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EDSS 1029 The Songs Of PETE ATKIN&CLIVE JAMES
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Beware Of The Beautiful Arranged by Pete Atkin Project co-ordination – Val Jennings Strings arranged by Nick Harrison CD package – Jools at Mac Concept Stranger Produced by Don Paul CD mastering – Alchemy Engineered by Tom Allom Ephemera courtesy of the collections of Fontana 6309 011, 1970. Re-issued on RCA Recorded at Regent Sound A, Tottenham Pete Atkin and Clive James SF 8387 in 1973 in a re-designed sleeve with CD front cover main photo and strapline photo – “Touch Has A Memory” replaced by “Be Street, London W1, on 31st March and 1st & 2nd April 1970 Sophie Baker Careful When They Offer You The Moon”, and Huge thanks – Pete Atkin, Clive James, Simon Mixed between 2 pm and 6 pm with “Sunrise” as the second song. Platz, Steve Birkill, Ronen Guha on 2nd April 1970 and Caroline Cook “Be Careful When They Offer You The Moon” and “A Man Who’s Been Around” For everything (and we mean everything) relating to were recorded at Tin Pan Alley Studio, Pete Atkin’s works, visit www.peteatkin.com, but Denmark Street on 11th August 1970 make sure you’ve got plenty of time to spend! Then of course, you’ll want to visit Credits – British Rail, Arthur Guinness, www.clivejames.com William Hazlitt, John Keats, Meade Lux Lewis, Garcia Lorca, Odham’s Junior Pete Atkin’s albums on the Encyclopaedia, Auguste Renoir, William Edsel label: Shakespeare and Duke Ellington (there never was another). Beware Of The Beautiful Stranger…plus [EDSS 1029] Hair by Robaire of Mayfair Driving Through Mythical America Photographed on location at Puttenden [EDSS 1030] Manor, Edenbridge A King At Nightfall…plus + The Road Type design by Sandy Field Of Silk [2 CD] [EDSD 2028] Designed and photographed by Keef Secret Drinker + Live Libel [2 CD] [EDSD 2029]
Lyrics – Clive James Visit www.demonmusicgroup.co.uk for the Music (and lyrics to ‘Honky Tonk Train’ and Edsel catalogue and the many other fine labels ‘All I Ever Did’) – Pete Atkin that make up the Demon Music Group. Tracks 1 – 16 licensed by Fly Records. Fly Records is a Pete Atkin – vocals, guitars, piano division of Onward Music Ltd. p 2009 Onward Music Ltd Steve Cook – double bass under licence to Demon Music Group Ltd. © 2009 Tony Marsh – drums Onward Music Ltd/Demon Music Group Ltd. Tracks Henry Mackenzie 17 – 24 issued under licence from Pete Atkin. Tracks – clarinet p © Russell “Dai” Davies 17 – 24 & 1969 Pete Atkin. Marketed by Edsel – tuba Records, a division of the Demon Music Group Ltd, 2 (Salvation Army Class A London, W1W 7TL. The Demon Music Group is a No. 4521, motto ‘Blood and fire’) 2 entertain company. Manufactured in the EU.
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music publishers, and that led us to Essex performed. LWT never returned the albums PA: Clive and I wrote these songs in the of a clubroom, destroyed in a bout of civic Music, and that led us to …. (see above). and my wife has reminded me of this fact at late 1960s, but it would be a mistake to try vandalism in the seventies – a long, narrow, The bass is by our stalwart Footlights least once a week for almost four decades. to find within them traces of the Summer of seedy, threadbare first-floor room with a chum Steve Cook, who went on to play on She liked me as a struggling young artist, Love, mind-expanding drugs, Carnaby tiny stage at one end and, most important Beware Of The Beautiful Stranger, as and even today is apt to point out that Pete Street, revolution in the air, and what have for me, a piano. We had access to this you’ll have spotted already, and then to did a better job of maintaining his initial you. For most people at the time – certainly room pretty much any time we wanted, and work in far more distinguished company, blazing integrity than I ever did. From that for us – most of that was happening it became a workshop, a second home. not least that of the great Mike Westbrook. angle, the cardboard albums aren’t just somewhere else (most especially Carnaby Actually, it became a first home. In spite of having been recorded in a keepsakes, they’re an ur-text, the holy Street). Except for the one thing that did As a teenager I had taught myself to proper studio, the quality of these tracks is tablets. They certainly weren’t tainted by get through to just about everyone: the play piano a bit by picking out tunes – less than terrific, I’m afraid, mostly because the deadly touch of Mammon. Pete might music. sorry, ‘hits’ – in the right hand and the original reel-to-reel tapes disappeared a be right that they made more money, It was in any case a lucky time for me. I ‘strumming’ chords with the left. In college, long time ago and these copies have been weight for weight, than any of the later was a lucky, naive eleven-plus grammar- without a piano handy, I started to play taken from one of the very few vinyl copies I commercial albums, but how much is more school boy who found himself waking up in acoustic guitar, but I still felt more at home can still lay hands on. than nothing? God, it was fun, though. a university that contained more on the piano. CJ: The second cardboard-covered limited possibilities than I could have imagined. It I’d sung a few of my own silly songs at edition album The Party’s Moving On was 17. Have You Got A Biro I was lucky too that the most popular music Footlights smoking concerts, and one day certainly a technical advance over the first, Can Borrow? 1.47 of the day happened also to be the best Clive simply handed me a lyric and said While The Music Lasts, which, as I recall, music then being made. I was additionally “Hey, sport, do you think you can do was recorded in a college room with 18. Touch Has A Memory 1.35 lucky that my college record library was anything with this?” I really don’t remember blankets hung up for sound control. I always well stocked with the best of classic jazz, which lyric that was, but we soon started thought of them as the cardboard albums, 19. Sunrise 2.23 blues, and Tin Pan Alley, and I was filling turning out songs at a fair old rate and used and since they contain more than a few early my head up with all of it to the shameful (abused, some might say) our privileged fumbles by me I’m rather glad they were never 20. The Luck Of The Draw 1.27 exclusion of almost everything else. The position to shoehorn some of them into generally available. But the people who clinching bit of good luck was somehow to Footlights shows. Songs – straight songs, bought them loved them, and the soaring 21. Girl On The Train 2.45 join the Cambridge Footlights and then to at any rate – weren’t a big part of what the Ebay prices probably reflect the desire of hook up with Clive. club usually did, but we had little or no successful but ageing executives who wore 22. You Can’t Expect To Be The Footlights was a revue club other idea of what we might do with them. them out over the course of years to get Remembered 3.13 (nowadays I suppose you’d call it a comedy An additional stimulus to writing – back to a time of happy student poverty. club) which put on shows for members and specifically to writing songs from a female My wife treasured a set of the 23. Laughing Boy 2.20 a big annual public show at the Arts point of view – was the presence in the cardboard albums and after I, typically, Theatre, as well as ad hoc cabarets around club of both Julie Covington and Maggie frittered my copies away, I borrowed her 24. All I Ever Did 0.49 the place. It was – and still is – famously a Henderson, the singing of either one of set in order to answer a request from training ground for many who have gone in whom would have been inspiration enough. London Weekend Television, who duly set All songs published by Onward Music Ltd, to show business in one or other of its Those days – 1967, ’68, ’69 – were so 26 up a little TV series called The Party’s except tracks 1, 2, 10, 11, 18 and 22 forms. The list is long, illustrious, and easy full of music of so many kinds, with the LP 3 Moving On in which Pete and Julie both published by Westminster Music Ltd. to find. In those days it had the crucial use starting to establish an identity of its own
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beyond just being a collection of singles, department, just off the Tottenham Court I’ve drunk the wines of life to the lees Bonus Demos: that I truly don’t think we ever gave a Road in London. I knew the signs of life when they were trees Recorded at City of London Recording Studio, I’ve seen it all as near as dammit moment’s consideration to writing in any Don happened to be a mate of Kenny Osborn Street, London EC1 on 3rd February Run the gauntlet and the gamut particular style or idiom. The song was the Everett, at that time the most famous and 1969, except ‘Biro’ recorded on 7th August thing. It still is. But we did imagine our influential DJ in the land with his Saturday You’re looking at a man who’s been around 1968. songs being sung famously by successful morning show on BBC Radio 1. Don I’ve hailed the kind, the true and the rare Pete Atkin – vocal, guitar singers, which is partly what led me to played him a couple of the tracks, and he I’ve sailed to find the new like Baudelaire Steve Cook – bass organise some amateurish recordings of reacted in a way we might have dreamed I’ve done the mad thing and the fun thing them and to assemble a couple of privately- of. He played them on his show several Done it all except the done thing PA: These tracks are all taken from the pressed LPs. The idea was to sell enough weeks running. That was enough to You’re smiling at a man who’s been around second LP I had had privately pressed from some demos we’d made, and which we of them to unwitting friends and convince Don and David that they might be So a kid like you is nothing new to me The Party’s Moving On acquaintances to cover the costs and use able to get a commercial release for them, However pleased I seem to be to see you called . There were the rest as demos. It didn’t exactly work, which they did. Easy when you just say it However keen I seem to be to please you just 99 of them, and they had labels printed mainly because the music business was like that. Don’t kid yourself you mean a thing to me by state-of-the-art technology and already changing, and most recording And so I became a recording artist, individually stuck on to the front and back artists, increasingly aware of the financial which hadn’t originally been the idea at all, I’ve seen the blazing young hit the top of their white cardboard covers. (If you benefit of writing their own songs, were not even a dream, to be honest. It was only I’ve heard their praises sung and then they made a hundred or more you became liable less and less likely to be looking for new after the album was released on Fontana flop to Purchase Tax, the predecessor of VAT, I’ve seen the weeping and the laughter songs from the likes of us. that I set about doing the rounds of the folk which would have made the entire Never needed looking after Nevertheless, the demo LPs did lead clubs – there were even more of them then operation economically unrealistic). I You’re staring at a man who’s been us in late 1969 to the publishers Essex than there are comedy clubs now – to try to numbered all the discs and kept a note of Through this before, get what I mean? which numbered copy each person bought Music, where David Platz took us on and get a performing career under way. You’re dealing with a man who’s been around advanced me fifty quid so I could at least At that critical point Kenny, man of the or was sent, and then I lost the list. One spend Christmas in some shoes that didn’t best possible taste and my de facto So a kid like you is nothing new to me copy came up on Ebay a year or two ago leak (sorry, but that’s true). More than that, sponsor, notoriously got himself sacked by However pleased I seem to be to see you and I’m sorry, or perhaps pleased, that I he stumped up for some proper studio the BBC for what was considered in those However keen I seem to be to please you don’t know whose copy it originally was. sessions to record some of the songs. And days to be an inexcusable and intolerable Don’t kid yourself you mean a thing to me Anyway, it fetched what seemed to me an those, amazingly, are the recordings you joke, something to do with the Minister of You’re dealing with a man who’s been around astonishing amount of money, but that’s have here. Transport’s wife having just passed her I’ve watched a million things come to pass almost certainly because of the presence David put me together with the driving test. Ah well. Although the album I’ve watched a string of kings put out to grass on half the songs of Julie Covington’s producer Don Paul, who had been a didn’t, as they used to say, trouble the I’ve made the good scene and the bad scene breathtakingly beautiful singing. member of the hitmaking vocal group the charts, it did pretty well really, perhaps I’ve even sung the mad scene I was blissfully unaware at the time Viscounts. I still vividly remember the partly because it didn’t sound much like You’re smiling at a man who’s been that this recording project would turn out to sessions in the little basement studio (the anything else. It might have done even Through the fat times and the lean be probably my most commercially effective whole building now long gone) across the better, but the trouble was it didn’t sound You’re dealing with a man who’s been around ever. And indeed I suppose it worked well 4 street from what’s now the entrance to much like anything else. Run the gauntlet and the gamut enough since it gave us something 25 University College Hospital’s A&E I could never have guessed, and reasonably serious-looking to tout around
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CJ: The Moon was still a destination in 16. A Man Who's Been didn’t, that I’d still be singing a lot of these those days. Nobody ever gave it a more songs nearly forty years later. But they do enchanting mention than Joni Mitchell with Around 3.49 still seem to work. Listening again now to her line about “the face of the conquered Recorded at Denmark Street Studios on 11th my twentysomething self singing them, Moon”, but I was quite pleased with my August 1970 there’s a lot that I’d do differently, of colourless and dusty ball of holes. There Pete Atkin – vocals, guitars, piano, course. In fact my luck has held out to the were plenty of rock stars who handled tambourine point where I have indeed been able to do success well: they were the ones you rarely Brian Odgers – bass guitar some of these things differently [on read about. But it can’t be denied that, from Tony Marsh – drums Midnight Voices: the Clive James-Pete the stories in the press, sudden fame Albert Hall – flugelhorn Atkin Songbook Volume One (Hillside looked fatal. The bodies were already piling Russell “Dai” Davies – trombone CDHILL08) 2008], but that’s not in any up. We would have quite liked to run the PA: The plan was always to put Master of way to disown what I did back then. I can’t risk, however, so essentially this lyric is an the Revels on the B-side of the Be Careful but feel affectionately for these recordings exercise in blatant hypocrisy. Luckily Pete When They Offer You The Moon single, so – almost as affectionately as I feel for lightened it up with the music. I took the opportunity of some studio time to anyone who supported us then and Be careful when they offer you the moon put down a ‘proper’ version of this song, which anyone who may remember them now. It gives a cold light Clive and I fondly believed was eminently It was only ever made to light the night coverable, as a kind of alternative or antidote CJ: False modesty can be a useful You can freeze your fingers handling the to My Way and the like. We played it to one rhetorical device but Pete has always moon of the publisher’s executives, suggesting suffered from genuine modesty, which sometimes has the effect of minimising the Be careful when they offer you the moon one particular eminent singer for whom we facts. Some of the songs that got “shoe- It’s built for dead souls thought it would be hugely suitable, and the horned” into Footlights revues were widely It’s a colourless and dusty ball of holes executive replied “Yes, I’ll get that to he.” recognized in Cambridge as the most You can break an ankle dancing on the moon Clive and I looked at each other with the same sad thought going through our minds. interesting things in the show, and when When you take the moon you kiss the world Maggie Henderson sang “If I had My Time goodbye CJ: That same executive was Again” in one of our revues on the For a chance to lord it over loneliness understandably a bit puzzled by the Edinburgh Fringe, Harold Hobson, the listeners. The problem might have been And a quarter-million miles down the sky mention of Baudelaire. He had a long face eminent critic of the Sunday Times, called it solved more easily if the record companies They’ll watch you shining more but weighing which a look of incomprehension took time the highlight of the entire Festival. Pete was had known how to classify what Pete was less to cover, but eventually there was nothing thus recognized, by discerning listeners, as up to. In the record stores, Beware Of The So be careful when they offer you the moon between his hairline and his chin that did an important songwriter from the jump: a Beautiful Stranger tended to be put in the It’s only dream stuff not send a signal of polite bafflement. Mind fact which, speaking as one who had a Folk bin by default. It was the first sign of a It’s a Tin Pan Alley prop held up by bluff you, the singer we had in mind would share in his work, I would like, in all dilemma that would trouble us for a And nobody breathes easy on the moon probably have been puzzled too. If I’d had modesty, to have recorded here. decade. 24 Nobody breathes easy on the moon my wits about me, I would have substituted The problem, of course, was about Pete Atkin and Clive James, 5 Count to ten when they offer you the moon something simpler. The fault was mine. how to increase the number of discerning November/December 2008
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1. The Master Of The Bonus Tracks: Revels 2.36 Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, 15. Be Careful When They 1st April 1970 Offer You The Moon 3.02 Pete Atkin – vocals, piano Recorded at Denmark Street Studios on Russell Davies – tuba 11th August 1970 Tony Marsh – drums Pete Atkin – vocals, guitars, piano, Henry Mackenzie – clarinet tambourine PA: This was the first track that Kenny Brian Odgers – bass guitar Everett picked up on. The lyric tells a sad Tony Marsh – drums story, but I thought that a small-scale, Albert Hall – flugelhorn slightly seedy, circus-y bravado was the Russell “Dai” Davies – trombone right pose to adopt. I started by playing the PA: Perhaps fortunately, we never two-note tuba phrase and were offered the moon, literally or the tune just kind of metaphorically, so our worldly arrived over the top of it, Compilation album (1977) wisdom was never put to the bending and twisting its practical test, so the song seems to way towards a showbizzy me to have acquired an almost ending. wistful quality in hindsight. I had There wasn’t much CJ: In the times of always loved harmony vocals (Buddy budget for additional Elizabeth I, the Master of Holly, Everly Brothers) and still do, musicians, but I thought I the Revels was more of so a lot of my tunes tend to imply a could get good value out an official censor than a second complementary melody line. of a clarinet, so Don Paul theatrical enabler, but his With the Everly Brothers in booked one for me. It title sounded like fun to particular, it was often hard to work was just chance that it me, so I went with that. out which voice was the tune and turned out to be the great It’s also possible to which the harmony, and I think this Henry Mackenzie, who, detect the presence of one turned out to be a genuine two-part among many other Merlin and Prospero: melody. Mackenzie clarinet, and some rudimentary things, had been one of mischief-making It was specially recorded – and attempts for Footlights shows (bluffing all the clarinet trio on the Beatles’ When I’m magicians. In my own mind, Pete’s released, what’s more – as a single. I have the way). I’m afraid I remember flattering Sixty Four. The tuba was a genuine sprightly, perky melody exactly expresses no memory at all of where the idea to use myself that the little answering flugelhorn Salvation Army model played by our then- the personality of a professional jokesmith brass on it came from, but I enjoyed writing figure at the end was almost Bix and-still old Footlights chum Russell who might have been a bit of a strain if you the arrangement. It was the first ‘serious’ Beiderbecke-like, which probably means I 6 Davies. met him in the tavern. arranging I’d done, apart from the Henry stole it. 23
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But I can’t even get the Lone Ranger Cole Porter’s “Every Time We Say Allow me to present myself, my ladies doesn’t immediately get the songwriting One last word from the beautiful stranger” Goodbye” when the narrator talks about a And gentlemen of this exalted age juices flowing. “You live in a dream and the dream is a cage” change from major to minor and the music Before my creatures take the stage Nick Harrison had done the Said the girl “And the bars nestle closer with mirrors the words. We were both mad For I am the Master of the Revels arrangement for Julie Covington’s recording age about that song, and indeed about the In what appertains to mirth I am a sage of The Magic Wasn’t There, the first of our Your shadow burned white by invisible fire whole show-tune heritage. During our I work myself to death for each production songs to get a commercial recording (also You will learn how it rankles to die of desire working career together we have drawn on And though the world’s great wits are all on produced by Don Paul). I had specially As you long for the beautiful stranger” all kinds of musical traditions, but one way file liked the choppy string writing in the Said the vanishing beautiful stranger or another we have always given our I have not been known to smile instrumental bit on Julie’s record. The idea to do this song with just strings (probably a “Here’s a wallet for you and five nicker for me” regards to Broadway. For I am the Master of the Revels And mastery demands a certain style nick from the Beatles’ Yesterday, if I’m Said the gypsy “And also here’s something for All I ever did honest) seemed a good one at the time, free While you were here In my office hang the blueprints Watch your step on my foldaway stairs getting Was done for you Of the first exploding handshake but we later always thought the resulting down Or so I said And the charted trajectories of custard pies track lacked a bit of rhythmic impetus, and And go slow on the flyover back into town Perhaps through fear For Harlequin ten different kinds of we replaced it on the 1973 RCA reissue of There’s a slight but considerable danger That nothing less heartbreak the album with Be Careful When They Give my love to the beautiful stranger” Would make you stay For Columbine the colour of her eyes Offer You The Moon. I’ve since had a chance to re-record it with a completely Some other windows darken in the evening 14. All I Ever Did 1.06 All I’d ever done different rhythmic approach. Take your pick. Or ever was And never before morning show a light Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, Meant something new But for me there is no night CJ: If Proust had been writing the lyric, it 2nd April 1970 Or so I thought For I am the Master of the Revels would have been “Taste Has a Memory” Pete Atkin – vocal, guitar Perhaps because The caller-up and caster-in of devils and there would have been something Steve Cook – bass The past seemed night And I am here for your instruction and delight about cakes. Keats died young but he PA: Still the shortest song I’ve ever written, And this seemed day seems to have lived long enough to know 2. Touch Has A Memory 2.41 quite a lot about sensuality. The undressing I think. It was the Mamas and the Papas All I’d ever seen was black and white Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, scene in “The Eve of St Agnes” is steamy who inspired me to put it last on the album. All I’d ever sung was off-key 31st March 1970 stuff. “Her rich attire creeps rustling to her They had done something similar with the All I’d ever spoken sounded trite knees.” I tried to get some of that in. almost equally diminutive Once Was A And then with you I was all the things I Pete Atkin – vocals Time I Thought. wished to be Steve Cook – double bass Touch has a memory Nick Harrison – string arrangement Better than the other senses CJ: Pete did the words for this one and the All I ever did Hearing and sight fight free fluently neat way they went with the music While you were here PA: This is a good example of a song that Touching has no defences was a wake-up call. From then on I tried to Was done for you came into being title-first. The phrase is Textures come back to you real as can be leave more opportunity for the music to Now through my tears from John Keats. People have often said Touch has a memory progress through my line-endings. Pete’s I’m asking why that in practice smell has a much longer 22 musical illustration of “off key” might have All you ever said and stronger memory than touch, but Fine eyes are wide at night 7 been instigated by that magic moment in Was goodbye somehow Smell Has A Memory as a title Eyelashes show that nicely
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Seeing forgets the sight playing it. However, Biro is indeed a brand high heels just by remembering the thing, A Venus made flesh in a shell full of sea? Touch recollects precisely name, and the publishers took the let alone having composed it and sung it to Does it show you the shape of my danger? Eyelids are modest yet blink at a kiss precaution of getting permission to include his own guitar accompaniment. I, on the Can you show me the beautiful stranger? Touching takes note of this it in the title. The Biro Corporation okayed it other hand, was always available in the “I don’t run a cinema here, little man When in a later day with the proviso that the name should gangway after the show just to field any But lean over close and tune in if you can Little of the vision lingers always be spelled with a capital B. praise for the lyric that might be offered. I You breathe on the glass, give a rub with your Memory slips away Regulars at my gigs will have spotted that I counted it among my most ambitious feats sleeve Every way but through the fingers always sing it with a capital B. of sustained construction, although Slip me your wallet, sit tight and believe Textures come back to you real as whether it is really a song lyric is still open And the powers-that-be will arrange a can be to question. Some people thought it was a Pre-release of the beautiful stranger” Making you feel time doesn’t heal novel. In the heart of the glass I saw galaxies born And touch has a memory On the midsummer fairground alive with the The eye of the storm and the light of the sound 3. dawn Have You Got And the lights of the Wurlitzer merry-go-round And then with a click came a form and a face A Biro I Can The midway was crowded and I was the man That stunned me not only through candour Borrow? 1.58 Who coughed up a quid in the dark caravan and grace To the gypsy who warned him of danger But because she was really a stranger Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm “Beware of the beautiful stranger” session, 1st April 1970 A total and beautiful stranger Pete Atkin – vocals, guitar “You got that for nothing” I said with a sigh “Hello there” she said with her hand to her Steve Cook – bass As the queen’s head went up to her critical brow eye Tony Marsh – drums I’m the one you’ll meet after the one you “The lady in question is known to me now know now PA: Another good example of a And I’d like to beware but the problem is how There’s no room inside here to show you us song that came into being title- Do you think I was born in a manger? all first. It was right there in the I’m in love with the beautiful stranger” But behind me the queue stretches right language and Clive picked it up. The gypsy (called Lee as all soothsayers are) down the hall It’s one of our very few cloudless Bent low to her globular fragment of star For the damned there is always a stranger love songs, as it has turned out, “This woman will utterly screw up your life There is always a beautiful stranger and it contains some of Clive’s She will tempt you from home, from your “That’s your lot” said Miss Lee as she turned most exuberant rhyming. children and wife We always like to say that on the light She’s a devil and nothing will change her “These earrings are hell and I’m through for the BBC banned this because Get away from the beautiful stranger” the night of the brand name in the title, “That ball needs a re-gun” I said, shelling out If they’d put up a booster not far from this but it’s not strictly true. But they “The future you see there has all come about pitch probably would have banned it if Does it show you the girl as she happens to I could screen you your life to the very last they’d ever seriously thought of 8 be twitch 21
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I’ve got the only cure for life, and the cure for life is joy where the silence is set as life is joy I’m a crying man that everyone calls Laughing carefully as the words. I’m a crying man that everyone calls Laughing Boy The instruction “Tie the Boy brush into my hands” is 13. A kid once asked me in late September for a Beware Of The Beautiful something the film director Jean shilling for the guy Stranger 5.23 Renoir heard his father say, when And I looked that little operator in her Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, the old man was crippled by wheeling-dealing eye 2nd April 1970 arthritis but still couldn’t stop And I tossed a bob with deep respect in her Pete Atkin – vocal, guitar painting. old man’s trilby hat PA: I’ve probably sung this more often than Have you got a Biro I can borrow? It seems to me that a man like me could die I’d like to write your name of things like that any other song we’ve written, and, unlike some of them, my approach to it today, in On the palm of my hand, on the I’ve got the only cure for life, and the cure for walls of the hall tempo and rhythm, is hardly any different life is joy The roof of the house, right across from this. I’m a crying man that everyone calls Laughing the land Clive and I were walking back to our Boy So when the sun comes up beds at dawn one summer morning just I’ve seen landladies who lost their lovers at tomorrow before the end of term as the travelling fair It’ll look to this side of the hard- the time of Rupert Brooke was leaving Midsummer Common. There And they pressed the flowers from Sunday bitten planet was a small convoy of fortune-tellers’ rambles and then forgot which book Like a big yellow button with your caravans, each bearing its resident expert’s And I paid the rent thinking ‘Anyway, buddy, at name written on it name, and on every single caravan the least you won’t get wet’ Have you got a Biro I can borrow? family name was Lee. So that’s how that And I tried the bed and lay there thinking I’d like to write some lines one started. ‘They haven’t got you yet’ In praise of your knee, and the When Clive first handed me this lyric I I’ve got the only cure for life, and the cure for back of your neck life is joy was worried about how I could write a tune And the double-decker bus that I’m a crying man that everyone calls Laughing that would both tell the story and bear so brings you to me Boy much repetition. I decided to try to come up So when the sun comes up with something which didn’t repeat itself I’ve read the labels on a hundred bottles for tomorrow melodically within each verse, and which CJ: The bit about “the belt of Orion” was It’ll shine on a world made richer by a sonnet eyes and lips and hair varied the timing of the lines. At least, I can And I’ve seen girls breathe on their fingernails one of my first consciously assembled And a half-dozen epics as long as the Aeneid see now that that’s what I did. and wiggle them in the air bravura passages in a lyric. Having learned Oh give me a pen and some paper And I’ve often wondered who the hell CJ: Pete used to finish singing this song, something of what Pete could do, I was Give me a chisel or a camera remembers as far back as last night walk off into the wings, and never wonder deliberately testing his capacity to set a A piano and a box of rubber bands It seems to me that a man like me is the only why it took the applause so long to die string of syllables on single notes. What I I need room for choreography 20 one who might away. It didn’t occur to him that he’d given didn’t expect, however, was that he would And a darkroom for photography 9 I’ve got the only cure for life, and the cure for the effect of running a four-minute mile in use space so well, as in the last few lines, Tie the brush into my hands
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Have you got a Biro I can borrow? avoid the standard classical tool-box (what The bards of old were bold about their claims You can’t expect to be remembered I’d like to write your name Philip Larkin called “the myth-kitty”) but I upon posterity You wouldn’t catch me being such a fool From the belt of Orion to the share of the had always liked those horses that dragged Petrarch, Shakespeare and Ronsard were Plough Phaeton’s chariot up out of the ocean. They never slow to guarantee 12. Laughing Boy 3.31 The snout of the Bear to the belly of the Lion were a handful, so maybe the narrator is Their loved ones’ immortality Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, So when the sun goes down tomorrow not quite the cool hand that he pretends to They never said Farewell, they said So long 1st April 1970 There’ll never be a minute be. So long lives this and this gives life to thee Pete Atkin – vocal, guitar Not a moment of the night that hasn’t got you They didn’t doubt the power of a rhyme Steve Cook – bass in it Sunlight Or the durability of scribbled pages A razzle-dazzle kind of glamour in the sky Tony Marsh – drums And so they wrote immortal lines to Time Henry Mackenzie – clarinet 4. Sunrise 2.18 No more That gave their love affairs to all the ages Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, Than just the glimmer of a star nearby and PA: Not the only time where a reference to bright And if eternity were still a good address the currency is a bit of a giveaway as to the 2nd April 1970 And if my skill were greater, fears were less Pete Atkin – vocals, guitar I’ve seen it turn the trick a thousand times age of a song. (Only slightly more subtly, I’d do the same for you, my dear the landlady would, at the time of writing Steve Cook – bass And send the millions wild with joy But since it isn’t and they aren’t this, have to be well into her eleventh Whereas for me it’s just a toy I can’t see my way clear PA: Most of our songs tend to start from decade at least.) But neither of us is That flying horses dragged up from the sea To promising the permanence of all our joy the words – or from some words, at any inclined to mess around trying to update Sunrise and sorrow rate – but this one definitely started from the lyric. The essence of it seems to hold How little thought it takes, how little time it Very far beyond the early evening of the first bit of the tune, which I was good. I still sing it myself, and we often use worrying away at on the Footlights piano leaves tomorrow Not long it as a closer when we take our two-man one day when Clive came up and asked You can’t expect to be extravaganza out on the road. “What’s that?”, just like June Allyson in The Before she wakes to dress and then she Remembered like somebody in a song Glenn Miller Story. Well, maybe not just leaves your eyes Whose name fits to a string of quavers CJ: The landlady really existed. She rented like June Allyson. The lyric arrived later that For very soon the sun will come for her Or last for anything like as long me her basement bed-sitter in Tufnell Park Road, London, in the early 1960s, and she same afternoon, I think. And it will carry her from you No-one in times to come It’s seen too many men like you still had the book with the pressed flowers. CJ: I nicked the “unruly sun” from John Will read your praises written down to stay To care how soon it chooses to arise She was the one I kept stumbling over in Donne, whose lawyers have not yet been in In balanced lapidary phrases the dark in my book Falling Towards touch. Sunshine Not that they wouldn’t if I knew the way England. For me, this little lyric was a large initial Already seems as if it’s moving in to stay You’d be there step, because I took the opportunity, as I Smiling In all the rooms I’ve hung my hat, in all the With all the ladies of the sonnets, dark and towns I’ve been would never have done in a poem, to make The wide and steady smile that says “The day fair a whole line out of two syllables. The is mine” It stuns me I’m not dead already from the If only I could work the trick shambles that I’ve seen writing isn’t very pictorial – it picks up on How many clever men have called the sun Of giving local habitation to the air I’ve seen a girl hold back her hair to light a standard conversational phrases rather A fool before today But it just doesn’t seem to click cigarette than offering images – but I was quite “O unruly sun” they say You’ll never hear from me And things like that a man like me can’t easily 10 “For stepping in to take my love away” 19 pleased with the horses. Usually I like to That your name will live until the sun is cool forget
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CJ: “The clouded ruins of a God” once 11. You Can’t Expect To Be Sunlight could use a repetition instead of a rhyme, belonged to Hazlitt, and the idea of the It’s time to make a move, it’s time to rise and because Pete would be putting the same silver coins envying the Moon was Remembered 3.19 shine word on different notes. In a poem I had something I lifted from Federico Garcia Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, Sunrise never used a repetition, and I still don’t Lorca, whose poetry briefly convinced me 31st March 1970 Shaking your shoulder murmurs “Everything today. Pete Atkin – vocal, guitar looks fine” that surrealism might be something I should Frangipanni was her flower Steve Cook And takes your love away try. It didn’t suit me, however, and I soon – bass And amethyst her birthday stone reverted to making straight connections if I Tony Marsh – drums 5. The fairest blossom of the bower could. But in that brief period of intoxication PA: Clive and I had both immersed Frangipanni Was Her She wasn’t born to be alone I took the lure of the music as an excuse to ourselves in the great Ella Fitzgerald Flower 2.17 And now she was terribly alone get weird. The smoke of exotic substances Songbooks, where she sings many of the Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, A Ford Cortina was the car was not involved. Not yet, anyway. 2nd April 1970 less-well-known verses to the well-known Eleven thirty-five the hour Tonight your love is over choruses of the greatest twentieth century Pete Atkin – vocals, guitar, piano The squeak of gravel in the drive Tomorrow it will all be put away songs. These verses were mostly written, in Steve Cook – bass Left the damsel in the tower Like the clouded ruins of a god the context of a musical stage show, as an PA: I’ve always liked stories where you’re Pondering her vanished power out-of-tempo scene-setting introduction to A pharoah put aside against a rainy day told everything except the most important Always, everything had gone so well the song itself. We always liked the flexible, And your silent eyes are crying central bit of the story, which you have to Her dolls had been the best conversational nature of them. This was That tomorrow is to be so very soon work out for yourself. A bit like Greek She was better than the rest The silver coins in your pocket are sighing one of our first attempts in the form. And it tragedy where the action all takes place Always, everything had gone so well For envy of the moon wasn’t the last time Clive would cut and offstage. OK, not that much like Greek The world at her behest Tonight the high times finish paste a whole chunk of out-of-copyright tragedy. But it is a sad story. Had fed her from the breast Shakespeare. Tomorrow sends you both back to square one The studio piano had a lever which Always, everything had gone so well Like a burning moth you kind of wish CJ: Quite apart from the songs that lowered little squares of metal between the She was married all in white You could have settled down into a longer run decorate the plays, the blank verse alone hammers and the strings to give a honky- To a lad serenely trite And your silent eyes are crying would be enough to tell us that tonk effect which I imagined could be Always, everything had gone so well That the daytime has already half begun Shakespeare’s language was intimately thought to sound a bit like a harpsichord. And on her wedding night The stars outshone in the east are dying connected with music. It’s a subject I find Or not. Things had more or less gone right Of envy for the sun endlessly fascinating, but better CJ: A journalistic staple of the 1960s was By fairest fortune she was kissed experienced than talked about. Listen to Tonight your love is over the story of the well-brought-up young lady Frangipanni was her bloom Tomorrow it will all be as you were Gielgud performing in “Prospero’s Books” either going to the bad or cracking up A silver spoon was in her fist Like a captain broken in the field on YouTube (via a short essay by me on the under the pressure of conformity. It had Upon emerging from the womb Ce n’est pas magnifique, mais c’est la guerre subject, the clip can be reached through also begun occurring to me that in a lyric I Tonight she wrecked the room And your silent eyes are crying the Video Finds/Actors section of my That tomorrow is to be so very soon website clivejames.com) and you will The silver coins in your pocket are sighing rapidly reach the conclusion that he isn’t 18 For envy of the moon saying it: he’s singing it. 11
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6. The Rider To The World’s You simply mustn’t blame yourself – the days CJ: As Fragonard is only one of the Well apart from the chance of the driver were perfect painters to remind us, nothing beats the accepting a cheque End 3.36 And so were exactly what I was born to spoil erotic charge of a beautiful woman For crashing his loco so I could be brave in Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, For I am the Rider to the World’s End reading a book. And nothing dates a lyric the wreck 31st March 1970 Bound across the cinder causeway like the mention of a sum of money. In To boldly encounter this creature was not in Pete Atkin – vocal, guitar From the furnace to the quarry those days, ten quid from the bank could my power Steve Cook – bass Through the fields of oil get you out of East Anglia. Today it would And so my heart mended and broke in the course of an hour Tony Marsh – drums And I left you with the sign of the Rider to the barely get you to the Cambridge city Nick Harrison – string arrangement World’s End limits. Some things never change, Well at last we pulled in and as straight as a PA: I remember specifically asking Nick It was not the mark of Zorro however, and for me “Verlaine” and “train” three-sided knife Harrison to go all-out on the Bartok-like Written sharply on your forehead with a blade still rhyme. I speak Australian French. Tant She got up and walked like a princess away discords in the strings, and his Just a way of not turning up tomorrow pis. from my life And unless she remembers the day she was arrangement is still one of my favourite And of phonecalls never made What did I do yesterday? Well I’ll tell you in reading Verlaine things on the record. It really gets the most brief My time with you seemed readymade to last In a second-class coach on her way through out of having two cellos in the quartet. Ten quid from the bank and I got out of town for always the fields in the rain with relief CJ: Justice demands that I attribute the And so was predestined to be over in a flash She won’t know it’s her that I sing to again And slowly but surely my life came to flower title line to the Australian poet Lex For I am the Rider to the World’s End and again again Banning. Lex suffered from such a terrible Bound across the fields of oil Again and again case of cerebral palsy that he could speak Through the broken-bottle forest Falling head over heels for a beautiful girl on the train only with difficulty, but he made every To the plains of ash 10. Tonight Your Love Is word count. He was a searing wit. A And I left you with the sign of the Rider to the She was reading a book, taking in every word 3.22 the man wrote Over master of linguistic compression, he wrote World’s End Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, And there in the margin she made the beautifully chiselled verses. I first read his It was not the ace of diamonds 1st April 1970 poem “The Rider to the World’s End” in a Or the death’s-head of the Phantom on your occasional note Pete Atkin – vocal, guitars, piano little pamphlet of his called Every Man His jaw And I couldn’t deduce why she didn’t once Steve Cook – bass Own Hamlet, back in Sydney in the late Just a suddenly-relaxing set of knuckles blink with surprise Tony Marsh – drums 1950s, and I never forgot it. Born in 1921, Never rapped against a door As fathom by fathom I gradually drowned in her eyes he died in 1966, only a few years after I You were more thoughtful for and fond of me PA: I think this was quite new when I arrived in London, but his great spirit is than I was But she kept on the job of improving her recorded it. It has no middle eight, and I still with me. I often wonder what he And so were precisely what I can never trust single-track brain must have thought it needed one, so I put would have thought of this song, and For I am the Rider to the World’s End Ploughing steadily onward through obsolete an instrumental one in anyway. There’s hope he would have admired the melody Bound across the plains of ashes Monsieur Verlaine another questionable French/English rhyme so much that he would have forgiven me To the molten-metal valleys While no further than seven-foot-six from her here – at any rate it’s questionable if like the theft. In the hills of dust fabulous mouth mine your English accent is not old- Sat the leading young poetic hope of the fashioned posh, or your French accent 12 whole planet earth doesn’t have a Liverpudlian twang. 17
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So now apart from some rather 7. The Luck Of The I went on so long without losing superfluous detail which I suppose it’s the luck of the draw 1.26 doubtless will seem to you Draw I got what I wanted before obvious, hardly worth saying Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, I was used to the runaway wins The story’s over in its basic 2nd April 1970 And that makes it hard to put up with essentials – the rest is merely Pete Atkin – vocal, guitar When at long last the bad patch begins overlaying Steve Cook – bass What you can see for yourself quite And it had to be the one that PA: easily although I would just like to Long playing records offered the Who didn’t want to know mention the thing on the front dangerous possibility of filling an entire side And I wonder if all the others were the same that always comes in handy with just one track, but they had one But didn’t show when you want to catch cows incidental and slightly paradoxical benefit in I once always finished ahead also offering possibility of writing short I got what I wanted and more 9. Girl On The songs, or at any rate shorter than the So long as I did the choosing conventional three-minute single-length. My 2.54 I suppose it’s the luck of the draw Train attention was caught early on by some of Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm Rodgers and Hart’s smaller songs – She 8. The Original Original session, 31st March 1970 Was Too Good To Me, Wait Till You See Pete Atkin – vocal, guitar Her, Glad To Be Unhappy – and it’s good Honky Tonk Night Train Steve Cook – bass not to have to stretch an idea beyond its Blues 2.20 Tony Marsh – drums natural length. We’ve always had a bit of a Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, Nick Harrison – string soft spot for our ‘littlies’. 1st April 1970 arrangement CJ: Not a single image in this one: just a Pete Atkin – vocal, piano PA: This is the other track that straight-out complaint. For a poet who Steve Cook – bass Kenny Everett latched on to. assembles most of his poems out of Tony Marsh – drums Clive says that the events it pictorial imagery, it’s sometimes a useful PA: I had a phase of being fascinated by describes (or a version of them – exercise to write a poem that’s all the way the likes of Jon Hendricks, King they do seem to recur) occurred argument. But I can remember putting in Pleasure, and Eddie Jefferson, for instance, on the Cambridge-to-Oxford the “bad patch” as I might have snaffled an were writing hip lyrics to improvised jazz train, a service that no longer interesting pebble from a strange beach, solos, and I foolishly wondered if I might be runs, and that the girl was in fact reading The three-sided knife also came in for which was indeed the case. It’s British able to do the same thing for Meade Lux Lamartine and not Verlaine, a change made quite a bit of discussion on the same forum. slang, not Australian. I was still getting Lewis’s Honky Tonk Train Blues. As you’ll for the sake of the rhyme. Sadly, as It turns out to be a particularly nasty kind of acclimatised, which for a writer is just as hear if you check this against the original, I someone pointed out on the Midnight stiletto, the blade having a cross-section much a matter of using his ears as using kind of ran out of (ahem) steam after about Voices forum at www.peteatkin.com, like a three-pointed star so that it’s less his eyes. eight bars of what was in any case a fairly ‘Verlaine’ doesn’t strictly rhyme with ‘train’ likely to be deflected by anything at all on I once always finished ahead approximate attempt. But not wanting to 16 either. its way to its target, presumably the heart. 13 I got what I wanted and more waste those eight bars, I filled out the rest
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of the lyric with steam engineering That are surrounded by water in the boiler till knowledge which I did not possess but eventually it moves derived from a cutaway drawing in On down the engine’s aorta out to the funnel Odhams’ Modern Encyclopaedia for where the cloud of smoke exudes Children, and finished the song with And now the hot air in the tubes has made musical ideas nicked from just about every the water in the boiler turn to steam train blues there’s ever been. I have been - hot hot hot told condescendingly by some unnervingly The steam also rises and collects inside that friendly steam engine enthusiasts that, large symbolic dome at the top apart obviously from some lamentable top top anthropomorphism, the song is surprisingly But if you think that now the steam is just as accurate. hot as it is gonna get you’re wrong ‘cause it’s not not not CJ: Pete used to pull in the walls of the Footlights clubroom with this one, and Because this is where the driver opens up the when people came up to me afterwards regulator valve handle to congratulate me on the intricacy of the The steam becomes alive again and goes lyric I had to tell them that the words back through the boiler or can were his as well. I did so through gritted Which I call it only ‘cause I’ve a shortage of teeth, so the message might sometimes rhymes ending in -an have failed in transmission. But honestly, So having been through the superheater I tried. tubes the steam is hotter than ever it was before the heat is more you may be I’m the original honky tonk train sure the steam now I’m the one that you see when you’re Passes on into the piston cylinder and pushes watching a western the piston for- That’s me chugging by Wards and backwards by means of valves Of the ones that you see in the films I’m the which reciprocate in alternation best ‘un According to simple mechanical law I’ll tell you why The piston then pushes connecting rods fixed ‘Cause no other loco can ever compare to the wheels With the places I’ve been ‘cause I’ve been That are set on the rails everywhere But that’s not the end of the story ‘cause then And I never once stopped for a moment of all that steam restin’ As you will have seen And if my fire’s burning properly the hot air Is blown out as exhaust through the funnel 14 oughta whence it can expire 15 Rise and go along a lot of tubes Thereby increasing the draught of the fire
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of the lyric with steam engineering That are surrounded by water in the boiler till knowledge which I did not possess but eventually it moves derived from a cutaway drawing in On down the engine’s aorta out to the funnel Odhams’ Modern Encyclopaedia for where the cloud of smoke exudes Children, and finished the song with And now the hot air in the tubes has made musical ideas nicked from just about every the water in the boiler turn to steam train blues there’s ever been. I have been - hot hot hot told condescendingly by some unnervingly The steam also rises and collects inside that friendly steam engine enthusiasts that, large symbolic dome at the top apart obviously from some lamentable top top anthropomorphism, the song is surprisingly But if you think that now the steam is just as accurate. hot as it is gonna get you’re wrong ‘cause it’s not not not CJ: Pete used to pull in the walls of the Footlights clubroom with this one, and Because this is where the driver opens up the when people came up to me afterwards regulator valve handle to congratulate me on the intricacy of the The steam becomes alive again and goes lyric I had to tell them that the words back through the boiler or can were his as well. I did so through gritted Which I call it only ‘cause I’ve a shortage of teeth, so the message might sometimes rhymes ending in -an have failed in transmission. But honestly, So having been through the superheater I tried. tubes the steam is hotter than ever it was before the heat is more you may be I’m the original honky tonk train sure the steam now I’m the one that you see when you’re Passes on into the piston cylinder and pushes watching a western the piston for- That’s me chugging by Wards and backwards by means of valves Of the ones that you see in the films I’m the which reciprocate in alternation best ‘un According to simple mechanical law I’ll tell you why The piston then pushes connecting rods fixed ‘Cause no other loco can ever compare to the wheels With the places I’ve been ‘cause I’ve been That are set on the rails everywhere But that’s not the end of the story ‘cause then And I never once stopped for a moment of all that steam restin’ As you will have seen And if my fire’s burning properly the hot air Is blown out as exhaust through the funnel 14 oughta whence it can expire 15 Rise and go along a lot of tubes Thereby increasing the draught of the fire
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So now apart from some rather 7. The Luck Of The I went on so long without losing superfluous detail which I suppose it’s the luck of the draw 1.26 doubtless will seem to you Draw I got what I wanted before obvious, hardly worth saying Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, I was used to the runaway wins The story’s over in its basic 2nd April 1970 And that makes it hard to put up with essentials – the rest is merely Pete Atkin – vocal, guitar When at long last the bad patch begins overlaying Steve Cook – bass What you can see for yourself quite And it had to be the one that PA: easily although I would just like to Long playing records offered the Who didn’t want to know mention the thing on the front dangerous possibility of filling an entire side And I wonder if all the others were the same that always comes in handy with just one track, but they had one But didn’t show when you want to catch cows incidental and slightly paradoxical benefit in I once always finished ahead also offering possibility of writing short I got what I wanted and more 9. Girl On The songs, or at any rate shorter than the So long as I did the choosing conventional three-minute single-length. My 2.54 I suppose it’s the luck of the draw Train attention was caught early on by some of Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm Rodgers and Hart’s smaller songs – She 8. The Original Original session, 31st March 1970 Was Too Good To Me, Wait Till You See Pete Atkin – vocal, guitar Her, Glad To Be Unhappy – and it’s good Honky Tonk Night Train Steve Cook – bass not to have to stretch an idea beyond its Blues 2.20 Tony Marsh – drums natural length. We’ve always had a bit of a Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, Nick Harrison – string soft spot for our ‘littlies’. 1st April 1970 arrangement CJ: Not a single image in this one: just a Pete Atkin – vocal, piano PA: This is the other track that straight-out complaint. For a poet who Steve Cook – bass Kenny Everett latched on to. assembles most of his poems out of Tony Marsh – drums Clive says that the events it pictorial imagery, it’s sometimes a useful PA: I had a phase of being fascinated by describes (or a version of them – exercise to write a poem that’s all the way the likes of Jon Hendricks, King they do seem to recur) occurred argument. But I can remember putting in Pleasure, and Eddie Jefferson, for instance, on the Cambridge-to-Oxford the “bad patch” as I might have snaffled an were writing hip lyrics to improvised jazz train, a service that no longer interesting pebble from a strange beach, solos, and I foolishly wondered if I might be runs, and that the girl was in fact reading The three-sided knife also came in for which was indeed the case. It’s British able to do the same thing for Meade Lux Lamartine and not Verlaine, a change made quite a bit of discussion on the same forum. slang, not Australian. I was still getting Lewis’s Honky Tonk Train Blues. As you’ll for the sake of the rhyme. Sadly, as It turns out to be a particularly nasty kind of acclimatised, which for a writer is just as hear if you check this against the original, I someone pointed out on the Midnight stiletto, the blade having a cross-section much a matter of using his ears as using kind of ran out of (ahem) steam after about Voices forum at www.peteatkin.com, like a three-pointed star so that it’s less his eyes. eight bars of what was in any case a fairly ‘Verlaine’ doesn’t strictly rhyme with ‘train’ likely to be deflected by anything at all on I once always finished ahead approximate attempt. But not wanting to 16 either. its way to its target, presumably the heart. 13 I got what I wanted and more waste those eight bars, I filled out the rest
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6. The Rider To The World’s You simply mustn’t blame yourself – the days CJ: As Fragonard is only one of the Well apart from the chance of the driver were perfect painters to remind us, nothing beats the accepting a cheque End 3.36 And so were exactly what I was born to spoil erotic charge of a beautiful woman For crashing his loco so I could be brave in Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, For I am the Rider to the World’s End reading a book. And nothing dates a lyric the wreck 31st March 1970 Bound across the cinder causeway like the mention of a sum of money. In To boldly encounter this creature was not in Pete Atkin – vocal, guitar From the furnace to the quarry those days, ten quid from the bank could my power Steve Cook – bass Through the fields of oil get you out of East Anglia. Today it would And so my heart mended and broke in the course of an hour Tony Marsh – drums And I left you with the sign of the Rider to the barely get you to the Cambridge city Nick Harrison – string arrangement World’s End limits. Some things never change, Well at last we pulled in and as straight as a PA: I remember specifically asking Nick It was not the mark of Zorro however, and for me “Verlaine” and “train” three-sided knife Harrison to go all-out on the Bartok-like Written sharply on your forehead with a blade still rhyme. I speak Australian French. Tant She got up and walked like a princess away discords in the strings, and his Just a way of not turning up tomorrow pis. from my life And unless she remembers the day she was arrangement is still one of my favourite And of phonecalls never made What did I do yesterday? Well I’ll tell you in reading Verlaine things on the record. It really gets the most brief My time with you seemed readymade to last In a second-class coach on her way through out of having two cellos in the quartet. Ten quid from the bank and I got out of town for always the fields in the rain with relief CJ: Justice demands that I attribute the And so was predestined to be over in a flash She won’t know it’s her that I sing to again And slowly but surely my life came to flower title line to the Australian poet Lex For I am the Rider to the World’s End and again again Banning. Lex suffered from such a terrible Bound across the fields of oil Again and again case of cerebral palsy that he could speak Through the broken-bottle forest Falling head over heels for a beautiful girl on the train only with difficulty, but he made every To the plains of ash 10. Tonight Your Love Is word count. He was a searing wit. A And I left you with the sign of the Rider to the She was reading a book, taking in every word 3.22 the man wrote Over master of linguistic compression, he wrote World’s End Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, And there in the margin she made the beautifully chiselled verses. I first read his It was not the ace of diamonds 1st April 1970 poem “The Rider to the World’s End” in a Or the death’s-head of the Phantom on your occasional note Pete Atkin – vocal, guitars, piano little pamphlet of his called Every Man His jaw And I couldn’t deduce why she didn’t once Steve Cook – bass Own Hamlet, back in Sydney in the late Just a suddenly-relaxing set of knuckles blink with surprise Tony Marsh – drums 1950s, and I never forgot it. Born in 1921, Never rapped against a door As fathom by fathom I gradually drowned in her eyes he died in 1966, only a few years after I You were more thoughtful for and fond of me PA: I think this was quite new when I arrived in London, but his great spirit is than I was But she kept on the job of improving her recorded it. It has no middle eight, and I still with me. I often wonder what he And so were precisely what I can never trust single-track brain must have thought it needed one, so I put would have thought of this song, and For I am the Rider to the World’s End Ploughing steadily onward through obsolete an instrumental one in anyway. There’s hope he would have admired the melody Bound across the plains of ashes Monsieur Verlaine another questionable French/English rhyme so much that he would have forgiven me To the molten-metal valleys While no further than seven-foot-six from her here – at any rate it’s questionable if like the theft. In the hills of dust fabulous mouth mine your English accent is not old- Sat the leading young poetic hope of the fashioned posh, or your French accent 12 whole planet earth doesn’t have a Liverpudlian twang. 17
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CJ: “The clouded ruins of a God” once 11. You Can’t Expect To Be Sunlight could use a repetition instead of a rhyme, belonged to Hazlitt, and the idea of the It’s time to make a move, it’s time to rise and because Pete would be putting the same silver coins envying the Moon was Remembered 3.19 shine word on different notes. In a poem I had something I lifted from Federico Garcia Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, Sunrise never used a repetition, and I still don’t Lorca, whose poetry briefly convinced me 31st March 1970 Shaking your shoulder murmurs “Everything today. Pete Atkin – vocal, guitar looks fine” that surrealism might be something I should Frangipanni was her flower Steve Cook And takes your love away try. It didn’t suit me, however, and I soon – bass And amethyst her birthday stone reverted to making straight connections if I Tony Marsh – drums 5. The fairest blossom of the bower could. But in that brief period of intoxication PA: Clive and I had both immersed Frangipanni Was Her She wasn’t born to be alone I took the lure of the music as an excuse to ourselves in the great Ella Fitzgerald Flower 2.17 And now she was terribly alone get weird. The smoke of exotic substances Songbooks, where she sings many of the Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, A Ford Cortina was the car was not involved. Not yet, anyway. 2nd April 1970 less-well-known verses to the well-known Eleven thirty-five the hour Tonight your love is over choruses of the greatest twentieth century Pete Atkin – vocals, guitar, piano The squeak of gravel in the drive Tomorrow it will all be put away songs. These verses were mostly written, in Steve Cook – bass Left the damsel in the tower Like the clouded ruins of a god the context of a musical stage show, as an PA: I’ve always liked stories where you’re Pondering her vanished power out-of-tempo scene-setting introduction to A pharoah put aside against a rainy day told everything except the most important Always, everything had gone so well the song itself. We always liked the flexible, And your silent eyes are crying central bit of the story, which you have to Her dolls had been the best conversational nature of them. This was That tomorrow is to be so very soon work out for yourself. A bit like Greek She was better than the rest The silver coins in your pocket are sighing one of our first attempts in the form. And it tragedy where the action all takes place Always, everything had gone so well For envy of the moon wasn’t the last time Clive would cut and offstage. OK, not that much like Greek The world at her behest Tonight the high times finish paste a whole chunk of out-of-copyright tragedy. But it is a sad story. Had fed her from the breast Shakespeare. Tomorrow sends you both back to square one The studio piano had a lever which Always, everything had gone so well Like a burning moth you kind of wish CJ: Quite apart from the songs that lowered little squares of metal between the She was married all in white You could have settled down into a longer run decorate the plays, the blank verse alone hammers and the strings to give a honky- To a lad serenely trite And your silent eyes are crying would be enough to tell us that tonk effect which I imagined could be Always, everything had gone so well That the daytime has already half begun Shakespeare’s language was intimately thought to sound a bit like a harpsichord. And on her wedding night The stars outshone in the east are dying connected with music. It’s a subject I find Or not. Things had more or less gone right Of envy for the sun endlessly fascinating, but better CJ: A journalistic staple of the 1960s was By fairest fortune she was kissed experienced than talked about. Listen to Tonight your love is over the story of the well-brought-up young lady Frangipanni was her bloom Tomorrow it will all be as you were Gielgud performing in “Prospero’s Books” either going to the bad or cracking up A silver spoon was in her fist Like a captain broken in the field on YouTube (via a short essay by me on the under the pressure of conformity. It had Upon emerging from the womb Ce n’est pas magnifique, mais c’est la guerre subject, the clip can be reached through also begun occurring to me that in a lyric I Tonight she wrecked the room And your silent eyes are crying the Video Finds/Actors section of my That tomorrow is to be so very soon website clivejames.com) and you will The silver coins in your pocket are sighing rapidly reach the conclusion that he isn’t 18 For envy of the moon saying it: he’s singing it. 11
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Have you got a Biro I can borrow? avoid the standard classical tool-box (what The bards of old were bold about their claims You can’t expect to be remembered I’d like to write your name Philip Larkin called “the myth-kitty”) but I upon posterity You wouldn’t catch me being such a fool From the belt of Orion to the share of the had always liked those horses that dragged Petrarch, Shakespeare and Ronsard were Plough Phaeton’s chariot up out of the ocean. They never slow to guarantee 12. Laughing Boy 3.31 The snout of the Bear to the belly of the Lion were a handful, so maybe the narrator is Their loved ones’ immortality Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, So when the sun goes down tomorrow not quite the cool hand that he pretends to They never said Farewell, they said So long 1st April 1970 There’ll never be a minute be. So long lives this and this gives life to thee Pete Atkin – vocal, guitar Not a moment of the night that hasn’t got you They didn’t doubt the power of a rhyme Steve Cook – bass in it Sunlight Or the durability of scribbled pages A razzle-dazzle kind of glamour in the sky Tony Marsh – drums And so they wrote immortal lines to Time Henry Mackenzie – clarinet 4. Sunrise 2.18 No more That gave their love affairs to all the ages Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, Than just the glimmer of a star nearby and PA: Not the only time where a reference to bright And if eternity were still a good address the currency is a bit of a giveaway as to the 2nd April 1970 And if my skill were greater, fears were less Pete Atkin – vocals, guitar I’ve seen it turn the trick a thousand times age of a song. (Only slightly more subtly, I’d do the same for you, my dear the landlady would, at the time of writing Steve Cook – bass And send the millions wild with joy But since it isn’t and they aren’t this, have to be well into her eleventh Whereas for me it’s just a toy I can’t see my way clear PA: Most of our songs tend to start from decade at least.) But neither of us is That flying horses dragged up from the sea To promising the permanence of all our joy the words – or from some words, at any inclined to mess around trying to update Sunrise and sorrow rate – but this one definitely started from the lyric. The essence of it seems to hold How little thought it takes, how little time it Very far beyond the early evening of the first bit of the tune, which I was good. I still sing it myself, and we often use worrying away at on the Footlights piano leaves tomorrow Not long it as a closer when we take our two-man one day when Clive came up and asked You can’t expect to be extravaganza out on the road. “What’s that?”, just like June Allyson in The Before she wakes to dress and then she Remembered like somebody in a song Glenn Miller Story. Well, maybe not just leaves your eyes Whose name fits to a string of quavers CJ: The landlady really existed. She rented like June Allyson. The lyric arrived later that For very soon the sun will come for her Or last for anything like as long me her basement bed-sitter in Tufnell Park Road, London, in the early 1960s, and she same afternoon, I think. And it will carry her from you No-one in times to come It’s seen too many men like you still had the book with the pressed flowers. CJ: I nicked the “unruly sun” from John Will read your praises written down to stay To care how soon it chooses to arise She was the one I kept stumbling over in Donne, whose lawyers have not yet been in In balanced lapidary phrases the dark in my book Falling Towards touch. Sunshine Not that they wouldn’t if I knew the way England. For me, this little lyric was a large initial Already seems as if it’s moving in to stay You’d be there step, because I took the opportunity, as I Smiling In all the rooms I’ve hung my hat, in all the With all the ladies of the sonnets, dark and towns I’ve been would never have done in a poem, to make The wide and steady smile that says “The day fair a whole line out of two syllables. The is mine” It stuns me I’m not dead already from the If only I could work the trick shambles that I’ve seen writing isn’t very pictorial – it picks up on How many clever men have called the sun Of giving local habitation to the air I’ve seen a girl hold back her hair to light a standard conversational phrases rather A fool before today But it just doesn’t seem to click cigarette than offering images – but I was quite “O unruly sun” they say You’ll never hear from me And things like that a man like me can’t easily 10 “For stepping in to take my love away” 19 pleased with the horses. Usually I like to That your name will live until the sun is cool forget
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I’ve got the only cure for life, and the cure for life is joy where the silence is set as life is joy I’m a crying man that everyone calls Laughing carefully as the words. I’m a crying man that everyone calls Laughing Boy The instruction “Tie the Boy brush into my hands” is 13. A kid once asked me in late September for a Beware Of The Beautiful something the film director Jean shilling for the guy Stranger 5.23 Renoir heard his father say, when And I looked that little operator in her Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, the old man was crippled by wheeling-dealing eye 2nd April 1970 arthritis but still couldn’t stop And I tossed a bob with deep respect in her Pete Atkin – vocal, guitar painting. old man’s trilby hat PA: I’ve probably sung this more often than Have you got a Biro I can borrow? It seems to me that a man like me could die I’d like to write your name of things like that any other song we’ve written, and, unlike some of them, my approach to it today, in On the palm of my hand, on the I’ve got the only cure for life, and the cure for walls of the hall tempo and rhythm, is hardly any different life is joy The roof of the house, right across from this. I’m a crying man that everyone calls Laughing the land Clive and I were walking back to our Boy So when the sun comes up beds at dawn one summer morning just I’ve seen landladies who lost their lovers at tomorrow before the end of term as the travelling fair It’ll look to this side of the hard- the time of Rupert Brooke was leaving Midsummer Common. There And they pressed the flowers from Sunday bitten planet was a small convoy of fortune-tellers’ rambles and then forgot which book Like a big yellow button with your caravans, each bearing its resident expert’s And I paid the rent thinking ‘Anyway, buddy, at name written on it name, and on every single caravan the least you won’t get wet’ Have you got a Biro I can borrow? family name was Lee. So that’s how that And I tried the bed and lay there thinking I’d like to write some lines one started. ‘They haven’t got you yet’ In praise of your knee, and the When Clive first handed me this lyric I I’ve got the only cure for life, and the cure for back of your neck life is joy was worried about how I could write a tune And the double-decker bus that I’m a crying man that everyone calls Laughing that would both tell the story and bear so brings you to me Boy much repetition. I decided to try to come up So when the sun comes up with something which didn’t repeat itself I’ve read the labels on a hundred bottles for tomorrow melodically within each verse, and which CJ: The bit about “the belt of Orion” was It’ll shine on a world made richer by a sonnet eyes and lips and hair varied the timing of the lines. At least, I can And I’ve seen girls breathe on their fingernails one of my first consciously assembled And a half-dozen epics as long as the Aeneid see now that that’s what I did. and wiggle them in the air bravura passages in a lyric. Having learned Oh give me a pen and some paper And I’ve often wondered who the hell CJ: Pete used to finish singing this song, something of what Pete could do, I was Give me a chisel or a camera remembers as far back as last night walk off into the wings, and never wonder deliberately testing his capacity to set a A piano and a box of rubber bands It seems to me that a man like me is the only why it took the applause so long to die string of syllables on single notes. What I I need room for choreography 20 one who might away. It didn’t occur to him that he’d given didn’t expect, however, was that he would And a darkroom for photography 9 I’ve got the only cure for life, and the cure for the effect of running a four-minute mile in use space so well, as in the last few lines, Tie the brush into my hands
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Seeing forgets the sight playing it. However, Biro is indeed a brand high heels just by remembering the thing, A Venus made flesh in a shell full of sea? Touch recollects precisely name, and the publishers took the let alone having composed it and sung it to Does it show you the shape of my danger? Eyelids are modest yet blink at a kiss precaution of getting permission to include his own guitar accompaniment. I, on the Can you show me the beautiful stranger? Touching takes note of this it in the title. The Biro Corporation okayed it other hand, was always available in the “I don’t run a cinema here, little man When in a later day with the proviso that the name should gangway after the show just to field any But lean over close and tune in if you can Little of the vision lingers always be spelled with a capital B. praise for the lyric that might be offered. I You breathe on the glass, give a rub with your Memory slips away Regulars at my gigs will have spotted that I counted it among my most ambitious feats sleeve Every way but through the fingers always sing it with a capital B. of sustained construction, although Slip me your wallet, sit tight and believe Textures come back to you real as whether it is really a song lyric is still open And the powers-that-be will arrange a can be to question. Some people thought it was a Pre-release of the beautiful stranger” Making you feel time doesn’t heal novel. In the heart of the glass I saw galaxies born And touch has a memory On the midsummer fairground alive with the The eye of the storm and the light of the sound 3. dawn Have You Got And the lights of the Wurlitzer merry-go-round And then with a click came a form and a face A Biro I Can The midway was crowded and I was the man That stunned me not only through candour Borrow? 1.58 Who coughed up a quid in the dark caravan and grace To the gypsy who warned him of danger But because she was really a stranger Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm “Beware of the beautiful stranger” session, 1st April 1970 A total and beautiful stranger Pete Atkin – vocals, guitar “You got that for nothing” I said with a sigh “Hello there” she said with her hand to her Steve Cook – bass As the queen’s head went up to her critical brow eye Tony Marsh – drums I’m the one you’ll meet after the one you “The lady in question is known to me now know now PA: Another good example of a And I’d like to beware but the problem is how There’s no room inside here to show you us song that came into being title- Do you think I was born in a manger? all first. It was right there in the I’m in love with the beautiful stranger” But behind me the queue stretches right language and Clive picked it up. The gypsy (called Lee as all soothsayers are) down the hall It’s one of our very few cloudless Bent low to her globular fragment of star For the damned there is always a stranger love songs, as it has turned out, “This woman will utterly screw up your life There is always a beautiful stranger and it contains some of Clive’s She will tempt you from home, from your “That’s your lot” said Miss Lee as she turned most exuberant rhyming. children and wife We always like to say that on the light She’s a devil and nothing will change her “These earrings are hell and I’m through for the BBC banned this because Get away from the beautiful stranger” the night of the brand name in the title, “That ball needs a re-gun” I said, shelling out If they’d put up a booster not far from this but it’s not strictly true. But they “The future you see there has all come about pitch probably would have banned it if Does it show you the girl as she happens to I could screen you your life to the very last they’d ever seriously thought of 8 be twitch 21
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But I can’t even get the Lone Ranger Cole Porter’s “Every Time We Say Allow me to present myself, my ladies doesn’t immediately get the songwriting One last word from the beautiful stranger” Goodbye” when the narrator talks about a And gentlemen of this exalted age juices flowing. “You live in a dream and the dream is a cage” change from major to minor and the music Before my creatures take the stage Nick Harrison had done the Said the girl “And the bars nestle closer with mirrors the words. We were both mad For I am the Master of the Revels arrangement for Julie Covington’s recording age about that song, and indeed about the In what appertains to mirth I am a sage of The Magic Wasn’t There, the first of our Your shadow burned white by invisible fire whole show-tune heritage. During our I work myself to death for each production songs to get a commercial recording (also You will learn how it rankles to die of desire working career together we have drawn on And though the world’s great wits are all on produced by Don Paul). I had specially As you long for the beautiful stranger” all kinds of musical traditions, but one way file liked the choppy string writing in the Said the vanishing beautiful stranger or another we have always given our I have not been known to smile instrumental bit on Julie’s record. The idea to do this song with just strings (probably a “Here’s a wallet for you and five nicker for me” regards to Broadway. For I am the Master of the Revels And mastery demands a certain style nick from the Beatles’ Yesterday, if I’m Said the gypsy “And also here’s something for All I ever did honest) seemed a good one at the time, free While you were here In my office hang the blueprints Watch your step on my foldaway stairs getting Was done for you Of the first exploding handshake but we later always thought the resulting down Or so I said And the charted trajectories of custard pies track lacked a bit of rhythmic impetus, and And go slow on the flyover back into town Perhaps through fear For Harlequin ten different kinds of we replaced it on the 1973 RCA reissue of There’s a slight but considerable danger That nothing less heartbreak the album with Be Careful When They Give my love to the beautiful stranger” Would make you stay For Columbine the colour of her eyes Offer You The Moon. I’ve since had a chance to re-record it with a completely Some other windows darken in the evening 14. All I Ever Did 1.06 All I’d ever done different rhythmic approach. Take your pick. Or ever was And never before morning show a light Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, Meant something new But for me there is no night CJ: If Proust had been writing the lyric, it 2nd April 1970 Or so I thought For I am the Master of the Revels would have been “Taste Has a Memory” Pete Atkin – vocal, guitar Perhaps because The caller-up and caster-in of devils and there would have been something Steve Cook – bass The past seemed night And I am here for your instruction and delight about cakes. Keats died young but he PA: Still the shortest song I’ve ever written, And this seemed day seems to have lived long enough to know 2. Touch Has A Memory 2.41 quite a lot about sensuality. The undressing I think. It was the Mamas and the Papas All I’d ever seen was black and white Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, scene in “The Eve of St Agnes” is steamy who inspired me to put it last on the album. All I’d ever sung was off-key 31st March 1970 stuff. “Her rich attire creeps rustling to her They had done something similar with the All I’d ever spoken sounded trite knees.” I tried to get some of that in. almost equally diminutive Once Was A And then with you I was all the things I Pete Atkin – vocals Time I Thought. wished to be Steve Cook – double bass Touch has a memory Nick Harrison – string arrangement Better than the other senses CJ: Pete did the words for this one and the All I ever did Hearing and sight fight free fluently neat way they went with the music While you were here PA: This is a good example of a song that Touching has no defences was a wake-up call. From then on I tried to Was done for you came into being title-first. The phrase is Textures come back to you real as can be leave more opportunity for the music to Now through my tears from John Keats. People have often said Touch has a memory progress through my line-endings. Pete’s I’m asking why that in practice smell has a much longer 22 musical illustration of “off key” might have All you ever said and stronger memory than touch, but Fine eyes are wide at night 7 been instigated by that magic moment in Was goodbye somehow Smell Has A Memory as a title Eyelashes show that nicely
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1. The Master Of The Bonus Tracks: Revels 2.36 Recorded during the 10 am – 1 pm session, 15. Be Careful When They 1st April 1970 Offer You The Moon 3.02 Pete Atkin – vocals, piano Recorded at Denmark Street Studios on Russell Davies – tuba 11th August 1970 Tony Marsh – drums Pete Atkin – vocals, guitars, piano, Henry Mackenzie – clarinet tambourine PA: This was the first track that Kenny Brian Odgers – bass guitar Everett picked up on. The lyric tells a sad Tony Marsh – drums story, but I thought that a small-scale, Albert Hall – flugelhorn slightly seedy, circus-y bravado was the Russell “Dai” Davies – trombone right pose to adopt. I started by playing the PA: Perhaps fortunately, we never two-note tuba phrase and were offered the moon, literally or the tune just kind of metaphorically, so our worldly arrived over the top of it, Compilation album (1977) wisdom was never put to the bending and twisting its practical test, so the song seems to way towards a showbizzy me to have acquired an almost ending. wistful quality in hindsight. I had There wasn’t much CJ: In the times of always loved harmony vocals (Buddy budget for additional Elizabeth I, the Master of Holly, Everly Brothers) and still do, musicians, but I thought I the Revels was more of so a lot of my tunes tend to imply a could get good value out an official censor than a second complementary melody line. of a clarinet, so Don Paul theatrical enabler, but his With the Everly Brothers in booked one for me. It title sounded like fun to particular, it was often hard to work was just chance that it me, so I went with that. out which voice was the tune and turned out to be the great It’s also possible to which the harmony, and I think this Henry Mackenzie, who, detect the presence of one turned out to be a genuine two-part among many other Merlin and Prospero: melody. Mackenzie clarinet, and some rudimentary things, had been one of mischief-making It was specially recorded – and attempts for Footlights shows (bluffing all the clarinet trio on the Beatles’ When I’m magicians. In my own mind, Pete’s released, what’s more – as a single. I have the way). I’m afraid I remember flattering Sixty Four. The tuba was a genuine sprightly, perky melody exactly expresses no memory at all of where the idea to use myself that the little answering flugelhorn Salvation Army model played by our then- the personality of a professional jokesmith brass on it came from, but I enjoyed writing figure at the end was almost Bix and-still old Footlights chum Russell who might have been a bit of a strain if you the arrangement. It was the first ‘serious’ Beiderbecke-like, which probably means I 6 Davies. met him in the tavern. arranging I’d done, apart from the Henry stole it. 23
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CJ: The Moon was still a destination in 16. A Man Who's Been didn’t, that I’d still be singing a lot of these those days. Nobody ever gave it a more songs nearly forty years later. But they do enchanting mention than Joni Mitchell with Around 3.49 still seem to work. Listening again now to her line about “the face of the conquered Recorded at Denmark Street Studios on 11th my twentysomething self singing them, Moon”, but I was quite pleased with my August 1970 there’s a lot that I’d do differently, of colourless and dusty ball of holes. There Pete Atkin – vocals, guitars, piano, course. In fact my luck has held out to the were plenty of rock stars who handled tambourine point where I have indeed been able to do success well: they were the ones you rarely Brian Odgers – bass guitar some of these things differently [on read about. But it can’t be denied that, from Tony Marsh – drums Midnight Voices: the Clive James-Pete the stories in the press, sudden fame Albert Hall – flugelhorn Atkin Songbook Volume One (Hillside looked fatal. The bodies were already piling Russell “Dai” Davies – trombone CDHILL08) 2008], but that’s not in any up. We would have quite liked to run the PA: The plan was always to put Master of way to disown what I did back then. I can’t risk, however, so essentially this lyric is an the Revels on the B-side of the Be Careful but feel affectionately for these recordings exercise in blatant hypocrisy. Luckily Pete When They Offer You The Moon single, so – almost as affectionately as I feel for lightened it up with the music. I took the opportunity of some studio time to anyone who supported us then and Be careful when they offer you the moon put down a ‘proper’ version of this song, which anyone who may remember them now. It gives a cold light Clive and I fondly believed was eminently It was only ever made to light the night coverable, as a kind of alternative or antidote CJ: False modesty can be a useful You can freeze your fingers handling the to My Way and the like. We played it to one rhetorical device but Pete has always moon of the publisher’s executives, suggesting suffered from genuine modesty, which sometimes has the effect of minimising the Be careful when they offer you the moon one particular eminent singer for whom we facts. Some of the songs that got “shoe- It’s built for dead souls thought it would be hugely suitable, and the horned” into Footlights revues were widely It’s a colourless and dusty ball of holes executive replied “Yes, I’ll get that to he.” recognized in Cambridge as the most You can break an ankle dancing on the moon Clive and I looked at each other with the same sad thought going through our minds. interesting things in the show, and when When you take the moon you kiss the world Maggie Henderson sang “If I had My Time goodbye CJ: That same executive was Again” in one of our revues on the For a chance to lord it over loneliness understandably a bit puzzled by the Edinburgh Fringe, Harold Hobson, the listeners. The problem might have been And a quarter-million miles down the sky mention of Baudelaire. He had a long face eminent critic of the Sunday Times, called it solved more easily if the record companies They’ll watch you shining more but weighing which a look of incomprehension took time the highlight of the entire Festival. Pete was had known how to classify what Pete was less to cover, but eventually there was nothing thus recognized, by discerning listeners, as up to. In the record stores, Beware Of The So be careful when they offer you the moon between his hairline and his chin that did an important songwriter from the jump: a Beautiful Stranger tended to be put in the It’s only dream stuff not send a signal of polite bafflement. Mind fact which, speaking as one who had a Folk bin by default. It was the first sign of a It’s a Tin Pan Alley prop held up by bluff you, the singer we had in mind would share in his work, I would like, in all dilemma that would trouble us for a And nobody breathes easy on the moon probably have been puzzled too. If I’d had modesty, to have recorded here. decade. 24 Nobody breathes easy on the moon my wits about me, I would have substituted The problem, of course, was about Pete Atkin and Clive James, 5 Count to ten when they offer you the moon something simpler. The fault was mine. how to increase the number of discerning November/December 2008
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beyond just being a collection of singles, department, just off the Tottenham Court I’ve drunk the wines of life to the lees Bonus Demos: that I truly don’t think we ever gave a Road in London. I knew the signs of life when they were trees Recorded at City of London Recording Studio, I’ve seen it all as near as dammit moment’s consideration to writing in any Don happened to be a mate of Kenny Osborn Street, London EC1 on 3rd February Run the gauntlet and the gamut particular style or idiom. The song was the Everett, at that time the most famous and 1969, except ‘Biro’ recorded on 7th August thing. It still is. But we did imagine our influential DJ in the land with his Saturday You’re looking at a man who’s been around 1968. songs being sung famously by successful morning show on BBC Radio 1. Don I’ve hailed the kind, the true and the rare Pete Atkin – vocal, guitar singers, which is partly what led me to played him a couple of the tracks, and he I’ve sailed to find the new like Baudelaire Steve Cook – bass organise some amateurish recordings of reacted in a way we might have dreamed I’ve done the mad thing and the fun thing them and to assemble a couple of privately- of. He played them on his show several Done it all except the done thing PA: These tracks are all taken from the pressed LPs. The idea was to sell enough weeks running. That was enough to You’re smiling at a man who’s been around second LP I had had privately pressed from some demos we’d made, and which we of them to unwitting friends and convince Don and David that they might be So a kid like you is nothing new to me The Party’s Moving On acquaintances to cover the costs and use able to get a commercial release for them, However pleased I seem to be to see you called . There were the rest as demos. It didn’t exactly work, which they did. Easy when you just say it However keen I seem to be to please you just 99 of them, and they had labels printed mainly because the music business was like that. Don’t kid yourself you mean a thing to me by state-of-the-art technology and already changing, and most recording And so I became a recording artist, individually stuck on to the front and back artists, increasingly aware of the financial which hadn’t originally been the idea at all, I’ve seen the blazing young hit the top of their white cardboard covers. (If you benefit of writing their own songs, were not even a dream, to be honest. It was only I’ve heard their praises sung and then they made a hundred or more you became liable less and less likely to be looking for new after the album was released on Fontana flop to Purchase Tax, the predecessor of VAT, I’ve seen the weeping and the laughter songs from the likes of us. that I set about doing the rounds of the folk which would have made the entire Never needed looking after Nevertheless, the demo LPs did lead clubs – there were even more of them then operation economically unrealistic). I You’re staring at a man who’s been us in late 1969 to the publishers Essex than there are comedy clubs now – to try to numbered all the discs and kept a note of Through this before, get what I mean? which numbered copy each person bought Music, where David Platz took us on and get a performing career under way. You’re dealing with a man who’s been around advanced me fifty quid so I could at least At that critical point Kenny, man of the or was sent, and then I lost the list. One spend Christmas in some shoes that didn’t best possible taste and my de facto So a kid like you is nothing new to me copy came up on Ebay a year or two ago leak (sorry, but that’s true). More than that, sponsor, notoriously got himself sacked by However pleased I seem to be to see you and I’m sorry, or perhaps pleased, that I he stumped up for some proper studio the BBC for what was considered in those However keen I seem to be to please you don’t know whose copy it originally was. sessions to record some of the songs. And days to be an inexcusable and intolerable Don’t kid yourself you mean a thing to me Anyway, it fetched what seemed to me an those, amazingly, are the recordings you joke, something to do with the Minister of You’re dealing with a man who’s been around astonishing amount of money, but that’s have here. Transport’s wife having just passed her I’ve watched a million things come to pass almost certainly because of the presence David put me together with the driving test. Ah well. Although the album I’ve watched a string of kings put out to grass on half the songs of Julie Covington’s producer Don Paul, who had been a didn’t, as they used to say, trouble the I’ve made the good scene and the bad scene breathtakingly beautiful singing. member of the hitmaking vocal group the charts, it did pretty well really, perhaps I’ve even sung the mad scene I was blissfully unaware at the time Viscounts. I still vividly remember the partly because it didn’t sound much like You’re smiling at a man who’s been that this recording project would turn out to sessions in the little basement studio (the anything else. It might have done even Through the fat times and the lean be probably my most commercially effective whole building now long gone) across the better, but the trouble was it didn’t sound You’re dealing with a man who’s been around ever. And indeed I suppose it worked well 4 street from what’s now the entrance to much like anything else. Run the gauntlet and the gamut enough since it gave us something 25 University College Hospital’s A&E I could never have guessed, and reasonably serious-looking to tout around
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music publishers, and that led us to Essex performed. LWT never returned the albums PA: Clive and I wrote these songs in the of a clubroom, destroyed in a bout of civic Music, and that led us to …. (see above). and my wife has reminded me of this fact at late 1960s, but it would be a mistake to try vandalism in the seventies – a long, narrow, The bass is by our stalwart Footlights least once a week for almost four decades. to find within them traces of the Summer of seedy, threadbare first-floor room with a chum Steve Cook, who went on to play on She liked me as a struggling young artist, Love, mind-expanding drugs, Carnaby tiny stage at one end and, most important Beware Of The Beautiful Stranger, as and even today is apt to point out that Pete Street, revolution in the air, and what have for me, a piano. We had access to this you’ll have spotted already, and then to did a better job of maintaining his initial you. For most people at the time – certainly room pretty much any time we wanted, and work in far more distinguished company, blazing integrity than I ever did. From that for us – most of that was happening it became a workshop, a second home. not least that of the great Mike Westbrook. angle, the cardboard albums aren’t just somewhere else (most especially Carnaby Actually, it became a first home. In spite of having been recorded in a keepsakes, they’re an ur-text, the holy Street). Except for the one thing that did As a teenager I had taught myself to proper studio, the quality of these tracks is tablets. They certainly weren’t tainted by get through to just about everyone: the play piano a bit by picking out tunes – less than terrific, I’m afraid, mostly because the deadly touch of Mammon. Pete might music. sorry, ‘hits’ – in the right hand and the original reel-to-reel tapes disappeared a be right that they made more money, It was in any case a lucky time for me. I ‘strumming’ chords with the left. In college, long time ago and these copies have been weight for weight, than any of the later was a lucky, naive eleven-plus grammar- without a piano handy, I started to play taken from one of the very few vinyl copies I commercial albums, but how much is more school boy who found himself waking up in acoustic guitar, but I still felt more at home can still lay hands on. than nothing? God, it was fun, though. a university that contained more on the piano. CJ: The second cardboard-covered limited possibilities than I could have imagined. It I’d sung a few of my own silly songs at edition album The Party’s Moving On was 17. Have You Got A Biro I was lucky too that the most popular music Footlights smoking concerts, and one day certainly a technical advance over the first, Can Borrow? 1.47 of the day happened also to be the best Clive simply handed me a lyric and said While The Music Lasts, which, as I recall, music then being made. I was additionally “Hey, sport, do you think you can do was recorded in a college room with 18. Touch Has A Memory 1.35 lucky that my college record library was anything with this?” I really don’t remember blankets hung up for sound control. I always well stocked with the best of classic jazz, which lyric that was, but we soon started thought of them as the cardboard albums, 19. Sunrise 2.23 blues, and Tin Pan Alley, and I was filling turning out songs at a fair old rate and used and since they contain more than a few early my head up with all of it to the shameful (abused, some might say) our privileged fumbles by me I’m rather glad they were never 20. The Luck Of The Draw 1.27 exclusion of almost everything else. The position to shoehorn some of them into generally available. But the people who clinching bit of good luck was somehow to Footlights shows. Songs – straight songs, bought them loved them, and the soaring 21. Girl On The Train 2.45 join the Cambridge Footlights and then to at any rate – weren’t a big part of what the Ebay prices probably reflect the desire of hook up with Clive. club usually did, but we had little or no successful but ageing executives who wore 22. You Can’t Expect To Be The Footlights was a revue club other idea of what we might do with them. them out over the course of years to get Remembered 3.13 (nowadays I suppose you’d call it a comedy An additional stimulus to writing – back to a time of happy student poverty. club) which put on shows for members and specifically to writing songs from a female My wife treasured a set of the 23. Laughing Boy 2.20 a big annual public show at the Arts point of view – was the presence in the cardboard albums and after I, typically, Theatre, as well as ad hoc cabarets around club of both Julie Covington and Maggie frittered my copies away, I borrowed her 24. All I Ever Did 0.49 the place. It was – and still is – famously a Henderson, the singing of either one of set in order to answer a request from training ground for many who have gone in whom would have been inspiration enough. London Weekend Television, who duly set All songs published by Onward Music Ltd, to show business in one or other of its Those days – 1967, ’68, ’69 – were so 26 up a little TV series called The Party’s except tracks 1, 2, 10, 11, 18 and 22 forms. The list is long, illustrious, and easy full of music of so many kinds, with the LP 3 Moving On in which Pete and Julie both published by Westminster Music Ltd. to find. In those days it had the crucial use starting to establish an identity of its own
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Beware Of The Beautiful Arranged by Pete Atkin Project co-ordination – Val Jennings Strings arranged by Nick Harrison CD package – Jools at Mac Concept Stranger Produced by Don Paul CD mastering – Alchemy Engineered by Tom Allom Ephemera courtesy of the collections of Fontana 6309 011, 1970. Re-issued on RCA Recorded at Regent Sound A, Tottenham Pete Atkin and Clive James SF 8387 in 1973 in a re-designed sleeve with CD front cover main photo and strapline photo – “Touch Has A Memory” replaced by “Be Street, London W1, on 31st March and 1st & 2nd April 1970 Sophie Baker Careful When They Offer You The Moon”, and Huge thanks – Pete Atkin, Clive James, Simon Mixed between 2 pm and 6 pm with “Sunrise” as the second song. Platz, Steve Birkill, Ronen Guha on 2nd April 1970 and Caroline Cook “Be Careful When They Offer You The Moon” and “A Man Who’s Been Around” For everything (and we mean everything) relating to were recorded at Tin Pan Alley Studio, Pete Atkin’s works, visit www.peteatkin.com, but Denmark Street on 11th August 1970 make sure you’ve got plenty of time to spend! Then of course, you’ll want to visit Credits – British Rail, Arthur Guinness, www.clivejames.com William Hazlitt, John Keats, Meade Lux Lewis, Garcia Lorca, Odham’s Junior Pete Atkin’s albums on the Encyclopaedia, Auguste Renoir, William Edsel label: Shakespeare and Duke Ellington (there never was another). Beware Of The Beautiful Stranger…plus [EDSS 1029] Hair by Robaire of Mayfair Driving Through Mythical America Photographed on location at Puttenden [EDSS 1030] Manor, Edenbridge A King At Nightfall…plus + The Road Type design by Sandy Field Of Silk [2 CD] [EDSD 2028] Designed and photographed by Keef Secret Drinker + Live Libel [2 CD] [EDSD 2029]
Lyrics – Clive James Visit www.demonmusicgroup.co.uk for the Music (and lyrics to ‘Honky Tonk Train’ and Edsel catalogue and the many other fine labels ‘All I Ever Did’) – Pete Atkin that make up the Demon Music Group. Tracks 1 – 16 licensed by Fly Records. Fly Records is a Pete Atkin – vocals, guitars, piano division of Onward Music Ltd. p 2009 Onward Music Ltd Steve Cook – double bass under licence to Demon Music Group Ltd. © 2009 Tony Marsh – drums Onward Music Ltd/Demon Music Group Ltd. Tracks Henry Mackenzie 17 – 24 issued under licence from Pete Atkin. Tracks – clarinet p © Russell “Dai” Davies 17 – 24 & 1969 Pete Atkin. Marketed by Edsel – tuba Records, a division of the Demon Music Group Ltd, 2 (Salvation Army Class A London, W1W 7TL. The Demon Music Group is a No. 4521, motto ‘Blood and fire’) 2 entertain company. Manufactured in the EU.
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EDSS 1029 The Songs Of PETE ATKIN&CLIVE JAMES
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