ohn
Altman is the George Martin of the Rutles. He arranged and orchestrated
all three series of "Innes Book of Records". He orchestrated
Neil's show "East of the Moon", The Rutles Archaeology album, Neil's
single "Re-Cycled Vinyl Blues" some of Neil's commercials, various
live gigs including Rutles at the Troubadour in Los Angeles and Rutles
at Queen Elizabeth Hall, a big UK comedy gala for ITV from the London
Palladium where they did "Spontaneous", and as he says, "Lord knows
what else!!!"
ohn's work with Neil Innes is only a fraction of all that has churned
out of that amazing brain of his. He's worked with Monty Python, including
orchestrating "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life." He directed
the music in both Secret Policeman's Balls. He's scored scores of
movies, television shows, commercials and gala events. And more recently,
he wrote and arranged all the ship's orchestra music in the movie
"Titanic."
nd then there are the awards! A 2000 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding
Music Composition for a Drama or Miniseries for "RKO 281" ( which
also won the ASCAP film award), the British Academy Award and British
Film Award for "Hear My Song", a TRIC Award, and Music from the Movies
Award for Best TV Theme for "Peak Practice."
hen we first started getting into Neil's music,
we started noticing that most of our favorite versions of Neil songs
somehow or other had his name attached to them. Who IS this guy, we
wondered, who brings out the best in so much of Neil's music? We've
long dreamed of finding out. On December 12, 2001, that there dream
done come true! He graciously offered to share his story with us so
we could share it with you. As we sat with him, we found him to be
a very pleasant man who enthralled us with his memories, his insight,
and his warm smile.
Now
neilinnes.org is honored, thrilled, and pickled tink to present
Part
One: THE INTERVIEW
My family were all well known bandleaders.
My mother's brothers were all arrangers, composers, sax players, clarinet
players, trombone players, trumpet players, bass players. And
I grew up with that. One uncle was the conductor at the Palladium.
He was Danny Kaye's musical director, and Sinatra, and Judy Garland,
and Nat Cole, and Hoagie Carmichael and all these people. These
were the people who were around me when I was small. Danny Kaye
would come round to the house like when I was three years old.
I didn't know anything from anything, who these people were. For
some reason, that whole thing appealed to me. The music, the 78's
- I used to play the 78's and I used to learn the solos off them by
heart, and at the age of five I could sing Jack Teagarden trombone solos.
Bizarre for a five year old! Count Basie and Ellington and things like
that. So my mother took me to the Palladium apparently.
Now my uncle doesn't remember this at all, and unfortunately my mother's
no longer around to verify it, but she always said it happened; that
I ran up to the stage and said "you take a rest, I'll conduct the orchestra!"
or words to that horrible effect. So there was always music there.
I started piano lessons at seven, and I started composing at seven.
I can still play some of the things I remember from those days! And
I got to eleven, and like most kids got fed up with piano lessons.
I changed teachers, and wound up with somebody who wasn't particularly
to my liking, and I let it drop. And that was the last formal
music lesson I ever had, was at the age of eleven. Ever.
You didn't go to college?
Nope! So I'm one in the eye to all these people who come up to me and
say "So where did you train?" But there was obviously something there,
because at the age of thirteen, I felt that I wanted to play saxophone.
My uncle brought one round on a Friday night and said, "Here it is,
you blow there,
you put your fingers there," and on Saturday I did a gig. So it
was one day later. So it's probably the quickest introduction...
I can't imagine what it sounded like! But I immediately knew my way
around it. So there had to be something there. And I started
playing, I didn't have any lessons or anything. Again, I could
always improvise, maybe because I'd grown up listening to all the music,
and I could always hear what was on the records. I remember when
we were about seven or eight, our teacher at school said, "Bring in
your favorite record and talk about it." And people were bringing in
Elvis and Rock Around the Clock, and I took in Count Basie's Texas Shuffle,
and a bunch of seven-year-olds sat there with their mouths gaping, sort
of wondering what on earth this was that they were being subjected to!
So I started playing in the local bands. I picked up the flute
and clarinet and taught myself to play. My uncle gave me a clarinet.
He played a particular type of clarinet that nobody in the world plays.
Clarinets are mostly the Boehm system or the Albert system, the old
Dixieland players use the Albert system. He had a covered hole
simple system clarinet that I still play to this day, and I can't play
any other type of clarinet. I put it in the hands of every major
clarinet player in the world who I come across, none of whom can figure
out how it works or how to get round it. So that was a bit bizarre.
I just have this voracious appetite for music. I was growing up
with the Beatles and with the Stones, and I also carried on my love
of jazz and got in Charlie Parker and things like that, and I discovered
the blues signers, and I sort of hung around the folk scene, and then
the psychedelic era started and I was in the middle of that as well.
So by the time I was 17, 18, I'm still at school and then at University,
but I was working across every area of music, except for the classical,
which I didn't really get into working in until much later. I'm
still not quite sure how I got into that, necessity really. So
like a typical time would be, I'd take my saxophone and I'd play in
a blues band, and I'd take the clarinet and do a Dixieland Jazz gig,
then I'd pick up the flute and go and play at the cousin's folk all-nighter
with James Taylor and people like that. And then I'd be on the
rock scene and I'd play with Little Richard and people like that, and
then I'd go and do a soul gig, and then I'd play keyboards in a sort
of funk band, and then I played salsa. To me, it was ways of doubling
the fun. If you just play rock and roll, fine, you'd stay in,
and you might play once a week. But I was playing 7 nights a week
with every different type of music. And there's a famous thing
at the Roundhouse in London called Implosion, which was, I suppose,
the parallel to the Fillmore, Bill Graham, San Francisco. And
you would literally get a bill that would include a folk singer, a rock
band, a proto-punk band, Pink Floyd. It was from 3 in the afternoon
until 11 at night, eight or nine bands on. And I used to turn
up, literally, with armfuls of instruments, go backstage, and I'd play
with whoever would want me to play. And one particular week, I
went through the card. I stayed on stage for every single band
who came on, which was great! I think headlining the show were the MC
Five, the first sort of punk band. I was leaving the stage, and
the guy from the band said "Where are you going? You've played with
everyone else, you may as well stay up and play with us!
What did you play with the punk band?
I played sax. So I was probably the first punk musician in London
apart from anything else. So that sort of set me up, really.
All through university I was doing all those different things, and meeting
and playing and working with people across the board. One week
I'd play with Kevin Ayer's band... it was really people who liked me
to sit in, and in those days it was a lot easier because you would go
to a Jimi Hendrix gig, say, and you'd go up and say "can I play?", or
you'd invite him to your gig, and he'd come along. You wouldn't
even begin to dream of that now. It was a very free intermingling
time. For my 21st birthday party I had muddy waters playing at
the party. So it was an incredible, fertile period for playing
music. I did my degree in English and American literature...
So you did go to college.
Oh yeah. To do English and American literature, not to do music.
And I came up to London University to do a doctorate in Victorian Literature.
And while I was in London — this is taking you toward the mid 70s
— I formed the first Salsa band in England, with a complete Cuban/Venezuelan/Argentinian/Brazilian
rhythm section. That was weird! People used to look at us and
think, "What on earth are they playing?" And I played with Bob Marley
before he became a reggae... had crossed over into ... you know, I was
just interested in checking out every aspect of music and having fun.
And in 1974 or 1975, I joined the band Hot Chocolate, who were very
big in England at the time. They had just release "You Sexy
Thing". I became their musical director and wrote arrangements
for them. I'd started arranging anyway for records, and the first
single I did was a disco hit and got in the charts with the group the
Sandpipers, who did "Guantanamera", but it was a disco version
of "Hang On Sloopy". It's actually a good record, it's
surprising! I didn't know what I was doing, I mean, I wrote an arrangement.
Hmmm, bass player, can you play that, and saxes will do this and strings
do that... and bingo, I was an arranger.
I'd become friendly
with a neighbor who was Ollie Halsall. I used to put him on my
sessions, and he used to tell me what he was doing, and I'd go to his
gigs, and he'd come to mine, and we'd hang out and go to the pictures
and do all the usual things. And he said to me, "I'm doing
a Monty Python session tomorrow, do you want to come along?" And
of course for every kid here or in England, Monty Python were your heroes!
That was what you laughed at, that was what you grew up with.
So I said, "Yeah, I'll come along!" And I put my saxophone in the boot
of the car. I'd met Neil very very very briefly in 1968, which
he wouldn't even remember, I don't think. But when I was at school,
I was inveigled into being on a chat show which was aimed at teenagers.
I was like a teenager in the audience talking about whatever the issue
was about teenagers. And music was provided by the Bonzo Dog Band.
So being a musician, I'd gone over and started chatting to some of them.
We had a little chat, and it was very amiable and amicable, but nothing
else. So this is like 6 or 7 years later. I go to the Workhouse
Studios, I think it was, in South London, and the Pythons are there,
and they're all there, and again it's your heroes, all there recording,
and Neil's there. And there was a lot of hanging about.
I don't think I played in there, but I did some hand claps and stuff.
And we chatted, and we all seemed to get on pretty well.
So a few weeks later, Ollie called and said "Neil's doing Recycled
Vinyl Blues", which is a single he did, "would you come along
and play the sax bit on the Glen Miller stuff?" So I went along
and I did four or five overdubs on that. And we chatted some more,
and we got friendly. And that sort of really started the contact
between us. And I don't know, obviously Neil at that time was
sort of thinking of extending his horizons, or doing more than he'd
done, or getting with more competent players, or whatever it was.
Of course Ollie and then myself coming along lifted that aspiration
into what could be done. So we hooked up around that time and
then it became an incredibly fertile period when we had the Rutles and
Life of Brian and the Innes Book of Records and all those things happening
at once. I'd already started scoring commercials as well, and
it just became for Neil an opportunity to say, right, here's a country
song, here's a brass band, here's a classical string quartet, here's
something else... and we could do it. And it really went on from
there. One thing after another, with no time to think or breathe,
which was great. The Rutles, I think — I'm trying to think
what stage they'd got to — they'd been rehearsing, and they'd recorded
a few backing tracks. They hadn't worked out a hook for "Love
Life", how to get it going, so I came up with the "John Brown's
Body" idea, that was mine, at the beginning, to parody the marsellaise
on "All You Need Is Love", and then all the stuff at the end
was my idea. And we just all threw ideas out and into the mix.
And you'd start listening, you'd hear on "Penny Lane", there's
a flute playing behind the vocals. It's something you never actually
notice, and it's just there for a couple of bars. So I put one
in for a couple of bars in "Doubleback Alley". And I
remember playing the tapes to Clive Franks who was Elton John's engineer,
who'd been the tape op on all the Beatles sessions, and he was saying,
"How did you know that? That's what we did! Nobody's ever noticed that
was there!" So I sort of dug into it. I was never really sure
about how George Martin felt about all that. Obviously Neil talked
a lot about what the Beatles thought about what the Rutles did, and
then years later I sort of met him somewhere and someone introduced
me and said, "This is John Altman, he's..." and George said "I know
who John Altman is!" He's lovely! It was fine.
He liked it?
Yeah. Definitely. But George, of course, Neil was
very close to George Harrison. My experiences with him were very
infrequent but always very pleasant. And he loved one of the phrases
I wrote on "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life", the arrangement.
He absolutely adored it, and he always used to sing it to me whenever
we met. It was just a little bit. The other thing which
I think came from Neil, the whistle. I'd written something, where
it went (singing) "Always look on the bright side of life da da deeeeee,
da da daa da-da dahhh", that little string phrase. George would
always sing that whenever he saw me, "da da deeee, da da daa da-da dahhhh..."
and he insisted that they take out the whistle so that phrase would
come through. So that was George's contribution to the mix of
"Bright Side of Life".
And then after the Rutles, we started the Innes Book of Records.
And it was really really fast and furious, because we'd do all the music
over three, four, five days. They were incredible, intense music
sessions, a conveyor belt. I remember I think we'd done a day
and a half of the string quartet, we'd done one, two, three, four, five
sessions with a string quartet, and the night session we did "Five
Learned Scholars" with the banjos and the hootenanny and we started
the take, and we'd been lulled into this sort of mood of string quartet
reflectiveness, and then it sort of went DAING DAING DAING DAING!!!
and Neil and I just both stood there going "ARGH!" completely galvanized
into this new mood by the banjos and fiddles. But the bands...
I think the first series, as the series went on, we became more elaborate
with the band lineups that we had. And we had some incredible
people. There's a guy called Bruce Dukoff who is now the concert
master of the Hollywood Bowl, and leads for John Williams and violinists,
and he did his first-ever recording session when he was 17, as a student
in London, was in the string quartet on the Innes Book of Records.
How did you record the songs for the
Innes Book of Records?
We'd have to do four songs a session. 10:00 til 1:00, four songs.
2:00 til 5:00, four more songs. 6:00 til 9:00, four more songs.
It was a production line. Because you couldn't take time.
It was completely the other way from making a record. You were
doing a t.v. show, you did four tracks per session. The guys came
in, the music was written out, you'd put the music in front of them,
they'd never seen it before, they just sat there, "one, two, three,
four!" first song. Finished, listen to it back, maybe record it
again, great, we've got it, onto the next. And that's how we did
it. It doesn't mean there wasn't care taken over it. But
you had the best musicians anywhere to be found, playing, and everything
was written out. So there wasn't any margin for experimentation
or error. Neil would give me a cassette that he'd done at home
of the songs. I think it was just him strumming the guitar or
playing the piano. There was never any orchestration in it.
And he'd just turn it over to me, "GO! Do whatever you do."
How does your brain work? Do you hear
the song and you hear all this stuff going on and you just write it
down?
Yeah. I used to do lectures and I used to play people tapes of
how I got the songs. These are well known things, like George
Michael strumming a guitar or Eric doing "Bright Side of Life",
just guitar and voice. We talked about what the songs might be,
or what the visuals were. I don't even think we agreed what the
orchestra might be, I think we agreed what the actual texture of the
song would be. Maybe slightly 1920's jazzy, or Kurt Weill, or
country, or rock and roll, or anything like that. But anything
from then on was my take on it. For example, when we did "Ungawa",
the ape man song, I just said it would be great fun, like an ape man
swinging from trees, with three baritone saxes. So we had three
baritone saxes burbling away down at the bottom. I never played
on Innes Book of Records but I did play on that. I played the
baritone solo. And it was all done live. I heard it, Neil gave me the
Recollections album, I heard it for the first time in years, and I remembered
that I played solo, and I thought, oh, that's great! So I think that's
possibly the only time I played on the Innes Book of Records.
We got great players, because it was obviously a BBC series, you could
put whoever you wanted. So there were some sort of legendary figures
playing on them. I think the funniest thing that happened probably
was dear old Ollie when he was on the first series. He wasn't
the most together person that ever walked the earth, and he turned up
for the first session with a guitar he'd borrowed from the glitter band,
which was shaped like a starfish. It didn't have any strings on
it, he didn't have any leads or amplifier or case. He just walked
in with this thing. And the other guitar player, poor old Mitch,
had to sort of rummage around, finding some strings, and have you got
a lead, and where can I plug it in to! We were also hampered a bit in
the first series by having to do it at the BBC, which was at the time
archaic. But it was BBC rules, and we could have been a lot better
off in a proper recording studio. That improved after the first
series. But it's hard work. I remember the engineer rubbing
out something while he was trying to drop in, sort of technical nightmares
going haywire. But I just remember it was a great time.
It was so easy to do. I think I appeared in all three series in
one segment. "Spontaneous" I was in, I was conducting
the cartoon. "Said and Done" was one where I was in
sort of a tea dance up north, playing the piano in black and white.
But I definitely pop up in all three series. (ed.
note: He also plays the bandleader in "La Vie En Rose.")
So that was always fun. But it was interesting, because
I didn't see them until they were done.
You weren't there while they were filming
them?
Very rarely. If they were filming in London I think I might pop
down to see them. But again, the thing is, I was doing a lot of
pop records and commercials, and I think I was touring with Van Morrison
at the same time as well, which didn't help!
Do you sleep occasionally?
Occasionally! But it all ran across that same time frame. I was
musical director for Van, and we were on the road, and things would
slot in. I do remember recording the day John was shot, and that
was also Neil's birthday. We did a song that could have been a
John Lennon song, with Neil playing the piano. That was a tough
one. I can't remember what it was. If I heard it, I would
know. I think it's something that popped up again on Archaeology.
I can't remember. I can check. The only thing I remember
about that day was hearing that news and then my car breaking down in
the snow. It was snowing in London that day. But generally,
the sessions were never hard, always fun. The musicians had fun
because they enjoyed parodying the things they parodied. And I
think what you said as well is very true, the songs work as songs, despite
being parodies as well, which is a great art, to sort of make fun of
something and yet be in its tradition and genuine and heartfelt.
Neil said there should be a verb "to
Rutle," meaning to poke fun at something and pay tribute to it at the
same time.
Absolutely. And that's where our mentalities were exactly on the
same wavelength. That's what I like to do as well. If you
feel affectionate toward something, you can have a playful dig at it,
but at the same time be honest about it and make it as good as it can
possibly be, which is hopefully is as good as anything can be! We did
a Rutle's gig in London this time last year, the one at the Queen Elizabeth
Hall, and that was fun. I played sax. And the one we did
here was marvelous because that was the first time we'd ever done it.
In '95 or '94, at the Troubadour. That was such a great night.
It was funny because I flew in that day and went straight on stage,
I was a bit, "what am I doing?" but I mean, the experience of having
an entire audience singing along
with every song, it was bizarre! It was great fun. It was a great
night. And I've got a little story: as I was waiting for the car
at the end, the valet parking, there was a guy standing there and he
was sort of moaning to his friends, "Oh, it wasn't a real Rutles gig
because Eric didn't come along and sing like he did in the movie." And
I tapped the guy on the shoulder and I said, "Excuse me, I was there,
and Eric was never at the recording studio at any time during any of
the production of the songs." It was very funny. The thing that
disappoints me, and still disappoints me about the Rutles video, which
I don't understand at all, is that none of the music gets any credit
on the titles. Which I find very disappointing about it, because
it's about what the music is. The music is it. And there's
no musician credit on the video or on the DVD.
Are you?
Nope. I haven't got a credit, nope. On the record, yeah.
Ollie got in the credits.
Because he appeared in it. But of course I didn't appear in it
so I'm not in the credits. None of the people playing, none of
them. On something that's so devoted to what the music is, it'd
be nice to see some of the people's name up there.
Still, you were there at the Director's Guild thing.
9 out of 10 questions were for Neil, not Eric. So people know
it's the music.
Oh, definitely.
How long was the production of the songs? Was
it done in two weeks?
It was pretty much done in two weeks, I'd have to say! I had the tracks
already. "Love Life" was a bit more complicated because
I think they had the track without an intro. They just had a sort
of "one two three four, two two three four"
I've heard a rehearsal tape from that,
and it started off with the Monty Python theme.
Yeah, that's right! So I added that to the track. But I think
the only one we did live with Neil was "Another Day", because
that was a string quartet and Neil. But all the other string and
horn things were done as studio overdubs on the backing tracks.
They were done at Chapels, I think, with Steve James engineer.
As was "Look On The Bright Side of Life".
Did you just do "Bright Side of
Life" or did you did more of Life Of Brian?
No, I only did "Bright Side of Life".
Neil had to leave Tunisia early during
the filming of Life of Brian to come back to England to start Innes
Book of Records.
Well that was all happening at the same time, and I was also doing Van
Morrison at the same time. Schizophrenic or what? That's why Van's
arrangements sound very Rutle-y from that period! It's an interesting
process, because obviously what I was doing was doing the George Martin
bit. And icing the cake rather than digging in from the start.
What I did, I listened to the Beatle songs once, and then threw them
out of my mind. When I arranged "Another Day" and whatever,"
Doubleback Alley", I put in what sounds Beatle-esque. The
actual instrumentation would often be totally identical. If you
had a piccolo trumpet, I'd take a piccolo trumpet. In fact, the
piccolo trumpet solo on "Doubleback Alley", it's actually
a brilliant pastiche of the Beatles if I say so myself! It's completely
inverted and turned around and turned upside down. I actually
tried to get Dave Mason, who did "Penny Lane", but he wasn't
free that day so Cliff Haines did it. But it was great, it was
wonderful.
How did you get involved in Archaeology?
That was actually more of the same in the way. The same techniques,
I came in when tracks were down on the whole, and overdubbed my stuff
in the studio.
Were you responsible for putting that
bit of Peter and the Wolf in Shangri-la?
Neil was responsible for that. It was always in there, I think
it was in there when we did it on the Innes Book of Records. I
did a totally different arrangement on Innes Book of Records as I did
for the Rutles, but I'm sure it was in there.
He's done so many things he doesn't
remember!
It's very difficult. You get these little ideas, and you put things
in, and then eventually people say, "How did you do that?" I listen
to stuff I've done back, and I can't remember how I did it or how it
came about. Why should anyone else? One thing is certain, when
we did Archaeology, I didn't listen to any Beatle songs at all.
When we did the Rutles I'm pretty sure I listened to them, but I didn't
listen to them that much. I think because they're so seeped in
everyone's consciousness, you know what you remember from them anyway.
So there are certain arranging tricks. It's very funny because
when we did the sessions on the Rutles, when we were doing "Piggy
in the Middle", one of the cellists — I mean, all the string
players really got into it, they loved it — and one of the cellists
said, "Oh, the original record is Bram Martin and someone else, the
guys who played on the original, and they really played it like this,
with the bows like this, so should we do that?" And as soon as they
did it, you went "Wow! That's the Beatles!" And that was like, something
that you wouldn't particularly know, but because the cellist listened
to the cello on the original record, he would say "This is how they
play, those guys played like this" and as soon as they did it, bingo,
you've got another element. You'd written half of it into the
arrangement. They put the other half in. So that's why the
string playing sounds so Beatley. It really does. They'd
got the essence of the string sections that the Beatles used.
And every single player who came on did what they knew worked on Beatles
tracks. That's why it's so authentic. A lot of it is the
writing, but a lot of it was. . in fact I think we had one
or two people who'd been on Beatles records. I'm sure there were
a couple of brass players and a few string players whom had done Beatle
records.
Cheese and Onions: who came up with
that last note?
That was me! It was great! People can't believe that in Life
of Brian... you know, I sat in on script meetings, and I would throw
in ideas. You got carried away with everybody talking, and you'd
suddenly say something yourself and think, what am I doing??
But then Terry Jones would pick it up, or Michael Palin, and say,"
oh, no no, what about if we did this?" And you'd think, wow,
I'm contributing!
So what did you contribute to Life of
Brian?
Well I swear that the original line was about a leper, and I put in
the ex-leper, because I was thinking of the ex-parrot. I said
"Isn't it funnier if he's an ex-leper?" and somebody said "Yeah! And
what we do then is this and that..." and that was my gag that I contributed.
But I always do that on things.
When we did the film Hear My Song, there's a scene at the end where
Ned Beatty is being arrested as Josef Locke, and David McCallum is coming
to arrest him and he goes on to sing one last song, and there's a cordon
of policeman. And I said to the director, "You know, it's
funny, looking at those policemen, because I'd just been to a Michael
Jackson concert in England, and the police were on duty to stop rioting
or whatever they do, and one of them really got into the music, he was
sort of dancing away and his helmet was going like this..." and
he said, "Good, I'll use that!" So there's a cut where all these police
are lined up and one of them starts bopping along and the other one
hits him. So that was my joke. I always contribute one gag
to everything I do!
What was Neil like to work with in the
studio?
Oh, fantastic. As I said, we had fun. It was very easy,
because I don't think our conceptions ever differed about what we were
doing. It was like we were one mind when we were... it sounds
sort of corny to say...
No, it comes through!
I don't think I ever wrote anything that he said, "I don't like that,"
or "That doesn't work", and I don't think that he ever put anything
to me that I said, "No, that won't happen" ... and when you think of
94 or however many tracks we did on the Innes Book of Records, we never
disagreed about anything. I do remember something, the drummer
was playing too much or something, and Neil said, "Oh, it's a shame
we didn't get the guy who did the last track," but then that sorted
itself out. Neil knows what he wants. When we did Archaeology,
I misunderstood what he thought he was going to have at the end, so
I did something, and he said, "Oh, I thought we were going to have that,"
and I said, "Oh, god, well okay, let's take five minutes and we'll put
it in. " So I shouted out some notes and wrote down a little bit
and put it out and then there it was. But I've always been a quick
writer and responder. And if anything ever came up to change —
because there must have been, let's put an ending on, or maybe leave
out the horns until the last chorus, or something — it was always
done straight away. So nothing ever ground to a halt while somebody
went, "Oh, I don't understand, it should be more like this." We
had the same mind is all that I can say really. It was easy.
It was just fun rock and roll.
Did you guys click personally as well?
Yeah, personally, we always got on. That's very important, because
if you don't get a person, then you're not going to get their
music. And I always understood what he was trying to achieve in
his music. It was all very obvious to me. So he would say
to me, "I worked with this guy, and he didn't get what I was after,
and he didn't get me, he didn't get it." And I always got it.
It's simple. I never listened to something and thought "What on
earth does he want? What's this all about?" It just clicked. And
it worked the other way as well, that he had the confidence to know
that whatever he gave me would come out in the way that he wanted to
hear it. And possibly better. Hopefully better!
Are you going to be working with him in the future
that you know of?
Oh I hope so! I don't know, but something always pops up. I'll
always go out and do anything that he wants to do. We talk regularly.
Always catching up on the phone every couple of months, or he'll ring
up and say he's doing something. So there's always the chance
that we'll do something. I hope so, yeah! I think the thing I
give him is, and I think because he knows the way I work, is the focus.
Sometimes when he's left to do his own projects, it sort of... and it
needn't necessarily me, but there needs to be somebody around... not
even saying anything, just being there... and we're all like that, I'm
sure. You do something and you can't quite get a handle on it,
or you're not quite sure where you're taking it, and then because someone
else is there you go, "Oh, yeah, this is how it should be." And I think
whenever we work together, there's always that sort of focus of energy.
I think the last big thing I did with him was probably Erik the Viking.
You did that too?
Yeah. Which I know was a hard thing for him because he was sort
of under a lot of pressure from Terry and it was hard work. But
that was the last really big project together. We did Archaeology,
obviously, but that wasn't as intensive as Erik. But I'm sure
the opportunity will come up again.
What's your favorite session you ever
did? Out of the ten million you've done!
It's impossible, really, because they're all great memories to have
done them. But also, it becomes very ... particularly when you're
conducting and musical director, it's so intensive, the work ethic of
it. The important thing is to get it down and get it right and
get it there. You're not particularly enjoying it at the time
because you haven't got time to. You know, "Oh, god, you made
a mistake," "Oh, lord, he didn't get that ending, he's off mike" or
something. In retrospect you can say "I loved doing that" or "I'm
really glad I did this," but apart from obviously live things, like
the Secret Policeman's Ball, or Van Morrison, you can come off and go,
god, that was fantastic, such a high. They're great. But
studio recording, I can enjoy the whole process, but I can't say I particularly
enjoyed a session, because it's so intense on your concentration.
It drains you, and you can't stop in the middle of it and go, "Wow,
I'm really having fun here doing this!" But then, all of them,
I must have fun doing them because it's fun! It's fun to write, if you've
arranged something or composed something, you've written a film score,
to go like that, and the whole orchestra starts playing what's come
out of your head, it's fantastic.
You did Secret Policeman's Ball, too?
Yeah. I was musical director on both shows. The fanfare
and that. I'm leading the band at the end with Sting. And
playing keyboard. And I'm playing offstage piano with Eric Clapton
and Jeff Beck. They couldn't wheel the piano on and off stage
because of the comedy numbers, so I'm playing offstage, and somebody
taps me on the shoulder in the middle of the song! And I'm not the world's
greatest piano player anyway, so I'm really struggling to keep up.
And this tap-tap-tap, "Have you seen john Cleese anywhere? Excuse me,
excuse me!" (laughing) "NO I HAVEN'T! GO AWAY!!" and they're
recording this and filming it! But I'm in the finale. I didn't
play with Neil that year, but for the first one we did "Spontaneous".
That never made the film. He was dressed up in that gear, the
gorilla chest, and he just sat there with Morgan
Fisher at the piano, and halfway through it, the curtain came up,
and there was a whole big band behind the curtain. Nobody knew,
and there were all these gasps as the full big band appears just for
one song. Of course I love the big bands, so I loved doing my
thing.
Was Titanic the biggest scale thing
you've ever done?
Well Titanic was the biggest movie in terms of obviously, it's the biggest
movie of all time. I did an hour and a half of music for it.
It was all stuff performed by the orchestra on the ship. So it
was all done before the filming. They'd asked me to play the orchestra
leader in the film, because they wanted somebody on set to make sure
that everything's right. They said it would be like two weeks
filming, and I said I can't really do that. It turned into two
years, so I'm glad I didn't! But it's incredible because the guy who
did it, he's a friend of mine, and people recognize him on the street,
it's extraordinary!
So you do background music...
For movies. Yeah, that's my main thing now. I'll watch a
film, and I'll forget about it and go away and get on with things, and
then suddenly I'll go inside and I'll start playing something, and I'll
go, "That's it, that's the main theme."
Do you understand that most people can't
do that? To you, is it like, "Why can't everybody do this?"
To me it is "Why can't everybody do this." And it always was.
I can't see any big deal in it. But I've got a gift. My
family got the gift, and that was the gift they all got. My cousin
is the most phenomenal drummer, he plays with Toto, he's an incredible
player, he's rated like the best drummer in the world by everyone.
What's his name?
Simon Phillips. Incredible
drummer. He's my first cousin. My eldest son plays drums
like him. My second son plays bass fantastically. Everywhere
you look in my family, people have got that gift. And you either
use it or abuse it. I didn't know that I could do anything special.
If you put on a symphony orchestra, and I can say, "Oh, the oboes are
doing this, oh, that's interesting, the bassoon player's got that, and
let's try and write this like this"... and yet, obviously it's
something that people can't do, and people train and go to college for
years, and even then they can't do it. How lucky can you be? I
don't know, it's amazing. And apropos the Innes Book of Records,
which is interesting. I was having a conversation with Anne Dudley
who did "The Full Monty" and "The Art of Noise"
and all those things. Great arranger/composer. And she said
to me, "I learned how to arrange by watching the Innes Book of Records."
Which I thought was fantastic! Very flattering. She said she learned
it all from watching that. And I said, "Well I don't remember
how I was doing it!" I didn't have a clue what I was doing! But it's
a gift, what can you say. I can hear music, I can write music,
I can invent melodies, I can sit down, I can orchestrate, and I can
conduct them. How can you do it? I don't know. But you keep
doing it, and hopefully I'll do it again.
What commercials have you done?
Well there's four thousand of them. Mostly their European.
I've done a lot of big campaigns for AT&T and Ford and Midas.
There's so many, it's impossible to...
Don't you have a famous one that everybody
would know?
In England, they would know. Awful things like the B&Q Jingle.
I don't really write jingles, I do more orchestral things. And
I work with great people. I do all Ridley Scott's commercial,
John Frankenheimer, Tony Scott, all these great directors, Alan Parker,
over the years I've worked with. I wrote one thing for you lovers
of trivia, I wrote quite a few commercials with Salman Rushdie.
What???
Salman Rushdie's lyrics and my music. He's my lyric collaborator!
Salman Rushdie was an advertising copy writer, and we did quite a lot
of commercials together. This was Before. Lovely guy! So
I've been blacklisted for "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life"
by the John Birch Society and the Daughters of the American Revolution,
and I've been blacklisted by the Fatwah on Salman Rushdie. I have
to watch it!
