MIKE BATT BIOGRAPHY “I thought that if life was like a Mars bar and you cut it up into little slices rather than eat it in one go, you’d get a lot more out of it,” says Mike Batt. He must have access to an awfully big piece of confectionery, as his unique career has plenty of tasty slices – singer-songwriter, composer, musician, record company boss, conductor, arranger, record producer and author. As well as being a solo performer in his own right, the roster of artists he has worked with is the cliched Who’s Who of music’s biggest names across the entire spectrum of performance from heavy metal Hawkwind to the rather cuddlier Wombles, with Art Garfunkel, Katie Melua, David Essex, Roger Daltrey, Vanessa Mae, Steeleye Span, Elkie Brooks and Cliff Richard, amongst many others. Mike has also won five Ivor Novello Awards, and the Queen quite likes him too, as in 2013, he was appointed Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order (LVO) for services to the Royal Household. He has composed commissioned pieces for various Royal and other ceremonial occasions. His hugely successful career(s) began as a child, when he joined a postal classical record club where you got four free EPs if you bought an album every year. He chose Strauss waltzes, Brahms’ Hungarian Dances, Carmen and Swan Lake, and started to fancy himself as a conductor, arranging the furniture into the shape of an orchestra when his parents were out, and being the Conductor. Combine this with his self-taught prowess at the piano, and love of verse with clever lyrics (one of his first works was setting the AA Milne poem Disobedience to his own music), plus playing with an R&B group in his hometown of Southampton, a musical career beckoned. Aged just 18, Mike answered an ad in the NME which read: “Liberty wants talent”, and was signed to Liberty Records as both an artist and a songwriter, and the same year, found himself as head of A&R for the label as well. At Liberty, he coordinated releases with Canned Heat and Credence Clearwater Revival and also worked with The Idle Race, an early band fronted by ELO’s Jeff Lynne. He also signed The Groundhogs and produced their first album; produced and co-wrote an album for psychedelic scenesters Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, and arranged strings and brass for the classic Family album Music in a Doll’s House. Liberty was a great crash-course in learning about the music business, but Batt left the company to become a freelance arranger and conductor, both skills he has taught himself. He received a surprising offer in 1973 when he was asked to write the theme tune for a new children’s TV series called The Wombles. He waived his £200 songwriting fee in exchange for the rights to produce music as The Wombles and bring his playful sense of humour to his music. Working with hugely respected musicians such as drummer Clem Cattini and guitarist Chris Spedding, Batt and The Wombles (he was the lead singer under the guise of Orinoco Womble) released 8 top 40 singles, four of which reached the Top Ten, and all four of their studio albums went gold. The Wombles received the Music Week award for “top selling UK singles act” in 1975. Mike also had a smash hit with Bright Eyes, the song he wrote and produced for the animated film Watership Down in 1979. Sung by Art Garfunkel, it reached number one in the UK, where it was the biggest-selling single of the year, and it also topped the charts in five other countries. Mike also wrote the score for the 1978 film Caravans, which yielded the hit single Caravan Song, sung by Barbara Dickson. One of Mike’s major personal passion projects has been his musical The Hunting of the Snark, based on Lewis Carroll’s fantasy poem. He recorded the show on a 1984 album, with contributions from an eclectic cast including Art Garfunkel, Roger Daltrey, Cliff Richard, George Harrison, Stephane Grappelli, John Hurt and Sir John Gielgud. He staged a concert of the album at the Royal Albert hall in 1987, and the Snark hit the West End in 1991. Mike not only wrote the show, but also created its revolutionary design involving 12,000 personally hand-drawn slides projected onto the stage; critic Sheridan Morley said: “The show’s design will revolutionise theatre design for years to come”. Mike’s other musical theatre work includes co-writing the title song of The Phantom of the Opera with Andrew Lloyd Webber, co-writing lyrics for Abbacadabra, a show commissioned by Sir Cameron 7 Broadbent Close, Highgate Village, London, N6 5JW t 020 3213 0135 f 020 8348 7776 e [email protected] www.republicmedia.net @republic_media Mackintosh based on the music of Abba, and his own musical The Men Who March Away. That show, set between the First and Second World Wars, is currently in development. Mike has recently completed the songs for the musical The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, based on the novel by David Nobbs, with a book by novelist Jonathan Coe and comedy writer David Quantick. He has worked closely with many new artists, and shaped many careers. He launched violinist Vanessa-Mae’s career, composing and producing her 4m selling album The Violin Player, which included Mike’s arrangement of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue, - a top 20 single. He had the idea for the glamorous all-girl string quartet Bond and produced their most successful single, then created classical crossover group The Planets. Their 2002 album Classical Graffiti went straight to number one in the classical charts and stayed there for three months. However, some of Mike’s biggest successes with new artists came when he launched his own Dramatico record label in 2002. There were established artists such as Marianne Faithfull and Carla Bruni on the label, but it made major stars of Katie Melua and Caro Emerald. Mike wrote and produced albums for Katie, who became one of the country’s biggest stars, selling 11 million albums and becoming the world’s biggest-selling British female UK artist in 2005. Working with other artists has been a major part of Mike’s career, but alongside that, he has always maintained a solo career a highlight of which was an imaginative cover version of The Beatles’ Your Mother Should Know on Liberty Records. He had a #4 solo single hit in the UK with “Summertime City” in 1975. Since then, he’s enjoyed great international success with albums such as Schizophonia, Tarot Suite, Arabesque, Waves and Six Days in Berlin, and singles including Railway Hotel, Lady of the Dawn and Ride to Agadir. Another key solo performance was the musical fantasy Zero Zero, a TV production which was a combination of music, mime, dance, acting and animation, starring Mike as a character called Number 17, living in a world in which love has been genetically eradicated. It was shot in Australia (where Mike has done a lot of work), and was one of the first programmes on Channel 4 during its first week of broadcasting in 1982. Mike also composed the soundtrack for the ITV children’s animation The Dreamstone – all 52 episodes of it. His love of classical music has endured, and he has conducted many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Royal Philharmonic, with whom he released a recording of Holst’s The Planets Suite in 2018. He has also served on the boards of many industry organisations including The Performing Right Society, the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA) and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), where he was Deputy Chairman from 2007 - 2015. He has been a member of the Society of Distinguished Songwriters (SODS) since 1976 and elected as King SOD three times. Mike had long thought about writing a book, and after several years’ gestation, The Chronicles of Don’t Be So Ridiculous Valley was published in 2020. The family fantasy adventure of an ambitious slug’s battle against the evil Pigfrogs was described by Stephen Fry as “divinely silly and enchanting.” His career as a solo artist is celebrated on his Penultimate Collection album this summer. Mike has achieved so much already, but still feels he has a lot to do. “I’d put up with the extra arthritis to live to be 140 – I want another lifetime at least to get done all the projects I still want to do.” 7 Broadbent Close, Highgate Village, London, N6 5JW t 020 3213 0135 f 020 8348 7776 e [email protected] www.republicmedia.net @republic_media .