came out and everybody played that, and our version lost out.

Arlon Music
Well it must have been very shortly after we met that I was approached by Deke Arlon. He wanted me to become Managing Director of Arlon Music, his music publishing company. Deke had been very successful in publishing but he was very much into management - he managed Sheena Easton, Dennis Waterman, Gerard Kenny and Chris Neil, the record producer - and he wanted to concentrate more on that side and also the theatrical side, he wanted to become a producer in the theatre. So he was looking for someone to come in and handle the publishing. I thought seriously about it and the only thing was, Deke operated out of Amersham - he had a country house there - and I said to him, "I will become MD of Arlon Music providing I can have an office in London. I don't think being out in the country is really right for the growth of the company".

And he said, "Fine, find an office". So after a lot of searching, I was in Marble Arch and I bumped into an old friend, David Howells, and we started talking. I said, "I'm out looking for an office", and he said, "Well I'm just leaving one! Come up and have a look at it". He was going into business with Pete Waterman - and we all know what happened with that! (Howells became MD of Waterman's phenomenally successful PWL label). Anyway, I went to the office, in Connaught Street, and it was fantastic. So I had Deke come down and look at it and he said, "If this is what you want, let's go for it".

My agreement with Deke was that I would not sign anything new to Noon Music but I would be allowed to carry on looking after the copyrights that were already successful, like "Paloma Blanca" and ''Mississippi and one or two other things I'd been working on. I had something like 350 copyrights, though a lot of them weren't active at the time. But I didn't want to forget Noon Music. It wasn't a healthy turnover, but it was a turnover and with that agreement, I decided to join Arlon.
I walked in there and within two weeks we had the announcement of the Eurovision and we had two songs in the last eight, so that gave me something to do! One of them, we didn't have an artist for and I convinced Alvin Stardust's manager that Alvin should do it, which he did. Unfortunately, neither of the songs won. A few weeks later, Gerard Kenny composed the theme for a TV series called "Widows", I placed the recording with Warner Brothers and the record became a chart success, Top 40. In fact, we had so much success in the first eight months I was there, Deke moved all his staff from Amersham into London and we took over the rest of the building, which was three floors.

Gerard Kenny
When I had that chart record with him, I wanted him to immediately follow that up and so did Warner Brothers. But Gerard had become involved with Alan Jay Lerner (the legendary lyricist of "My Fair Lady", "Brigadoon", "Paint Your Wagon", "Gigi", "Camelot" etc.) on a show called "My Man Godfrey" and he felt he should put everything into that. I said to Gerard, "please take some time out to write a new song. If you have another hit record, it can only help the show". But he didn't quite see it that way. And unfortunately, at the end of the day, after a lot of time and effort, the show came to nothing. Shortly afterwards, Alan passed away.

Alan Lerner
I met him once. Gerard brought him up to the office to meet me and it was quite an experience. You think, "I'm meeting a legend here!" A very, very nice man. And Gerard also brought Clive James in to see me, because they did some writing together, which was a nice gesture on Gerard's behalf. I think it was because I tried to make our writers feel the office was part of their home, a place they could always come. And so they'd say to people, "come and meet my publisher!"

Chris Neil
I looked after his publishing. First he had C & D Music, which he owned with Deke Arlon, and then he formed another publishing company called 63 Songs, which was actually his own company. Chris had quite a few things happening, one of which was getting involved with Mike & The Mechanics and he wrote with Mike Rutherford (leader of the band and also a part-time member of Genesis, of course), so I had half of Mike & The Mechanics' publishing. Chris put his share into 63 Songs.
In 1986, Chris Neil and I went to Los Angeles to pick up an ASCAP award for "All I Need Is A Miracle" being the most played international song on American radio. I also received an award from ASCAP in London on behalf of 63 Songs, again for the success of Mike & The Mechanics, so 85/86 was a very active period. We were building a very strong independent publishing company. At one period around then, we had 16 copyrights on the American charts - some singles and some album tracks. And looking back, I'd say the climax of the Arlon thing for me was Chris Neil and I going to America to pick up that award.

Though we looked after ourselves in the UK, we sub-published through Chappell internationally and what I used to do was have a relationship with the individual countries directly  I didn't just go through the London office. I contacted people directly and sent them material directly so they felt more like an offshoot of our office. And it wasn't a hustle  I was just making them aware of what we had, giving them a full outline of what the writer was about and keeping them up to date with all the new product. Not just sending them what had been recorded, but new demos, new ideas, keeping them well ahead of the game.

Mick Leeson & Peter Vale
Mick Leeson and Peter Vale, had been schoolteachers, though when I was involved, they were already full-time songwriters, we'd paid them an advance and some of the copyrights I've mentioned that we had in the American charts were by them. They'd written for Sheena and for a few other people, and Mick Leeson had written several lyrics for other people's tunes. For instance, the "Widows" theme, for which Gerard Kenny did the music.  They were very bright boys and real craftsmen. All they wanted to do was write songs. They didn't really want to perform, although they had a slight interest in producing. But mainly it was writing and they went about it very professionally. They would meet at nine o'clock in the morning and finish some time in the afternoon just like a job.

Finding new talent
I made it a policy that I would hear everything that came in because although I had people working for me, I felt I should be seen to be involved. Deke was employing me for my experience in the business, not just to sit there while other people found the talent. And I must say he gave me total control - it was like running my own show.

Deke was managing Ned Sherrin and we put on a musical called "The Sloane Ranger", which Ned did with, I think, Keith Waterhouse, which was very successful and Ned also did a version of "The Mikado" - very much a Ken Livingstone era "Mikado"!  and I represented the publishing on that, because there were original songs in it. I hadn't been involved in putting on a musical before and that was quite an enlightening time for me.

All our administration went through Frank Coachworth at Mautoglade which was excellent because Frank is very experienced and a very nice man. So if I had any problem, I'd go round to Frank and we'd sort it out. I found that a lot more valuable than having somebody sit in front of a computer. With a one-man operation like Noon Music - well, one man and a secretary! - you become cocooned in what you're doing. When you suddenly join an organisation like the Arlon Group, although it was a small company compared to a Chappell or an EMI Music, there were people operating in different fields that you could bring together and that gave me a lot more room to manoeuvre.

Deke would never stop me getting involved with the management side or going with him to a record company to discuss an artist, so I'd meet more people, more opportunities would arise and that made it a lot easier for me.

Continued