On a cold and bright Sunday at the end of January I finally saw a childhood favourite on the big screen. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is one of those films that has continued to grow in popularity since its original release. It was my first trip to the big screen since New Year’s Day 2020 so it was well overdue. Now, I have to be honest that one reason alone encouraged me to go to the BFI last Sunday. As well as the film, the lovely Julie Dawn Cole was doing a Q&A after the film, and she was a childhood crush of mine, of which more later!
My first memory of Willy Wonka was on the small screen as a clip on the Screen Test programme. Thanks to the magic of the Radio Times Archive (with which I am becoming obsessed for its ability to take me back to my childhood days) I have pinpointed it to an episode that aired in 1972.
I remember that even in black and white, the world of Willy Wonka looked absolutely amazing. Then I saw another episode in December of that year with (I’m sure, although memory does play tricks on you!) an interview with Julie Dawn Cole and some behind the scenes clips.
Now, remember that the film itself was released in 1971 and it was 1972 before it left the cinemas. Once that happened, TV stations had to wait five years before showing it. BBC1 picked it up for showing at what was almost certainly the first opportunity as you can see below. That meant that it was 1977 before I saw the film in its entirety, but by that time colour television had arrived in my household and I was able to enjoy the film as it was originally intended.
By this time, Julie Dawn Cole had become one of my early heart throbs and I nursed (pun intended) a huge crush on her when she appeared as Jo Longhurst in the hospital drama, Angels, which started in 1975. Julie’s were the first pictures I had up on my wall and when I watched Angels, any part of the story that didn’t include Jo saw my attention wandering!
When I saw Julie as Veruca Salt, I was captivated anew by her younger self, closer in age to me at that time, and my crush on her intensified. It was a very odd experience watching the film, because, not knowing the story very well, I wanted Veruca to win the Chocolate Factory even if she was a bad egg! I remember being very disappointed when she disappeared down that chute!
So, how did the film appear to my adult self. Well, first of all, the relative novelty of the big screen made it a far more immersive experience than the biggest of home TVs, so it was easy to lose myself in the story. I liked the way that Charlie Bucket and his family’s poverty was portrayed in a surprisingly direct and honest manner. Yes, it was exaggerated, but at its heart was a clear eyed portrayal of his life that was rare in children’s films at the time. The songs by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley were fun with Pure Imagination and I Want it Now the obvious standouts as indeed they were when I first watched. This time, though, I also appreciated the melancholy Cheer Up, Charlie sung by Diana Sowle as Charlie’s mother. The pacing of the film was very good, with the search for the golden tickets and the introduction of the main protagonists being handled well. This is due to the excellence of the uncredited screenwriter – more later in the Q&A section! The reveal of the Chocolate Factory itself was just as impressive to my adult eyes, as I soaked up all the details and marvelled at the amount of pure imagination that went into creating it. As with all Roald Dahl’s work, there was a streak of nastiness running through it, albeit for unpleasant characters, but the screenplay did soft pedal it and play it for laughs somewhat more. Suffice to say, the 1 hour 40 minutes went by very quickly as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory proved that it is a film for all ages as it held the full attention of three generations.
The Q&A was the third time I saw Julie Dawn Cole on Sunday. First of all, I saw her walk through the foyer to meet the staff at the BFI who were organising the showing. She looked very youthful given the time that had passed between the filming and this showing, and I was aware that a combination of my younger self and older self were absolutely overjoyed to finally see her close up! Then she helped present some prizes to children who had done some drawings before the film, and gave us a couple of moments to look out for in the film that we might otherwise have missed. When the film ended, she came out for the Q&A and spoke with real affection for the film, her co-stars and the whole team behind the scenes. There were three snippets of behind the scenes information that I was really fascinated by.
Firstly, she fibbed about her acting experience when attending the final audition as she realised that her inexperience was costing her roles that she was otherwise a great fit for. She invented her film history, in the days before an IMDB search would have revealed the truth, and secured the part. Well, it’s what Veruca herself would have done isn’t it? Secondly, a large part of the screenplay was written by David Seltzer, who also wrote The Omen. However, he had to agree to be uncredited because the studio were under the impression that Roald Dahl was still attached to the production. Thirdly, Julie was the only child on set not to be accompanied by a family member so Gene Wilder asked all the older members of the crew to keep a special look out for her. It was a warm and lovely half hour with the most delightful of actresses.
I did actually see Julie walking out, and I toyed with the idea of saying hello, but my younger self , which seemed to take the reins, was too shy to do so! It was probably for the best, and it gives me a reason to go to her next signing when, I trust, I won’t be tongue tied! They say you should never meet your heroes, but you should definitely go to see your childhood crush!
Song 3 – Rite de la Terre
Never heard of it? Well neither had I until this morning, or at least I had no idea what the tune was called. Quite by chance I found it on Spotify and a huge piece of my musical history fell into place finally. Now, strictly speaking this is a tune, not a song, as are the four following it in this trawl through my musical upbringing, but they belong to a fairly neglected area of musical creation nowadays, namely the television theme tune.
Without sounding too much of an ‘in my day’ bore – I hope! – I put the decline in their overall quality down to the way that people started to fast forward through them on VHS and now ignore them altogether on streaming services. Of course, there are still good examples of the genre in the TV programmes nowadays, but the sheer number of memorable theme tunes from my childhood pointed to the early 70s in particular as a golden era.
Anyway, back to Edward Michael’s Rite De La Terre. It introduced one of the most original and challenging children’s programmes of all time, Timeslip. When it was shown on ITV, I was 6 or 7 years old, and I can’t remember if or when it was repeated. The content of the programme was way above my head at the time, but that theme tune was the reason I tuned in week after week. It is a foreboding, scary theme tune that unsettled me as a child and still does now. When I got the series on VHS many years ago, it was that theme tune which sent the hairs on the back of my neck rising. The programme itself was as accurate a picture of the future as was scientifically possible at the time, with episodes involving Virtual Reality, global warming and cloning turning out to be pretty much on the money as those scientific concepts hardened into everyday reality. Have a trawl through YouTube and eBay or elsewhere on the internet for artefacts of this marvellous, forgotten series. Just to whet your appetite, here is that theme tune that finally has a name!
Next, we have a theme tune from 1972 that is instantly recognisable as the sound of Sunday afternoons, at least in the Southern Television region. I give that little caveat, because the regional variations at the time were sometimes very large indeed. For others of my age it may have been the sound of a Saturday or Sunday evening, but whenever you heard it during the weekend, the fantastic Galloping Home will bring memories flooding back. Although I knew the tune, and in this case the title, I had no idea of the identity of the composer behind it until today. Denis King has had a varied career to say the least. A member of the King Brothers, Britain’s first ‘boy band’, whose tunes would be familiar to those with memories of the late 50s and early 60s. He studied orchestration at the Guildhall School of Music from 1970 after the group disbanded. It’s fair to say that he hit the jackpot pretty much straight away when he composed the exhilarating theme to children’s equestrian drama Black Beauty! His musical expression of the freedom of a horse at full speed is 50 years old now, but still instantly recognisable to those of a certain age and, almost certainly, their children. Here is a tune that is simply iconic.
Moving back into the realm of sci-fi, it’s the third ITV theme tune in a row in an era when the BBC tended to dominate children’s viewing. If I say the words SuperMarionation to you, you might look at me blankly or nod your head as you remember the incredible theme tunes from the Barry Gray Orchestra. The partnership between Barry Gray and Gerry Anderson began with the very first puppet series from 1956, the largely forgotten The Adventures of Twizzle, and stretched throughout the 1960s with Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and, my favourite of all, Joe 90. The adventures of a bespectacled nine year old, employed by WIN as a very special agent who could enter places fully grown agents couldn’t, and who could be given the brainwaves of any person when he sat in the machine BIGRAT, captured my imagination from the start, quite literally. Gray’s psychedelic theme tune was an outstanding theme tune that sits with the classics of any genre. Many of you will have other favourites from the Gerry Anderson stable, but for me, it’s another taste of childhood weekends that is imprinted on my mind.
Changing channels now, I move onto a programme that shaped my childhood love for the cinema. Screen Test was, in my childhood, one of the few ways you could see film clips outside of Disney Time. Four children answered questions about the film clips they had just seen in a game of visual and aural memory. I used to love playing along although I was not particularly brilliant at the visual questions if memory serves. As well as the questions, it had Michael Rodd who was one of the best TV presenters of the time. He also appeared on Tomorrow’s World which I became a regular viewer of because of Rodd’s presence, and he was one of the great communicators in a TV era packed with them. Syd Dale’s Marching There and Back was the military style theme that introduced the programme and contributed so much to it. There were lots of great BBC theme tunes in the 1970s, but this is my pick of the lot.
For my final theme tune, I am changing the channel again to ITV. They really did have a run of excellent theme tunes in those days and they held me in their thrall from that day to this. My final choice comes from composing legend Dudley Simpson. His incidental music was heard in pretty much every iconic Doctor Who story from Planet of the Giants in 1964 to the somewhat less iconic Horns of Nimon in 1980. Alongside his Doctor Who work, he was responsible for two of the most readily identifiable pieces of science fiction music from the 1970s. In 1978 he composed the music for Blakes 7. Despite never liking the series itself, I always liked listening to the theme tune before turning over to another programme. However, in The Tomorrow People it hit the spot both as a theme tune and a genuinely intelligent science fiction series. Whilst the theme tune itself was extremely good, it was the incredibly unsettling visuals that went with it that really stick in my mind. All that is left is to ask, were you the blue or the green?
I hope that, for those of you who remember this era, I have brought back some memories and singled out some of your favourite theme tunes. If I have missed any, let me know in the comments. See you for Part 4 very soon.
Song 2: Womble of the Universe by The Wombles
I have written about my discovery of this song here and mentioned it regularly on twitter as part of my fan worship of the amazing Mike Batt. Why did it affect me so much on a musical and personal level? Well, I had been a huge fan of The Wombles from the start, but this was definitely a game changer as far as I was concerned. It mesmerised me from the first few notes with its space vibe and it referenced, though I didn’t know it at the time, Space Oddity in places. The storyline was captivating as we followed Orinoco into space on his clockwork rocket ship and wondered, along with his family and friends, whether he would come down to Earth again. It tapped into my feeling of wanting to escape from everything I knew to have an adventure, although it reflected just wanting to escape from everything whether I had an adventure or not, when I listened to it when I was older. As with many of Mike Batt’s songs it has a wistful, almost melancholy edge to it. The whole album showcased a musical genius at work in its use of 11 different genres, but it was Womble of the Universe that was the track which led me to different songs as I developed a fascination with space and the universe around me.
The next song, chronologically in my discovery of music, was a small film called Star Wars! I saw it 6 times in the cinema and, although I enjoyed the main tune, it was the scene in the Cantina Bar which really hit the spot musically. Why that one? Well, I suppose that it was different, kind of quirky and great fun. At 12 you don’t necessarily look for the same songs as you do when you are an adult, but I still love this track. It reflects a bit of Mike Batt’s sense of fun and musicality, and the use of clarinet style instruments in the original film was great. The track that charted was by Meco and it was a combination of the main theme and the Cantina Band tune and it was a single that was hardly off of my record player in 1977/78! As you can probably hear, it is very much a 70s disco track, but it’s great for all that.
In 1980 my favourite TV series was Cosmos, the history of pretty much everything presented by the visionary Carl Sagan. The breadth and depth of the programme as it tackled philosophy, discovery and space exploration set it apart from anything else at the time, or indeed since. There were brilliant uses of music throughout, but the piece of music that left me awestruck was the track Alpha by Vangelis which sound tracked a journey through space. It is a synthesiser track that starts slowly and builds up momentum gradually throughout until, by the end, it is an exhilarating dizzying ride that just leaves you breathless – well me at least – and just staring at the TV in stunned admiration at the combination of special effects and that simply incredible music. Remember, this is in 1980, when UK TV sci-fi was innovative in terms of storylines, but had the budget of the average caravan holiday in Norfolk! Cosmos was in all ways on a different planet. When I saw the ‘Cosmos’ single of Heaven and Hell in the record shop I picked it up eagerly. I turned it over and saw Alpha on the B Side, although at the time I bought it, the title meant nothing to me. When I put it on the record player and realised which song it was I was overjoyed. It is a record that also put me in touch with the world of exciting synthesiser music, but that’s another story!
Time for a little bit of fun now, with a song that is one of the most educational songs ever recorded. In the excellent Meaning of Life from the Monty Python team, there were some really good songs, but one of them was an all time classic. Written and sung by the multi-talented Eric Idle, it is the tour de force that is The Galaxy Song. For my money, it is better than the more heralded Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, as he uses entirely accurate information about space and time to encourage a woman to donate her organs! It skips along with a sense of mischief, but never loses sight of scientific accuracy as it wears its knowledge so lightly. Eric Idle is on great form as he sings it with the air of a game show host and a travelling salesman combined. If you’ve never heard the song before, you are in for a rare treat I promise you.
The final track is from the artist that recorded Space Oddity, so in a sense it completes a nice circular journey as we move through space to the Red Planet. The song Life on Mars is definitely my favourite Bowie track with its mix of captivating piano playing by Rick Wakeman and the lyrics that are open to multiple interpretations. In December 2016 I went to the Kings Cross Theatre to see Lazarus, the Musical. The part of the girl in the production was played by Sophia Ann Caruso on Broadway and in London. However, on that night, her understudy, Hannah Rose Thompson played the part and delivered the performance of the night. She sang Life on Mars with a beauty and power that left me covered in goose bumps and with tears in my eyes. Ever since then I have been looking for a copy of her version of the song on Youtube or Spotify, but without any luck. If anyone can track it down I’d be incredibly grateful, and if by a very small chance Hannah reads this, thank you for my favourite musical memory from any stage production. Given the impossibility of tracking down that version, I shall stick with the gorgeous original that I discovered many years after it was first recorded.
I hope you enjoyed reading my space themed collection and I hope that you will join me for song three of my musical journey very soon.
Song 1: Vincent by Don McLean
I was seven years old when this song came out in the UK, and in retrospect it seems to be a very unusual song for a young child to become obsessed with. So what was it about this track that made it the first song that just made me stop, listen and think, ‘Wow!’? First and foremost, it is the ethereal, otherworldly sound that McLean conjures up from that first note. All you can hear is that unique voice, with no embellishments and no intros. It is pure, arresting and instantly recognisable, and instantly drew me in. Once you get into the song itself, the lyrics are designed to weave a story, sometimes factual, sometimes fantastical that makes you want to learn more about the person he is singing about. What is the Starry Night? Who is Vincent? Why did people not listen to him? I seem to remember that the Starry Night painting was used in an episode of Top of the Pops, although I might be confusing that with another programme. Just as this song immediately captivated me, so did the painting itself, the artist and the whole impressionist movement. I fell in love with the fire and passion of the painting before I had the slightest idea what it was about. It was many, many years afterwards that I finally saw Van Gogh’s work in the excellent Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which I highly recommend, but Starry Night was very conspicuous by its absence. It is still a painting I would love to see close up. My Nana, who also loved this song, did tell me a little about the artist, and I got more information from my grandparents’ set of encyclopaedias. One of my clearest memories of this song is sitting at my grandparents’ kitchen table in their small cottage listening to it on their radio. Like many childhood memories, it may be a combination of more than one event, or a misremembered event which became the real memory, but I know for sure that this was a song I shared with my Nana who loved all kinds of music.
So, how did this song change me, and what other songs did this lead me to? Well, it gave me a lifelong focus on the lyrics of a song as my way in to the music. My wife, by contrast is initially attracted by the music itself. I can, of course be captivated by music that is wholly or largely instrumental, and although I love ‘story songs’ I can find one word or phrase that gives me an entry into the song. However, ever since I heard Vincent at the age of seven, I have found myself listening to the lyrics first and foremost.
The next ‘story song’ I remember very clearly came along a couple of years later, in May 1974 when Alan Price reached the Top 10 with another track based on real life, ‘The Jarrow Song’. Yet again, the lyrics sent me off to the encyclopaedia to find out when the march was, and what it was about. For those who have not come across it, the song is a retelling of the Jarrow March of 1936 which took place in October of that year, and involved 200 men from the town of Jarrow in the North East of England marching from there to Westminster to raise awareness of the dreadful situation in their town after the main employer, the Jarrow Shipyard was closed down. The poverty in that town was grinding even by the standards of the 1930s and the march was designed to spread the message to other communities that the time had come to protest to the highest in the land. Despite being brought up in a staunchly Conservative household, and attending a private junior school at the time, it fanned the ember of a social conscience that eventually burst into flames in my 20s and 30s.
Just over 6 months later came the song that, to a very small extent, opened my eyes to poverty in the here and now. December 1974 saw Ralph McTell’s Streets of London rise quickly up the charts to Number 2. The verses painted portraits of people at their lowest ebb, but it did so with compassion and respect. It made me wonder in my own immature way what had caused those people to end up on the streets, and I remember being more aware of people living on the streets on the odd occasion I visited the capital. Sadly, the lyrics are just as relevant today, nearly five decades on.
You can draw a fairly straight line from the gentle but pointed lyrics in Streets of London to the more strident social commentary of the early 80s. That line, I think is all about discomfiting the listener and making them aware of their own prejudices and blind spots. I was not sure which of the socially aware songs to include, but there were two that really spoke to me at the time. First of all was Ghost Town by The Specials which has been a constant reminder of ongoing social decay and the way that the youth of the country almost invariably get the worst deal in any situation. It has been endlessly analysed, so suffice to say my interest in this track has grown over the years and it is one that speaks to each new generation. Second was Paul Weller’s second group, The Style Council with the outstanding Walls Come Tumbling Down. The track was urgent, visceral and fist pumping, and what a tune! The targets were timely and the barbs well aimed. It was a protest song that had more in common with late punk/early new wave than 70s social commentary, but frustration at the plight of people that had no access to the levers of power underpinned both. However, where McTell wanted to change minds, Weller wanted nothing less than to change regimes! I suppose that reflects different generations and different times, with the 70s being more about incremental improvements and the 80s being more about instant results.
My final song is by another 80s singer/songwriter famous for protest songs, but this is not one of those. It is the most beautiful and sympathetic love song I have ever heard, and one that always brings me to the point of tears with its beautiful chorus. As an aside, it only got to Number 37 in the UK charts, proving once and for all that the record buying public cannot be trusted! I bought it on our fourth anniversary in September 1994, but it has become more relevant to me and my wife as we have aged and reached the time that the fantastic Paul Heaton wrote about in this song. I said at the beginning of this post that I use lyrics as my way in to a song, and I instantly saw our relationship in the early years where we were young and wrapped up in each other. Then, this young man, barely any older than we were moved forward to the same couple decades later where the memories were brought into sharp focus by the awareness of mortality. This song speaks to me as perhaps no other does with 32 years of marriage behind us. If Vincent was a song about thwarted love, Prettiest Eyes is a song about lasting and deepening love and it really cannot be bettered as a portrait of lifelong affection. It is the perfect finish to this travel through the song writing loves of my past.
Welcome to 2023 and a Happy New Year to all of you. Last year was a year of growth for my blog, albeit from a low base to a very slightly higher base! I got a huge amount of satisfaction from completing #Blogmas and some of you were nice enough to let me know that they got something by way of interest and entertainment from some of those entries.
So, what lies ahead for 2023?
Well, I am going to review more vinyl, in my re-play series, more books both old and new, and more DVDS/Blu-Rays in my re-view series. Alongside this I intend to look back over my musical history, but this time taking a different approach into a project that I will call 10 Songs that changed me. In it, I will go chronologically, as I did with my Musical History entries, but each entry will be one single song that set me on a new musical path. I will try to explain what it is about the song that had such an effect, and to show how it led me to discover different artists.
I hope you enjoy the next 12 months on this blog. See you on here (I hope) during 2023.
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 