Four Weddings, “Love Is All Around” and Wet Wet Wet

I wrote yesterday about Bryan Adams’ monopolisation of the British music charts in 1991 with his movie song. 1994 was most definitely monopolised by another movie song – The Troggs’ Love Is All Around, this time recorded by Wet Wet Wet. As it turns out it would have beaten Bryan Adams record of 16 weeks at No. 1 had the band themselves not taken the decision to delete it from sale after week 15. They were fully aware by this time that everyone was fed up hearing it and some radio stations had even taken to banning it from the airwaves.

Love Is All Around by Wet Wet Wet:

The song had been attached to the fantastically popular film Four Weddings and a Funeral and yet again, droves of fans of the film took to purchasing possibly their first single in many a year. It hit the number one spot at the end of May and stayed there until October!

I remember going to see it that summer with my husband and his family who were home from abroad for a visit. Seemed like a good idea for a night out and I must admit to loving the film so much, I went back the following week for a second viewing. Hugh Grant had been around in films for a while but when Richard Curtis cast him as the smart, funny, good-looking but slightly awkward Charles in Four Weddings, he struck gold. The whole cast of mainly British actors (we’ll not mention Ms MacDowell as I think she was included to appease the American market) were fabulous and although set in “Richard Curtis-world” where everyone lives in stately homes or Notting Hill townhouses with no discernable income stream to match, the film was a tremendous success. When Liz Hurley hit the red carpet on Hugh Grant’s arm in the safety pin dress, her career took a discernable turn for the better also, so lots of winners here.

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I expect the biggest winner of all was Reg Presley of The Troggs who had written the song in 1967 and had a top ten hit with it back then. Nearly 30 years on and here he was, the writer of the biggest-selling single of all time. Very nice for the pension pot.

Not too shabby either for Wet Wet Wet but sadly this was to be one of their last forays into the pop charts. They had started out in the ’80s as a Celtic Soul band but as happened with my earlier pop hero David Cassidy, the good looks (and incredibly smiley face) of lead singer Marti Pellow meant they quickly became teen idols. A long string of pop hits followed culminating with the truly massive Love Is All Around. As with many acts like Wet Wet Wet, they had great commercial success but really craved credibility – Hard to get both and when they went their separate ways, problems ensued. As the comedian Kevin Bridges commented in his latest standup routine, Marti Pellow must have been the only person to leave Clydebank, and become a heroin addict (no slur on Clydebank intended). All that seems to be behind him now however and he has become a bit of a West End star turning up in many big productions.

Something I never got to the bottom of however – All through his Wet Wet Wet career which included numerous TOTP appearances, Marti sported the short, spikey haircut that boys from that era tended to have. All of a sudden he was belting out the now big production number that was Love Is All Around, sporting long, luscious locks. That was hair which would have taken years of growth and high-level maintenance. Still don’t know how he did it and probably never will!

Love Is All Around Lyrics
(Song by Reg Presley)

I feel it in my fingers
I feel it in my toes
Love is all around me
And so the feeling grows

It’s written on the wind
It’s everywhere I go
So if you really love me
Come on and let it show

You know I love you, I always will
My mind’s made up by the way that I feel
There’s no beginning, there’ll be no end
‘Cause on my love you can depend

I see your face before me
As I lay on my bed
I kinda get to thinking
Of all the things you said

You gave your promise to me and I gave mine to you
I need someone beside me in everything I do

You know I love you, I always will
My mind’s made up by the way that I feel
There’s no beginning, there’ll be no end
‘Cause on my love you can depend

Alan Rickman, The Sheriff of Nottingham and Bryan Adams

I am in disbelief – only four days into this blog and another of my heroes has died. Again at 69 and again of cancer. Didn’t know he had been ill.

Thought I’d first really noticed Alan Rickman in Truly, Madly, Deeply – A lovely little film with Julia Stevenson but it turns out that Die Hard came out first where he brilliantly played the villain Hans Gruber. He was familiar to me then, so he must have appeared on TV shows and films prior to that. He seems to have been the kind of actor who never played the leading man but kept popping up in supporting roles and stole the show. In Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, he definitely stole the show playing the villainous Sheriff of Nottingham. Kevin Costner was at the peak of his career around this time and although the film was a great success, I thought he was a bit underwhelming in it (give me Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood any day). Alan Rickman on the other hand turned in an amazing dramatic and comedic performance totally outshining his fellow actors. He has of course appeared in many, many films and theatre productions since, but most of us will remember him best as The Sheriff of Nottingham, Severus Snape in the Harry Potter movies and as Emma Thompson’s foolish husband in Love Actually.

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Alan Rickman playing The Sheriff of Nottingham

Thinking back to 1991, I remember going to see Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves with my boyfriend (now husband) after returning from an early summer holiday in Greece. It was June, the start of summer, and we were already sporting glorious suntans. Little did I think that the title track from the movie (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, would still be at the top of the UK Singles Chart in October, long after the suntans had faded. Poor old Bryan Adams – He still holds the record for the most weeks at No. 1 in the UK and although it wouldn’t have done his bank balance any harm, for those of us who used to get quite excited about what topped the charts (sad I know), it ruined most of 1991. We ended up getting quite cross with Mr Adams through no fault of his own. All those people who didn’t usually buy records, rushed out to acquire it after enjoying the film. The same phenomenon happened three years later when Four Weddings and a Funeral was released. All those fans of the film went mad for Wet Wet Wet’s version of Love Is All Around and we had yet another summer long monopolisation of the No. 1 spot.

(Everything I Do) I Do It For You by Bryan Adams:

Anyway, I have now forgiven Bryan Adams for commandeering the 1991 chart and listening to the song again I have to concede that it is quite pleasing to the ear. And, a piano intro again, which seems to be forming a pattern here. I will now, as well as enjoying David Bowie’s back catalogue this weekend, look out for some Alan Rickman films to watch. Two heroes gone in four days, and both only 69 – Enough now. RIP Alan.

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(Everything I Do) I Do It For You Lyrics
(Song by Bryan Adams)

Look into my eyes – you will see
What you mean to me.
Search your heart, search your soul
And when you find me there you’ll search no more.

Don’t tell me it’s not worth tryin’ for.
You can’t tell me it’s not worth dyin’ for.
You know it’s true:
Everything I do, I do it for you.

Look into your heart – you will find
There’s nothin’ there to hide.
Take me as I am, take my life.
I would give it all, I would sacrifice.

There’s no love like your love
And no other could give more love.
There’s nowhere unless you’re there
All the time, all the way, yeah.

Look into your heart, baby…

Oh, you can’t tell me it’s not worth tryin’ for.
I can’t help it, there’s nothin’ I want more.

Yeah, I would fight for you, I’d lie for you,
Walk the wire for you, yeah, I’d die for you

The Partridge Family, David Cassidy and “Could It Be Forever?”

Thinking yesterday about my first crush (Davy Jones) inevitably led me to think of my second big crush, David Cassidy. Thankfully this David is still alive and well although now 65 which would have made him around 21 when he first came into my life in the early ’70s. He starred in The Partridge Family which was shown midweek in the kid’s TV slot just before the early evening news.

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It was inevitable because of his amazing good looks and great singing voice that he would become a teen idol. There had been chart hits already with The Partridge Family but in April 1972 David had his first solo hit as himself, and not as Keith Partridge. Could It Be Forever was the perfect vehicle to cement David’s place as one of the two biggest “pop stars” of the day (the other being Donny Osmond but we’ll leave him for another time).

Looking back at the dates now, I realise that this song must have been around during the last few weeks spent at my Scottish primary school. It is also the first song that made me cry – I still remember those tears welling up as I listened to it being played on the radio. Young girls are highly emotional beings and at around 12, just when the hormones are kicking in, we have to leave the familiar surroundings and friendships of our junior school and enter the serious, scary world of secondary school. We end up losing our sanity a bit when it comes to our pop idols and behave in a totally irrational and frenzied manner. We buy all the magazines that have their pictures and create scrapbooks and fanzines. We cover our bedroom walls with their posters. We even iron picture transfers onto our pillowcases. (Yes guilty of all the above.) Of course we dream of them being our fantasy boyfriends, without really understanding what having a real boyfriend would mean.

The really frenzied behaviour however happens if we are ever lucky enough to see them in concert, or in the flesh, and whenever David came to Britain there were hordes of girls at the airport to greet him. It always amazes me when we see old footage of these scenes, that young girls simply headed off to Heathrow en masse unsupervised. We have become a nation who heavily supervises its young people until they are practically at the stage of leaving home – Wasn’t so in the early ’70s obviously. Also, the girls are practically on the tarmac and hanging off every balcony/rooftop vantage point. Compare that to the massive security operation nowadays of getting people shoeless, belt-less and scissor-less through to their plane of choice.

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As with most teen idols, David’s time in the sun didn’t last and it was practically all over by 1974. He had become disillusioned with it all by then anyway and who could blame him. It can be a curse to be that good-looking as you are going to have a stratospheric rise to fame but then lose all control of your life in the process. Unless you are incredibly grounded, realistic and well-managed you will find it very hard to cope with life when it’s over. He also suffered the double-whammy of having a fan die in the crush at one of his concerts which he never quite got over. He did attempt a bit of a comeback in the ’80s but it was short-lived. Young girls are very fickle and grow up fast – Once they’ve moved on to “real boys” the career is over.

As for me I will enjoy listening once more to the first song that really made me weep. His second solo single How Can I Be Sure didn’t just make me weep but sob. Yes the hormones and move to “big school” were really kicking in by then. Thank goodness for DC Thomson of Dundee who could be relied upon weekly, to provide plenty of reasonably priced centrefold posters of our idol in Jackie magazine. Hope this David lives a long and healthy life.

Could It Be Forever Lyrics
(Song by Wes Farrell/Danny Janssen)

Could it be forever or is my mind just rambling on
Well I touched you once and I kissed you once
And I feel like you’re mine
Well I feel like you’re mine and I see in your face
I’m not wrong to have these feelings
Well I feel like you’re mine and I’ve never known a time before
That’s had so many meanings

Could it be forever or is my mind just wasting time
Well I don’t think so because you let me know
You make me feel like you’re mine
Well I feel like you’re mine and I can’t remember
When the feelings have been stronger
And all I know is I can’t let go of you
Or be with you just a little while longer

All my feelings come together
All of me is here
Never known when I felt better
Cause I know this won’t disappear

But could it be forever
Or is my mind just rambling on
Maybe it is, if it is
Then I’ll be moving on

Well, I feel like you’re mine
And I see in your face
I’m not wrong to have these feelings
Well, I feel like you’re mine
I’ve never known a time before
That’s had so many meanings

Davy Jones, The Monkees and “Daydream Believer”

Day two after news broke of the death of David Bowie (Jones) and the media still awash with tributes and commentaries about the icon.

Got me to thinking about that other David Jones who also died prematurely in his sixties – Davy Jones of The Monkees. My first big crush. Their television show (also called The Monkees) ran from 1966-68 and I was an avid viewer. Bright clothes, great pop songs, psychedelic sets and anarchic, slapstick behaviour – What not to like for a seven-year-old. Their scheduled slot was teatime on a Saturday night so perfect for family viewing.

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They very cunningly managed to highjack Neil Diamond’s best songs from that era and made them their own, no doubt contributing handsomely to Mr Diamond’s royalty cheques. My favourite was this one however from November 1967 and not a Neil Diamond song as it turns out – Daydream Believer. You only have to hear the first few notes on the piano to recognise what is about to come and boy are you in for a treat (starts at 0:20).

Daydream Believer by The Monkees:

Again, it makes me sad to think of those days nearly 50 years ago watching the impossibly cute Davy Jones leading the rest of the boys with his tamborine in hand. His diminutive size meant that he never really seemed to grow old and was a very handsome man right up until his death. After a spell of acting as a youth (Ena Sharples’ nephew in early Coronation Street) he became an apprentice jockey, but after taking up the role of the Artful Dodger in the West End, his show business path was set. He contined to have a lifelong love of horses however, and died aged just 66 after being out riding.

The Monkees never really did reunite properly although there were a few mini reunions over the years, the last being in 2011 to celebrate their 45th anniversary. The main reason was that they could never get Mike Nesmith on-board. His mother had invented and patented correction fluid, “Tippex”, so he inadvertently became a Tippex millionaire who didn’t really need the money and preferred to concentrate on his own projects – Very Rock ‘n’ Roll!

So from one David Jones (a Londoner turned Berliner turned New Yorker) to another David Jones (a Mancunian turned Angeleno turned Floridian) in two blogs. And both dead by the age of 70 – Far, far too young.

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Daydream Believer Lyrics
(Song by John Stewart)

Oh, I could hide ‘neath the wings
Of the bluebird as she sings
The six o’clock alarm would never ring
But it rings and I rise
Wipe the sleep out of my eyes
The shavin’ razor’s cold and it stings

Cheer up, sleepy Jean
Oh, what can it mean
To a daydream believer
And a homecoming queen

You once thought of me
As a white knight on a steed
Now you know how happy I can be
Oh, and our good times start and end
Without dollar one to spend
But how much, baby, do we really need

David Bowie, “Life on Mars?” and The Mortality Reality Check

Ironically I had already chosen this day, 11th January 2016, to start a blog. The idea behind it was to jot down those memories conjured up by a random piece of music heard in the course of the day. And what a day it turned out to be. News broke this morning, as we were all waking up, that David Bowie had died after an 18 month struggle with cancer. I had noticed a few days earlier that he’d just released a new album to coincide with his 69th  birthday (suddenly prolific in his later years after a long gap with little output), but like most of us I was unaware that he was so ill. A video clip showed him with stylish short cropped hair, smartly dressed, but looking old I thought which made me sad. Sad perhaps because of my own mortality. If our musical heroes were getting old then so must we. This morning’s news confirmed that “The Man Who Fell To Earth” was indeed not immortal.

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Only three times in my life can I remember this much media attention having been paid to the death of a person from the world of music, and they were:

Elvis Presley, who died the day I went back to school after the long summer holidays in 1977. I was only 17 and had been a big Elvis fan mainly because of the movies we had watched on television and then the massive events that were the ’68 Comeback Special and the ’73 Aloha from Hawaii concert broadcast live around the world. In a career stretching back to the mid 1950s it’s sad that so many only remember Elvis from the later jumpsuited, Vegas years when until the early 1970s he truly was still the King of Rock and Roll.

John Lennon, shot down by Mark Chapman at the end of 1980. I was a 20-year-old student at the time and stayed in bed most of the morning listening to BBC Radio 1 which played the music of both The Beatles and Lennon himself. Andy Peebles, a DJ of the day had recently recorded an interview with Lennon, so he found himself suddenly the man of the moment in terms of contributing to the day’s output.

Michael Jackson, the King of Pop. It was June 2009 and we had just come back from my daughter’s school’s version of Britain’s Got Talent.  She was one of eight performers that night (one of three solo singers) and was by far the youngest contestant at 13. After tremendous praise from our local panel of celebrity judges who forecast her being “snapped up by Simon Cowell”, she ended up not being placed so was upset. A tremendous rush of adrenaline following weeks of preparation which led to disappointment and the low that comes with it. It was when we got home that we heard of the death of Michael Jackson and as we watched footage of him as a very young boy totally outshining his brothers with his singing and dancing, it did make me glad that my 13-year-old daughter had perhaps had her wings clipped as I can think of very few child stars who have gone on to have a long and happy life.

And now we have Mr Bowie. At 69 he has actually had a long life compared to the others listed above who died at 42, 40 and 50 respectively. It is sad that his family and friends will no longer be able to talk with him, work with him and spend time with him but I am not sure if it is true that it is “sad” for the rest of us who did not know him other than through his work. It is more a massive shock that someone who has been around for such a long time as part of the fabric of Britain’s music culture, is suddenly no longer with us. Back to the mortality, reality check. It is sad that his body of work is now complete but what a body of work to leave – it will be added to, new material will be found and it will be reworked for as long as people have the appetite to do so. With a creative force such as Bowie whose work never did fit neatly into a particular genre or period, it will keep on appealing to new fans.

So back to the original premise to this blog – The random piece of music heard in the course of the day. I’m going to pick Life On Mars?.

Life On Mars? by David Bowie:

I have watched many video clips of Ziggy Stardust today and heard much analysis of how Bowie pushed boundaries with his androgyny, but here’s the thing, when Life on Mars? hit the charts in June 1973, I was just a 13-year-old girl who loved Top of the Pops and Radio 1’s chart show. I sat poised with my cassette recorder and microphone on a Thursday night at 7.30pm desperately trying to capture my favourite songs with no annoying applause or voice-overs. I liked Life on Mars? a lot, because it’s a great sounding song, but at 13 I really wouldn’t have understood what androgyny meant and having taken in lots of telly from the mid ’60s onward, he was just another flamboyantly dressed pop star (we’d had the hippy era already and glam rock was well and truly underway by this time). Looking now at the lyrics, they are fairly bizarre and my 13-year-old self wouldn’t have given them much thought. The weirdest thing about Life on Mars? foray into the charts is that it coincided with The Laughing Gnome’s second release after failing miserably to make an impact first time around in 1967. Not part of his grand plan to have both songs around at the same time I imagine but the economics of the recording industry being as they are, his former record company weren’t going to miss out on an income stream from a now popular artist.

My older self now realises what a massive a creative talent David Bowie was and I look forward to revisiting his back catalogue as we all do when something like this happens. When I said earlier that he was just another flamboyantly dressed pop star, I will concede that he was indeed the most flamboyant of them all. The striped, sleeveless swimsuit affair and the one-legged jumpsuit ensembles are still deeply troubling to look at today. I will try to make sense of it all, although I am not entirely sure we were ever meant to. He was unusual in that he was primarily an actor and artist whose biggest success came in the music industry. Only an actor could reinvent himself, so often, so successfully, into so many great characters.

But when all’s said and done I would just like to know, once and for all, how to pronounce his name. Is is Bow-ie or Bo-wie? Still working that one out but maybe that’s just how it should be, for the master of reinvention.

RIP David Bowie.

Life On Mars? Lyrics
(Song by David Bowie)

It’s a god-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair
But her mummy is yelling “No”
And her daddy has told her to go
But her friend is nowhere to be seen
Now she walks
through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she’s hooked to the silver screen
But the film is a saddening bore
For she’s lived it
ten times or more
She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to focus on

Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man!
Look at those cavemen go
It’s the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he’ll ever know
He’s in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

It’s on America’s tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck for fame
‘Cause Lennon’s on sale again
See the mice in their million hordes
From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads
Rule Britannia is out of bounds
To my mother, my dog, and clowns

But the film is a saddening bore
‘Cause I wrote it ten times or more
It’s about to be writ again
As I ask you to focus on…

Postscript:

A brilliant television series, first shown in 2006 was also called Life On Mars. The main character Sam Tyler went back in time to join the 1973 Manchester Police Force. It had a really clever fantasy-esque plotline and a great soundtrack of ’70s songs which made it a must-watch show, especially for me. It was inevitable that Life On Mars? the song, would be heavily used throughout the whole series and probably contributed to it becoming my favourite Bowie song.