1 April 1983: Pan Am Flight 101 out of Heathrow at 11 a.m. It is Good Friday and two hours away from New York the sky darkens and the plane shakes with biblical intensity. Apparently we are unable to alter altitude because of the busy flightpath, so pre-landing snacks are to be postponed for fear of pouring hot coffee into clenched laps. I fall to earth a hundred times. Eventually, after flying upside down for a hundred miles, the plane lands safely at JFK where I fail to cut the mustard with Immigration and am led away to a small office where an inspector is unimpressed by the fact that I went to Paul McCartney’s twenty-first birthday party. Following twenty minutes of careful questioning, it transpires that I am, in fact, me and, let loose into the community, I take the Carey bus to the Sheraton Russell Hotel on Park Avenue and on to meet up with Bill and Jane at their office on Madison Avenue. Next morning we travel by train and car to Austerlitz, a pretty little town on the borders of New York State and Massachusetts where Bill and Jane have a house. Outside New Amsterdam we pass a scrapyard the size of a football pitch, a graveyard for yellow school buses, some lying on their sides like elephants. Rusting carcasses. No school today.
The idea of coming here to the boondocks is to escape the temptations of the Big Apple and hunker down to writing new lyrics. Robert Frost used to live only an hour’s drive away and I mention how I’d love to walk in his woods ‘lovely dark and deep’, or visit our nearest village, Stockbridge, where Norman Rockwell lived and painted, but there is no response. In fact, I am left very much to myself, with Bill downstairs at the piano and Jane outside setting squirrel traps.
Knowing her passion for all creatures great and small, I asked her one morning what she did with the rotting corpses and, not detecting the irony, she explained that these were ‘Have a Heart’ traps, that merely caged the little critters. Once she had nabbed a few she would drive them to another part of the state and let them loose, presumably on some other animal lover’s property.
I use my jet lag to advantage by rising before dawn and getting down to work while my fellow writers sleep. Being made of wood, the house stretches itself and comes to life as the sun rises. You can hear the bones creaking as it tones up its muscles for the day. ‘Lumbering up’, you might say. With no distractions I get a lot done, including new verses for ‘Large Families’ and the ‘Wayfarer’s Song’ but the claustrophobia kicks in and I’m glad when they decide to return to New York on Wednesday. Back at the office on Madison Avenue, the idea is to work together, but their other productions take up most of the time and I leave on Saturday having achieved nothing I couldn’t have done at home.
Sunday 7 August 1983: In my room in the Capitol Hill suite killing time before the nine o’clock flight tonight from Dulles airport. Still in recovery from the opening night hangover (preceded by the press night hangover, preceded by the pre-press night hangover etc.). The show, I think, is a success with excellent reviews so far, although still awaiting the Washington Post. The music and the choreography were impressive, as were the performances, particularly Vicky Lewis who plays Mole. She’s no bigger than a mole but certainly prettier, and what a voice! Yes, I do regret not having been around during rehearsals and when I brought the matter up with Renny (one of the producers) he agreed but said the expense hadn’t been included in the budget. Paranoia sets in with an uncharitable, sinking feeling that perhaps Bill and Jane wanted me out of the way, because now all but four of my lyrics have been added to, so the credits for future productions will read: ‘Book by Jane Iredale, Music by William Perry, Lyrics by Roger McGough and William Perry’. But I mustn’t get above myself, it’s only fame and money after all. Looking out of the living-room window just now, I thought I saw Maradona and Michael Jordan stroll by. Do they know I’m staying here? Are they biding their time until I leave the building, to jump out and apologise for trying to mug me in their stoned pseudo-gaelic patois?
Sunday 4 December 1983: Good flight except for a little turbulence before dinner and a little flatulence after.
This time I don’t have to scuttle to the shuttle, because an eight-seater black limo is waiting, courtesy of the producers, with genial Dan at the wheel to drive me into the city. This is the lyric writer’s life, I think, waving majestically to the locals as we speed along, safe in the knowledge that no one can see me behind the smoke-blackened windows. The Milford Plaza, just down the road from Times Square, lacks the faux bookish charm of the Sheraton Russell but is bustling and lively, and in next to no time I have stuffed my travellers cheques under a loose corner of the carpet in my room, showered and hit the town. The plan now is to take the show to New Haven for a week, then on to Boston prior to New York, all of which sounds good to me. Over the following few days I spend time in a recording studio with the cast, who are making a tape that will be used to attract backers for the show, as well as meeting Peter Hunt, the new director. I feel it is very important to fight my corner, or else my input, not to mention my lyrics, will be sidelined in the rush to get to Broadway. But he’s hard to pin down and, having been appointed by Jane, who is also a producer, he is careful not to tamper overmuch with her script, which I feel needs tampering with, very overmuch. Only through harassing Renny and Michael from the management team do I manage to pin down the director for a meeting on the day before I leave town. We confer in the back of his limo and over a swift Martini in his hotel before he leaves for an important dinner date. He seems to have little time for wilting poets, but does agree that cuts and additions to all lyrics should not be made without reference to me. No more should my co-writers slip in references to baseball, Daytona Beach and other all-Americanisms that are out of place in the English Wild Wood that Kenneth Grahame had created. Ho, ho. We shall see.
I think the Liverpool Poets might have made a decent fist of Wind in the Willows, had we staged it in England, with Adrian as Mr Badger, Brian as Ratty and myself as Mole. However, we chose to devise our own shows instead, and during May 1984 we toured Gifted Wreckage and in March the following year It’s for You. Both shows comprised us reading our own poems, as well as sharing each other’s. There were sketches, usually with a literary theme, musical accompaniment supplied by Andy Roberts, lighting cues, and in the case of It’s for You a stage set in the form of a one-dimensional, bright red telephone box. But where were Bill Kenwright and Cameron Macintosh when we needed them? We had written a show that only we three poets could perform and although it had legs, two of them (Badger’s) were getting tired. It would not run and run, unlike the Willows with a fair wind behind it, and deep down I always cherished the hope that success on Broadway would bring home the gravy.