Swinging London & the Wombles seen from an electric-blue Rolls-Royce. Mike Batt looks back
Description
Mike Batt still wrestles with the emotional legacy of the Wombles, the act that simultaneously made him and cast a shadow over the rest of his career, not least his early days as a songwriter at Liberty Records, discussed here, hired after he’d answered the same ad as Elton John and Bernie Taupin, a time when A&R men wore kipper ties and had Picassos on their wall. He forged a path through psychedelia and into TV and films, taking huge financial risks with musicals, orchestral works and big-selling acts like Katie Melua, his Art Garfunkel hit ‘Bright Eyes’ eventually promoting him from the Haves to the Have-Yachts. Life, he says, has been “like running through traffic”. His memoir is just out, ‘The Closest Thing to Crazy: My Life of Musical Adventures’. All sorts discussed here including ...
… his brief satin-jacketed tenure in Hapshash & the Coloured Coat.
… parallels between record producers and traffic cops.
… Happy Jack and songs about outsiders.
… being in Savile Row when the Beatles played the Apple roof.
… life as “a square” during psychedelia.
… a snatch of abandoned teenage composition ‘The Man With The Purple Hand’.
… John D. Laudermilk and the magic of writing credits.
… how Bright Eyes “got me into the Officers’ Mess of Songwriters”.
… his publishers insisting there was a Womble on the book jacket.
… “circumcising” the world in a seven-crew yacht.
... and feeling simultaneously smug and guilty when driving a Roller.
Order ‘The Closest Thing To Crazy: My Life of Musical Adventures’ here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Closest-Thing-Crazy-Musical-Adventures/dp/1785120840
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