I love it when the telephone rings and someone offers you the chance of changing your life and making a fortune. I don’t mean the cold caller breathlessly announcing that you’ve won a weekend break in Gran Canaria, so hurry to collect the tickets from a hotel in Stevenage where they’re selling timeshares, or the recorded message promising wealth untold in northern Nigeria. I mean the genuine enquiry that comes out of the blue and turns your life upside down for weeks or months on end.
Like the one from Brian Brolly at The Really Useful Theatre Company asking if I’d be at all interested in writing some lyrics for a musical that Andrew Lloyd-Webber was currently writing based on the poems of T. S. Eliot. It was called Cats and Trevor Nunn believed I might just be the man for the job.
Ermm … Yes.
Or the one from Bob Ezrin, managing Pink Floyd at the time, wondering if I had the time to help Dave Gilmour with the lyrics he was writing for the new album.
Ermm … I’ll be right over.
Like Willy Russell offering me the part of the narrator in Blood Brothers, the musical he was writing, due to open at the Liverpool Everyman before transferring to the West End.
Ermm … Willy, do I have to sing?
Or the call from New York, where a production company was planning a new musical version of The Wind in the Willows and would I provide the lyrics? Of course, this would involve spending time in New York and Washington.
Ermm … Now where did I put my passport?
Of the four, the only invitation I turned down, which I have regretted ever since, was the one from Willy. It came at a bad time, for the commitment would have meant my going back to Liverpool for several months when Hilary and I were just settling in to a new life on the Fulham Road. Added to which was the prospect of doing the same show night after night, something that actors are trained to do, but not poets. Could I just do the opening night, I wondered, and understudy for the remainder of the run? That way I would get the glory and the champagne, and a cosy dressing room in which to spend my evenings writing poems and learning Italian. Then again, if the show proved to be a success (and at the time we had no idea just what a huge hit it would be) and the critics heaped praise on my performance, reminiscent of my early days in Luther at the Playhouse – ‘The musical really came alive when the Narrator, played by McGough, brought on the stool and set it “sans pareil” stage left’ – would it lead to other parts in other West End musicals? Of course not. So I said no. I have not mentioned, of course, the fear of failure. Of being up there on stage with the likes of Barbara Dickson and proper actors and singers, and being crap. So I said no, and did nothing else of note during the period I could have been rehearsing and appearing in the first ever production of Blood Brothers, one of the greatest musicals of the twentieth century.
Pink Floyd had been beavering away for the best part of a year, in a houseboat on the Thames that had been converted into a recording studio, and although they were pleased with the music tracks laid down, some of the band were not happy with Dave Gilmour’s lyrics. Roger Waters had quit and at the time seemed irreplaceable. All this, Bob Ezrin imparted to me over the phone, as well as saying that the group had discussed the problem and agreed on bringing in another writer, that writer being me. Great! I thought. ‘Although, I must point out’, he went on, ‘that Dave thinks the lyrics are fine.’ Shit! I thought. And so it was not only with sharpened pencils and a rhyming dictionary that I turned up next day at Dave’s house in Maida Vale, but with a great deal of trepidation. What gives me the right to monkey around with someone else’s thoughts and feelings put into words, I asked myself. Well, first and foremost he’s a musician, and so the writing may be a trifle clumsy, with the words obscuring the meaning, and so perhaps I can hack away at the undergrowth and let the light shine through. Could I help make the lyrics as memorable as the music? That was to be the challenge as we sat down together and looked at the lyrics in the cold light of silence.
‘What are we trying to say here?’
‘Mmm …’
‘This one’s about war isn’t it?’
‘Yep.’
‘For or against?’
‘Against, definitely.’
‘Good, then let’s see if we can try and bring that out …’
The drummer, Nick Mason, had a daughter in the same class as Finn, and when he was around we’d chat about the pros and cons of Ackland Burghley Comprehensive in Tufnell Park; but alone with Gilmour I felt as welcome as a tax inspector and was not surprised when Ezrin rang a few weeks later to say that the band had agreed to go along with Dave’s original lyrics. Apologies all round, but two tickets for the Floyd concert at Wembley were as good as on their way.
Unfortunately, I never did get to sit down at the piano next to Andrew Lloyd-Webber, because the decision had been taken to stay with the original lyrics, but had I been able to give voice to the characters fashioned in the Eliot image, I’m sure we might have squeezed in one or two when Mrs Eliot’s back was turned:
There’s many a cat in the cats’ Who’s Who
Who rue the cat they once did woo
From Felixstowe to Edinbraw
Titled toms have held her paw
Miaowed her praises, sworn true love
By the light of the milky moon above
Alone now, Miranda mopes in her flat
An ex-sex-kitten, now a tired old cat.
Occasionally, on cold, grey mornings when I’m writing out a cheque for the council tax, or packing an overnight bag to travel somewhere for a reading when I’d rather stay home by the fire, I think about the ‘What ifs’ and the ‘Nearlys’. What a difference a few points or a nano-percentage of Cats or the Floyd’s LP A Momentary Lapse of Reason would have made to my life. Would the kids have gone to private schools? Would I have had a facelift? Would Hilary still be driving an old Peugeot? Would I pay a ghost to write this while I’m relaxing on my private island in the Caribbean? Of all the arts, poetry is the one you don’t pursue if it’s money you’re after. Paint, sculpt, compose or play a musical instrument and if you’re any good there’s a ready market for your talent, but write a poem? It’s not currency, it won’t increase in value, it can’t be hung on the wall and if it’s memorable it can be carried round in the head, so why pay for it? Poetry has been good to me and I’ve been fortunate, but had I wanted to make money I’d have chosen a different path. All the same, it’s nice to dream.
In December 1982 the telephone rang with an American accent and William Perry, over from New York for a few days, was keen to meet up for a chat about a new musical he was involved in. Over supper at Thierry’s on the King’s Road, he and his partner Jane Iredale, born in England but now settled in the US and running a casting agency, told me about their plans to adapt The Wind in the Willows into a musical that would open at the Folger Theater in Washington the following year. Their production company, Great Amwell, had introduced me to the American television public in a half-hour show devoted to my work, starring Jim Dale, and they were keen to have me on board, especially when I didn’t throw my napkin on the table and storm out of the restaurant when they told me that Mole would be female. Initially it was a lovely project to work on. I liked Bill’s music, which was tuneful, and he had clear ideas about what the lyrics should do; and Jane, who was writing the book, welcomed my input and happily added my dialogue to the script. But now let me cut to the chase.
The Chase: It was just after midnight on Wednesday 3 August 1983, two days before we opened at the Folger Theater, when I left the bar I’d gone to with a few of the cast after a late rehearsal and, refusing an offer to walk me home from a pair of weasels, set off. Within minutes I was away from the brightly lit cafés and bars and crowded streets, and walking along an empty sidewalk overhung with trees. The air was hot and humid, and the only noise was the drip-drip of moisture from the branches and my own hurried footsteps. They appeared out of the shadows: a tall young black with a basketball-player’s stoop and a short guy who looked like an Argentinian football legend. ‘Hey, man, shlanna bea gimmer,’ growled Maradona. ‘Pugga ma hon.’ He’s talking to me in Gaelic, I thought, but when he pulled the knife I leaped off the sidewalk and sprinted up the road. I heard them swearing and giving chase, but they were so stoned they soon gave up and I reached my apartment safe, sound and soaking wet.
The Folger Theater, a copy of Shakespeare’s Globe built within a modern complex, is a compact 270-seater and proved an ideal venue to stage the musical. Directed by an Englishman, John Neville-Andrews, the production ran for nine weeks and reviews ranged from encouraging to ‘Bound to be a smash! See it now before it becomes next year’s CATS!’ (Bob Mondello, ‘Close-up’ Channel 7), ‘One of the most delightful and entertaining nights I’ve ever been privileged to share in the theater.’ (Arch Campbell, Channel 4 News). And although there were hints that cuts needed to be made, with perhaps a little honing here and there before it transferred to New York, no one could have foreseen the wreckage that was to become of The Wind on Broadway.