More Rosebud - Don Black

Don Black, the legendary lyricist, brings his gorgeous and sunny energy onto Rosebud today. He and Gyles talk about Don's life and work, beginning with his extremely happy, but humble, childhood in Hackney, going with his starstruck mother to the Empire to watch Max Miller and other big names of the day. He talks about his father, who worked as an Underpresser, ironing clothes for the local elite. Don then takes Gyles to Denmark Street, or Tinpan Alley as it was known, the heart of London's music scene, where Don began to get work as a promoter and then as a lyricist. There he meets Matt Monro, and Don writes the song for Monro which changes his life, "Walk Away". Five James Bond themes, "Born Free", Michael Jackson's "Ben" and numerous other hits and hit musicals follow. Don is multi-award-winning and has met everyone from Quincy Jones to Henry Mancini, but remains delightfully modest, down to earth and funny. He says he was grounded by his long and extremely happy marriage to Shirley, who never let them get carried away with fame and fortune - and this episode contains many stories and lessons about love. This is a really charming conversation which will make you smile and remind you of what really matters in life. Don's show From the Heart is on at the Garrick Theatre, London, from October 8. Tickets are available here https://www.londonboxoffice.co.uk/from-the-heart-tickets. Our thanks to Don Black for his delightful company. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:57Speaker 02

  It's Tuesday. If you're listening to this on the day we drop it onto the world, it could be any time that you hear it, it's more Rosebud. And it's a special interview today. And I'm here with my friend, my colleague, my producer, Harriet Jain. Are you excited about today's guest?

• 2:15Speaker 03

  Oh, what a charming and lovely man.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  He's a very interesting human being, as well as indeed being a very charming person. And he's been a hero of mine for, well, really as long as I can remember. Do you know what one of my ambitions was when I was a little boy?

• 2:34Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  It was to be a songwriter.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  A lyricist.

• 2:38Speaker 03

  Brilliant. You'd have been excellent at that.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Well, I don't think I would, but I aspired to it because I fell in love with the work of Alan J. Lerner, who wrote the lyrics for, well, Camelot, for My Fair Lady, for lots of great musicals. And when I first began to hear the lyrics of Don Black, who is our guest today, I thought, this is my kind of guy, because he's got a way with words that is very special. And he has been a huge success. Academy Award winner for Born Free. He, well, I mean, he's got two Tony Awards for musicals done in the West End and on Broadway, six Ivan Oviedo Awards, a Golden Globe. He's had awards aplenty.

• 3:22Speaker 03

  He wrote five Bond themes.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:25Speaker 03

  Giles, I mean, that's big news.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  It is. Diamonds are forever, Thunderball.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  The story about the origins of Thunderball is one of my favorite stories. But actually, he is one of my favorite people because he is a happy person from an interesting childhood, and he had the most remarkable marriage that, because I've known him for a long time, I was lucky to see. He was married to his wife Shirley for nearly 60 years. They were, well, they were very close. They met, I think, when they were 17. They married when they were 20. I think that's the year he wrote one of his first hits when he was 20 years of age. It's an extraordinary story. He has worked with everybody, literally, from, well, you name it, from Andrew Lloyd

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Webber through to Michael Jackson. I mean, the name dropping in this episode is incredible, but also the modesty and good humor of the individual.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  Yes, and I think it's going to make you, if you're listening to this, just feel really lovely to listen to somebody, as Giles says, so modest, so humble, so happy, so positive, with such a lovely outlook, and telling a really gorgeous story about a lifelong marriage and a really, really happy and satisfying life. And that's a great feeling to listen to someone talking like that, isn't it?

• 4:56Speaker 02

  It really is. And he's now, gosh, I think he must be 88.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  He's a good age. But when I called him, you know, the day before the recording and said, you're coming, aren't you, coming to our studio at Grosvenor House? He said, oh, yes, he said, I certainly am. Charles Aznavour, he said, famously said to me, "A man will never grow old if he knows what he's doing tomorrow." And tomorrow, Giles, I'm doing Rosebud.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  So here is Don Black, the great lyricist, with his episode of Rosebud. Cue the music.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Don Black, born on the 21st of June, 1938. My first question, as you will know, is always the same question. It's quite simply, what is your very first memory?

• 5:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, having seen this before, I knew you were going to ask me that. And I do remember being a babyish, you know, well, very, very young, but my most vivid memories of my mother singing me to sleep, because it wasn't a normal lullaby. It was always "Besame mucho."

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 6:12Speaker 04

  Besame, besame mucho. You know the song?

• 6:14Speaker 02

  No, I don't know the song.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  Each time we kiss, I hear music divine. It's a lovely gypsy thing. And anyway, coming from Russia, she knew all these kind of songs. And she always used to sing me to sleep with that, so it's very vivid. And we'll be talking about my mom and her singing.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  I want to talk all about your mom right now.

• 6:35Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  So who was this mom? Why did she come from Russia? Where was this happening, this early memory? And I forgot to ask you, first of all, what is your actual name? What's your full name?

• 6:45Speaker 04

  Donald Blackstone.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Donald Blackstone.

• 6:48Speaker 04

  And I changed it because when I wanted to be a stand-up comedian, I thought, Bob Hope, yeah, it's a short, sharp, that's great. Don Black, yeah, that's good. So I changed it as the years went by. But answering your question, my mom came from Ukraine, from Mariupol. My father came from Kiev, also in the Ukraine.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  And when did they come?

• 7:16Speaker 04

  They came around about 1900, I think.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  Oh, with their parents? They were tiny when they came.

• 7:23Speaker 04

  Yes, they were. And...

• 7:26Speaker 02

  And why did they have to come? What was going on? They were...

• 7:29Speaker 04

  Well, they never talked much about it, but they always said that there was wars going on. Being Jewish, it was safer to get out of there. Anyway, they both ended up in Sunderland, of all places. And they met in Sunderland. And from Sunderland, they moved to London, to Hackney.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  Describe your mom. What was her name? What was she like?

• 7:51Speaker 04

  Well, Betsy Blackstone. She was full of love, life, and laughter. She was the greatest mom and never stopped laughing. She was very taken by celebrities. And we lived in Hackney, and there were a few celebrities floating around there. There was a boy called Danny Clapton, who lived in the next block, who was a very famous footballer, played for Arsenal. And my mom used to say, Danny Clapton, you know, she's very proud to know any... And there was a singer called Steve Conway. And if you look him up, he had a number one hit with "My Thanks To You," it was called. And he topped the bill at the Hackney Empire. And my mother used to look out the window, and she'd say things like, Donald, quick,

• 8:35Speaker 04

  quick, there's Steve Conway, and he's wearing a camel coat. She was always so taken by that kind of thing.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  So Betsy was full of life and love and energy and music?

• 8:47Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  And your father was who?

• 8:49Speaker 04

  My father was Maurice Blackstone. He was a wonderful man. He was Russian. He never lost his accent. My mother had a Sunderland accent, but my father was... He always, we used to take the Mickey out of him. He used to lose the H's all the time. He used to say, um, cause he was in the A R P.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  The air raid ward.

• 9:12Speaker 04

  Air raid protections.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  During the war.

• 9:15Speaker 04

  And it was wonderful because he thought this was the proudest thing to be. And he used to say things as if he was Field Marshal Montgomery. He'd say things. I'm going to headquarters without the H and then he's going to Acne Wick for the dogs. And he would say, where's my Daily Herald? Cause he read the Daily. He was a wonderful man and very strong. He had chest expanders and no one could open them apart from him. And my memory so vivid of him was he loved the radio and boxing. So I learned names like Bruce Woodcock and Freddie Mills, Max Schmeling. He knew all about boxing.

• 9:56Speaker 04

  He had a bit of a temper. He, he never used it, but he sort of, he threatened me. He would always say it. If you, if you don't behave, I'll take the strap to you. I'll take the strap to you. He never did. And he loved any, any movie with Edward G. Robinson or James Cagney in it.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  A gangster movie?

• 10:14Speaker 04

  The gangster. Humphrey Bogart was his favorite.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  What did he do for anything? How did he earn money for the family?

• 10:20Speaker 04

  Uh, he was an under presser.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  What does that mean?

• 10:23Speaker 04

  Exactly. It was a bit of a thing. Well, he used to press with, I mean, he had a great big iron in the kitchen. And he was a very good presser.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  He did it at home?

• 10:32Speaker 04

  Yes, he did at home.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  This is a tailoring job of some kind?

• 10:35Speaker 04

  He had jobs to, people with very good clothes used to go to Maurice Blackstone, get him to press it.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  So that's what, he earned a living?

• 10:44Speaker 04

  He made a living pressing clothes, yes.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Pressing clothes for the gentry?

• 10:48Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  How interesting. He did it from the kitchen at home?

• 10:52Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, the lounge.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  The lounge? That's how he earned his living. And did your mother have a job as well?

• 10:58Speaker 04

  No, look, she had five children and I was the youngest and I was the one spoiled rotten. Completely. I mean, I, I must say, it was lucky that I went to school because she never wanted to wait me. She used to say to the others, I don't like to wait. Donald is having such a lovely sleep. He was that kind of really, and I, all my life I've been spoiled. When she made chicken soup, I was the one who got the egg. And, um, so, you know, it was an incredible childhood.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  And do you remember the war at all?

• 11:34Speaker 04

  I remember it well.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Tell, describe what you remember of the war.

• 11:37Speaker 04

  I remember the air raid shelters. I remember them all singing songs in there. There were lots of war songs. And when I think of it, that I hear them singing, goodbye, goodbye, there's a silver lining in the sky. And, and I can hear that. I can hear the shouts of turn that light out up there. And also seeing a flare. It was a good thing. It was exciting. It wasn't, there was no terror in it.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  And you stayed in London throughout the war, did you?

• 12:08Speaker 04

  I was evacuated for a little while in Sunderland. My mother had lots of sisters. I used to go to Darlington a lot because that was Auntie Annie's place. And Uncle Benny, who was a rabbi, became a very important rabbi. He became the chief rabbi of Cork.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 12:25Speaker 04

  It was unusual.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  And were you conscious of your Jewishness as a little boy? Was that part and parcel of your life?

• 12:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, very much. So I went to Hebrew lessons and I was bar mitzvahed, obviously. And we were sort of orthodox. We were orthodox. We lit candles. We were kosher food. It all changed when I had my first Chinese meal, I think. And I said, lobster pours and all that stuff. Sweet and sour chicken. That's another world. Another world opened.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  Beautiful and a sweet world.

• 12:56Speaker 04

  A sweet world.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  And was it, when you were a little boy, a problem being Jewish? Was there antisemitism?

• 13:02Speaker 04

  No.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  I mean, seriously?

• 13:04Speaker 04

  Well, there was, there was obviously the black shirts, you know.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  But that was before you were born, or was it before the Second World War? But you were not conscious as a little boy?

• 13:13Speaker 04

  No, no, not at school, never came up at all. No, thank God.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  And what were your parents like together when you were a small boy? Can you picture them together?

• 13:22Speaker 04

  I can picture them together. They used to laugh and joke all the time. It was, it was bliss for them. My, my mother would give us everything to all of us. And my father would try to be strict, but he wasn't. He was trying to be a bit of James Cagney, you know, you dirty rat. He wasn't really like that.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  And the older siblings, if you're the fifth, how much older than you were they?

• 13:46Speaker 04

  Well, my brother, Michael, was thirteen years older than me, which is quite a big thing. And he turned into be the funniest man I've ever met. Now, this isn't just my opinion. My brother, Michael, was, he started out as a comedian, compere. And everyone in show business used to say to me, your brother is the funniest man I've ever met. Who isn't on the stage. Now, the people who said that, Bob Monkhouse, Dave Allen, Tommy Cooper.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  Good grief.

• 14:19Speaker 04

  Everybody said, and even today, your brother, he, he was hilarious.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Give me an example. This is Michael Blackstone.

• 14:27Speaker 04

  Michael Black.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Michael, oh, he called himself Black as well.

• 14:31Speaker 04

  He was, he turned into an agent and he used to say, I'm a different kind of agent. I get stars and make unknowns out of them. Yeah, he did a lot of that. He would go into a bookshop, Waterstones, and say, they say, can I help you? He said, no, love. I've read them all. He was just funny. I remember going to a, a shop in Radlett. And the man there said, Michael, I'm in terrible trouble, terrible trouble. I've had this shop for thirty years and they want to get rid of me. My lease is up. You don't know a good lawyer, do you?

• 15:08Speaker 04

  Know a good lawyer? He said, my lawyer, he said, when he worked for me, the judge got nine years. It was hysterical. He was great at exaggeration. When he said, I was with this fellow, he's got a few quid, you know. I said, has he? He said, has he? He's got seven living trainers. You know, he just.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  And is he your hero when you're a little boy?

• 15:34Speaker 04

  He was, he was, and he got me started. He got me a job, but I needed it when I left school.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Tell me then, before we get to there, the other brothers and sisters you have, how many, the five in all?

• 15:44Speaker 04

  I had Nita, who was lovely. She used to tell strangers she was Don Black's sister. I mean that, I mean, she would say, you know, I'm Don Black's sister. Yeah. And go to Brent Cross shopping. I used to say, Nita, don't do that. I said, you know, I, I used to tell you, Nita, do you know what I did today? I called myself Nita's brother. But she was so proud of me. When there were bad reviews, when I was, did something, the lyrics were awful. Nita immediately was like, oh, it could have been worse. It could have been appalling. It was just, I could do no wrong in any of their eyes.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  And the flat, it was a flat you lived in?

• 16:23Speaker 04

  It was a flat, in a council flat.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Do you share the room with your brothers?

• 16:26Speaker 04

  Uh, I did. I did share it with my brother Cyril. He used to do Frankie Lane impressions. We were all sort of influenced through, uh, through show business in a way.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  And how were you into show business? Because there's nothing in being an under presser.

• 16:43Speaker 04

  My, my life really started, I think, in the Hackney Empire.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  And what age are you then?

• 16:49Speaker 04

  Well, it must be about ten, I suppose. But my mother used to love the Hackney Empire. She used to say to me, and it was so lovely. She used to say, when we sat down in the gods, she would say, eh, Donald, look at those chandeliers. Look at those curtains, velvet curtains. Look at the manager's got a tuxedo on. You know, he was, she was, she was overwhelmed by this kind of stuff.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  She just loved it.

• 17:14Speaker 04

  She just loved it.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  And the Hackney Empire was a very famous music hall.

• 17:17Speaker 04

  Very famous.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  And a large building as well.

• 17:20Speaker 04

  It was a beautiful, yeah, Matcham building.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  Frank Matcham, the great theatre architect.

• 17:24Speaker 04

  But, um, you know, I saw everyone there, you know, who did I see? There were Gracie Fields, Anne Shelton, Max Miller, all those people.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Max Miller?

• 17:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  And were you taken up by the magic of it?

• 17:37Speaker 04

  I was taken up by the magic of it and the, just the spotlights and people singing and. It, it was just a magical time and it always followed in a fish and chip shop called Joe's. And we had chips and a wally.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  What's a wally?

• 17:54Speaker 04

  A wally, cucumber.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 17:56Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. It was a big treat.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  A wally? Why is it called a wally?

• 17:59Speaker 04

  I've got no idea.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  I don't know. But anyway, very good. So chips and a wally.

• 18:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  And a loving mum and a, just a wonderful evening of.

• 18:09Speaker 04

  Yes, it was, it was a big thing. And of course, there's one thing that wasn't a big thing in my life, the cinema. I saw The Jolson Story thirty-two times.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  This is the original Jolson Story, is it?

• 18:24Speaker 04

  Well, it's with Larry Parks.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  The Larry Parks version?

• 18:26Speaker 04

  The Larry Parks.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:27Speaker 04

  And we just.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Thirty, forgive me, thirty-two times?

• 18:31Speaker 04

  Thirty-two times.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  This is Al Jolson?

• 18:33Speaker 04

  Al Jolson. We went mad over Al Jolson. Cause he was great. He was a Sammy Davis before Sammy Davis. And, you know, you laughed, you cried. It was, because it was about a, you know, he was a son of a rabbi. And he wanted to be a big star. And we could relate to it somehow, cause he was from an orthodox family, but he wanted to be a singer. One of my big disappointments in my life was many years later, I was at a party in Hollywood with Michael Jackson and Sophia Loren and Evelyn Keys, who was an actress, Evelyn Keys.

• 19:13Speaker 04

  She played Jolson's wife in The Jolson Story, which I saw thirty-two times. So I was sitting next to her. I said, I can't believe I'm sitting next to you. I saw The Jolson Story thirty-two times. And she said to me, I saw it the other night again on the Late Show. What a load of Hogwarts.

• 19:35Speaker 04

  I've never gotten over that, Charles. I mean, yeah, terrible.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  But for you, it worked every time.

• 19:40Speaker 04

  Every time, still does.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  So you've got this wonderful, happy home. You're not particularly wealthy, but there's a sense of community.

• 19:49Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  And you're a lovely, close family.

• 19:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  You go to school. What's the first school you can remember?

• 19:57Speaker 04

  Well, the main school was Castleland Road School in Hackney. And, you know, lots of friends there.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  Do you remember your first friend outside of home?

• 20:06Speaker 04

  Yes, his name was Lionel Cohen, who changed his name to Lionel Conway. And he turned out to be a very successful music publisher. But he was also like me. He loved singing. In fact, we did a little double act, Conway and Black, just for a little amateur thing.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  This is when you were teenagers?

• 20:23Speaker 04

  Yeah. And...

• 20:25Speaker 02

  What sort of songs did you do? What kind of material?

• 20:27Speaker 04

  Well, he used to do Eddie Fisher impressions. And not impressions, I did the impressions. He used to sing all those big songs that you won't remember because you're annoyingly young. But I used to do impressions of Sidney Green Street and Peter Laurie and people like that. No, don't ask me.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  I'm tempted to. What was your best? What was considered, when you, your failsafe impression? What was the one that you?

• 20:52Speaker 04

  Well, it was probably a bad Marlon Brando, you know, the one, I'm a contender, you know, that one from On the Waterfront. But I love, when an old film is on, I'm in my glory.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  So you were going to the cinema a lot? That was your hobby? Was your, what would you say was your hobby when you were a boy?

• 21:09Speaker 04

  My father used to take me to a snooker hall where all the people in the ARP, the British Legion, used to go. And he was pretty good. And I loved snooker. And snooker has always been my addiction all my life. And I've been playing snooker for years and years. And it's my hobby now. I belong to the RAC Club. I've won trophies for it. I'm not any good, but I can give anyone a good game. But to me, it is better than therapy to have just the quiet click of the balls, the quiet excitement of how do I get that ball over there and keep that?

• 21:52Speaker 04

  And I still get a kick up as soon as I hold a cue in my hand. It's better than Valium.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  So you were a snooker-playing teenager.

• 22:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  In love with the movies, Hollywood movies.

• 22:04Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  From this very warm, loving family. Are you academic at all at school? How are you doing at school?

• 22:12Speaker 04

  I was only, English was good. The thing I remember most about school was my English teacher, Mr. King, because he used to use long words. And that's how I got interested in words. He would use words like culpable. You know, what's, what's that meaning? And I used to ask him, and then I used to go home and look them up. And I built quite a vocabulary up there because it was just one of those things that stayed with me. And it helped me a great deal later on. When you work with people like Trevor Nunn, Sir Trevor Nunn, Sir Christopher Hampton, these are very well-educated people.

• 22:52Speaker 04

  So if they say that lyric, Don, is a bit too elliptical, you think, oh, I can't, what I, you feel an idiot. If you can't say, what's that, Trevor?

• 23:02Speaker 02

  But you know what it is, because Mr. King told you.

• 23:06Speaker 04

  That's right, Mr. King told me.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  So at school, are you popular? Are you easygoing? Are you?

• 23:11Speaker 04

  I had a phalanx of friends.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a good word. Yes, Mr. King introduced you to that. Oh, rove them. Yes, it's a phalanx. I've got a phalanx of friends.

• 23:20Speaker 04

  Mr. King would be proud of me.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:21Speaker 04

  Um, no, I was very popular at school.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  Why? Why did you have a phalanx of friends?

• 23:27Speaker 04

  I think I was, um, I've got no idea, probably because I was entertaining, light-hearted, coming from a family that was always laughing.

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  Here you are at school. You're popular, you're liked, you've got a phalanx of friends. In your head, what's your life going to be at that stage as a teenager?

• 24:53Speaker 04

  I'm thinking it's something to do with show business, something. And my brother, Michael, got me a job at the Musical Express, the NME.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  He's the one who's 13 years older?

• 25:03Speaker 04

  Yes, as an office boy.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  And what age were you then?

• 25:07Speaker 04

  Fifteen, sixteen, just left school. And that's when I met, my life changed then because he's in Denmark Street, which was Tin Pan Alley, also known as 200 yards of Hockham. And it was surrounded by songwriters and music publishers. And I met so many of them. You won't know their names, but I met like Tommy Connor, for example. He wrote South of the Border. I mean, you know, Jimmy Kennedy, Red Sails in the Sunset, Tolchad Evans. What did he write? Yeah. Now, what did Tolchad write? Lady of Spain.

• 25:49Speaker 04

  But all the, these fantastic people. And as I got to know them, I noticed that old songwriters never lose their twinkle.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 25:58Speaker 04

  They were old people. And I remember Tommy Connor, the South of the Border man. He said, I'm going to the park. I said, he said, I've got to find an idea for a song. I thought, what a job that is, you know?

• 26:12Speaker 04

  And I started writing lyrics. But at that time, I met Matt Monroe.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Before we get into Matt Monroe, who's really fundamental to your, to where you are now, which is an old songwriter, still with a twinkle. Take me back to the first twinkle of when you first saw a girl and fancied her and did something about it, your first crush, even your first kiss, Don.

• 26:38Speaker 04

  Well, we belonged to a club in Clapton called the Harmony Club. And there was a girl who used to sing there. Her name was Judith Hart, Judy Hart. And she was very nice, I'd say. And I found her very attractive. It wasn't...

• 26:52Speaker 02

  How old are you?

• 26:54Speaker 04

  I must have been about 16.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  And she was about a little bit older?

• 26:58Speaker 04

  About the same, I think. And I don't remember kissing her, but I remember cuddling and feeling very close to her. But there was, before I met Shirley, there was no really one. There was not anyone that stands out.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Shirley is your wife for nearly 60 years. What age were you when you met her?

• 27:18Speaker 04

  Seventeen.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  Oh, well, we have to bring her, she comes before Matt Monroe.

• 27:22Speaker 04

  Yes, very much so.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  Bring Shirley into the story. We can forget Judy Love.

• 27:27Speaker 04

  Well, we can forget, we can forget Matt Monroe. We can forget everyone if we want to talk about Shirley.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  Okay. And where did you first see Shirley? Who is she?

• 27:35Speaker 04

  At the Harmony Club. Her name was Shirley Berg. And, well, I, you know, I loved her right away, but that, no, 17. What I loved about her is that she read a lot. She read books, which was unusual. And then when we started talking and we went out somewhere and we played, some records were playing. And I remember Tony Bennett's song, which was called How Insensitive. And she started to cry. She, she welled up a bit. And I thought, she cries in sad songs. And she was just irresistible. And...

• 28:15Speaker 02

  What did she look like then, when she was 17, when you were both 17?

• 28:19Speaker 04

  Well, she was very pretty. She had blonde hair.

• 28:25Speaker 04

  Just irresistible. How do you explain somebody like that? It's just very attractive, very warm. You look, I looked at her and I felt she, we belong.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  And why did she like you, do you think, then?

• 28:41Speaker 04

  Um, I made her laugh.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:44Speaker 04

  And she made me laugh because she wasn't going to meet me that night. And for years throughout our marriage, she said things like, I was going to wash my hair that night. I wasn't going to come to the Harmony Club. As, as we went on in our marriage, if we ever had a row, she would say, I should have stayed in and washed my hair. But, no, she was the love of my life, really. It's just, I wouldn't, I... If it wasn't for her, I'd still be selling ties in a men's wear shop.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Well, you have to unpack that in a moment. But how quickly did this, your affection for each other, develop into a proper love affair? Can you remember the first time you said, I love you to her?

• 29:29Speaker 04

  Um...

• 29:32Speaker 04

  I think it was, it's a good word, axiomatic. Self-explanatory, self-evident really, it was just, you don't remember the first time, but it was, we did go away, I mean, when, after we'd been out a few times, we went away for the day to like Southend or something like that.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  On the train?

• 29:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, on the train.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Can you picture that day, what the weather was like, what you did when you got to Southend? Did you have winkles on the pier?

• 30:00Speaker 04

  Well, I remember sitting in the deck chairs, just having fun, it was just lovely to spend a day with this beautiful girl.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  What was she doing? How was she earning her living?

• 30:09Speaker 04

  She was um, working for a solicitor, she was a shorthand typist really. She was, cause she was clever, and she had a great education.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  And was she Jewish?

• 30:18Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, would that have been a problem for your family if she hadn't been?

• 30:23Speaker 04

  Not really, my mother had that attitude of, as long as they're happy.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  And did your parents and the rest, and your brothers and sisters, did they like her straight away?

• 30:33Speaker 04

  Very much, yeah. I always felt, when I said, you know, I wouldn't be who I am, but she just wanted everything for me. And we wanted the same things. And also, she wasn't impressed, she wasn't impressed at all by show business. On her last birthday, her eightieth birthday, her opening line in her speech was, "I've met a lot of celebrities in my time, and I'm delighted to say none of them are here tonight."

• 31:09Speaker 02

  So she was funny as well?

• 31:10Speaker 04

  She was funny.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  How quickly did it become clear to both of you that this was going to be forever?

• 31:16Speaker 04

  Well, you, it's, you don't think of it forever, even though I'm a songwriter, and they say forever, and instant, it, it's just, we're having a good time, we were together, we got engaged.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Quite quickly?

• 31:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, quite quickly. And it was in those days when everyone said, "They're engaged."

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a big thing, yeah. And then, how old were you when you got married?

• 31:43Speaker 04

  Twenty.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Young!

• 31:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  And did you, you got yourselves a flat? How did you?

• 31:49Speaker 04

  Twenty, we had a place in Highbury.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Oh, that's another.

• 31:52Speaker 04

  Got into Highbury, it was a lucky place, because it was by a train station. When I say lucky, I was writing songs then, and I wrote one that did well. It was a song called Walk Away, that Matt Monroe recorded, and it made a top five and...

• 32:10Speaker 02

  So at twenty, you're getting married, living in Highbury, you've met Matt Monroe, you write a song that's a top five hit, and you're twenty years of age.

• 32:19Speaker 04

  Right.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Well done, Don, that's brilliant! And, so, just describe, before we get on to Matt Monroe, this first flat that you had in Highbury. What, what were the rooms like? Did you have just a sitting room and a bedroom, or what was it?

• 32:33Speaker 04

  Well, it was all fine until we had a baby. Yes, we had my first son Grant there, and the trains kept waking him up, so it wa, it wasn't changelot. We, we were happy there, we were together, we were happy, you know, it's not where you are, it's who you're with.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  So, you are working for the New Musical Express, you're working uh, in Tin Pan Alley?

• 32:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  In Soho, and you're meeting songwriters, you like the twinkle in their eye, you think, this, this is gonna be for me, and you've already written a few songs, how do you meet Matt Monroe, who was, at that time, huge?

• 33:08Speaker 04

  Well, he wasn't huge, he was skint at the be, when I met him.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  Oh!

• 33:12Speaker 04

  He was a bus driver.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Oh, forgive me?

• 33:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, he was a bus driver.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  You helped him become famous, did you?

• 33:17Speaker 04

  Well, I didn't do, didn't do him any harm.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  My gosh, I assumed he was the star, and he lifted you, you lifted him, got it all the wrong way around.

• 33:25Speaker 04

  Right, no, he's a bus driver.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  That's not the way he tells it.

• 33:28Speaker 04

  And he kept winning, he kept winning uh, singing competitions in Hong Kong, when he was in the army and stuff. And then he came to Denmark Street, and it was at the time when you had to demo a song, and he was a demonstration singer, he'd want, you know, cause he was skint, absolutely skint. And I was in a position, cause I was, then went into music publishing a bit, and I was in a position to hire him to sing songs that needed demonstrating.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Explain in a nutshell, if you can, how the Denmark Street operation was. There are a series of businesses there that are creating songs.

• 34:07Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  And are getting those songs made into demo.

• 34:10Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 34:10Speaker 02

  Discs, and they're then being sent to the broadcasters, and if they...

• 34:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  The pluggers would get them put on the air, and if it works, everyone makes money, is that the essence of it?

• 34:20Speaker 04

  So, but the whole street is populated by music publishers. So, if any one of the, at that time, went down the street like a Frankie Vaughn, or a Dickie Valentine, start, all the publishers would rush to meet them, get him, to get into the office and plug him with a song. But Matt and I got to know each other, just, just as you do in the local tea shop and stuff. And then we had a couple of ballads that came up, and I thought, I'm Matt, Matt Monroe, you know, and I, anyway, I hired him. And I gave him a fiver, now, he's never forgotten that. A fiver was a fortune to Matt, and I gave him quite a few fivers.

• 35:03Speaker 04

  And when he became successful, because it took him a long time, first thing he said to me was, "You're gonna manage me." Cause I was his best friend, and he wanted me to do it, anyway. But it was because of him, cause he sang Walk Away.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  How does Walk Away go?

• 35:22Speaker 04

  Walk away, please go, before you throw your life away. A life that I could share for just a day. I could do the whole thing, but I need strings behind me.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  And you wrote the lyrics?

• 35:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it was an Austrian tune.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Oh, that was available, that the music publisher had.

• 35:41Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  That's how it would work, you'd get tunes from around the world, you'd think this has got something, and then you would put words to it. So you wrote the English lyric to it.

• 35:50Speaker 04

  So I went around the world with that, twenty years I managed him.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  So this is you in your twenties and thirties.

• 35:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  Are managing Matt Monroe, who became one of the world's most popular singers.

• 36:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, certainly the best singer ever to come out of this country. And Frank Sinatra loved him.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  Forgive me, the best singer to come out of the British Isles, in your view, was Matt Monroe?

• 36:12Speaker 04

  No question, I mean, it's not just my opinion. Frank Sinatra wrote to him, Tony Bennett loved him, Sammy Davis loved him. He was really rated, um, and it was sad, he passed, he was only fifty-four when we, we lost him.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  Gosh.

• 36:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  And you gave him his first hit?

• 36:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  And then you managed him for twenty years, what?

• 36:33Speaker 04

  But I tell you what happened in my life, that, that song happened to be John Barry's favorite song, Walk Away. And he used to hang around Denmark Street as well.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  Now, who is John Barry?

• 36:45Speaker 04

  John Barry's a famous composer now, who wrote all the James Bond stuff, and Out of Africa, Dances with Wolves, a multi-Oscar winner. And um, he came up to me one day, cause he loved this song. And he said to me, in a Yorkshire accent, "Do you fancy having a go at Thunderball?" I said, "What's that?" He said, "It's something, a Bond film or something." I said, "Yeah, cool, or whatever it is, you know." He just had Goldfinger, that, you know, so he was more or less, that was the first one.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  With my friend Lesley Brickers writing the lyric?

• 37:24Speaker 04

  Yes, Lesley and Tony Newley.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:26Speaker 04

  So anyway, I wrote Thunderball, and that was a hit, and it got me into the world of movies.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  So how do you sit down, and what, what happens? Has he written the tune first?

• 37:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's written the tune. And he said to me, just call, it's gotta be called Thunderball.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:40Speaker 04

  So I looked it up in the dictionary, and um, it, it isn't there, there's no, there's no such words as, as Thunderball in the dictionary. So I said, "Who's gonna sing it?" And he said, "Well, we want Tom Jones to sing it." I said, "Well, if Tom Jones, it's gotta be a muscly, you know, it's a powerful song." And then I got the tune, so I thought, well, it, it came to me quite easily. "He always runs while others walk, he acts while other men just talk. He looks at this world and wants it all, so he strikes like Thunderball." So it was, it was, cause, you know, he's, he's a different kinda man.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  Ah, we get it. How long did it take you to write those four lines?

• 38:25Speaker 04

  Well, people always, you never know, it's a day or two, or a, you know, it never takes more than a day.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  What's the lyric of yours that has made most money?

• 38:33Speaker 04

  Uh, Born Free, I suppose, cause it won the Academy Award. After it won the Academy Award, it was uh, recorded by six hundred people. You know, Johnny Mathis and Andy Williams, you know.

• 38:47Speaker 02

  And you get a little tickle every time? Born Free, are you getting something now, if I just do that? Born, well, not the way I sing, I agree.

• 38:55Speaker 04

  Only if you sing it all, and I'm prepared to listen.

• 38:59Speaker 04

  But um, no, it's uh, it was, it was a different time then. Because nowadays, everyone writes their own songs. So it's all different, but that time was a golden time for me.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  So, you write Thunderball with John Barry.

• 39:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  And your world changes.

• 39:15Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  Because you've already become established with Matt Monroe.

• 39:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Uh, and you know music is going to be your life.

• 39:22Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  As a lyricist. When, you mentioned earlier being a comedian.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  Like your brother had hopes to be.

• 39:28Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  When did that happen?

• 39:30Speaker 04

  Um, when I just got married, I think we have, I thought we'd have a go. I kept talking about it.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 39:36Speaker 04

  And I had a go and I played a few places, like Leeds and the Met Edgeware Road, Collins Music Hall.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  These are proper places.

• 39:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  The Met Edgeware Road was a big music hall.

• 39:46Speaker 04

  Very big.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  Collins Music Hall, big, what, what were your billiards?

• 39:48Speaker 04

  Don Black, A Living Joke, that was my bill matter.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  That's rather good.

• 39:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  Don Black, A Living Joke. And what was the material? What did you come on and do?

• 39:56Speaker 04

  Oh, terrible, terrible. The thing about it, I looked unbelievably young and I stole all the material from American comedians. So what we've taught about my wife and mother-in-law, he was ludicrous, really. No, but it helped me a lot in writing songs, because there is a correlation between comedy and lyric writing. You can kill a joke if there's too many syllables and, you know, long-winded. And it's the same with a lyric writer. It's all about eliminating the unnecessary.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  Is there a lyric you particularly admire, not necessarily your own, is there a lyric that, for you is, I mean, were you a great fan, for example, of Cole Porter, a great lyricist?

• 40:41Speaker 04

  Well, it's my idol, my idol, you know. And, uh, yeah, I mean, he wrote everything, I mean, all of them, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Frank Lesser. I, I've studied them all.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  And what, what is the line? Give me an example of a great line and why it's a great line.

• 40:58Speaker 04

  Every time we say goodbye, I die a little.

• 41:03Speaker 04

  It's so much better than saying, I hate leaving you and you leaving me and, you know, whatever.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  What's all this all about? I hate leaving you, you hate leaving me, but instead, every time.

• 41:14Speaker 04

  We say goodbye.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  I die a little. Wow.

• 41:17Speaker 04

  That's Cole Porter.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. What's the next line? Can you remember?

• 41:21Speaker 04

  Every time we say goodbye, I wonder why a little. Why the gods above you, who must be in the know. Why the, why the gods above me, who must be in the know, think so little of me, they allow you to go.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Oh, come on.

• 41:37Speaker 04

  It's priceless stuff.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  I'm surprised you didn't give up before you started, if that's the competition. What's the first lyric of yours that you felt, I can do it now, this is working?

• 41:49Speaker 04

  As, as I kept going and I wrote some more, you know, and did Diamonds of Forever and I thought, yeah, well, I, you know, getting a bit of success and doing musicals, that's what changed me. John Barry, after we had a bunch of James Bond songs together.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  How many did you do in all?

• 42:09Speaker 04

  Five.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  You've written five James Bond.

• 42:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Songs.

• 42:12Speaker 04

  But John Barry said to me one day, a, a great musical, he said, I think a great book is Billy Lyer. And he said it would make a great musical, so we.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  This Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall story.

• 42:26Speaker 04

  It's a wonderful story, Billy Lyer. And so we did Billy. It starred Michael Crawford.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 42:32Speaker 04

  It ran at the Droy Lane Theatre for three years. It was a, and the producer, I always remember him saying, that Peter Witt, his name was, from Vienna, he said, you'll never be happier than today. You're all healthy and you've got a hit musical in London, you know. And it's so true that it was a wonderful feeling to go to theatre every night. And it proved to me I could write funny songs, not just catchy pop songs or title songs, because you can write any emotion in a musical. And, uh, the world, you know, it's a lyric writer's dream.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  Fantastic. And were you happy that day? Are you good at being happy in the moment? Did you enjoy that?

• 43:18Speaker 04

  Oh, very much, very much. When you have a show on in, on Broadway and it's working,

• 43:25Speaker 04

  it's what every songwriter dreams of. They're not all hits, you know. I mean, I've written some.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  Oh, give us a flop or two. Reassure us.

• 43:33Speaker 04

  Well, Stephen Ward that I did with, uh, with Andrew.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, Andrew Lloyd Webber.

• 43:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, and Christopher Hampden.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  And Christopher Hampden, I mean, these are Rolls Royce writers. I mean, he's a Rolls Royce writer.

• 43:44Speaker 04

  You know, it, it got good reviews, but people didn't want to see it.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  This was the Profumo affair. This was the osteopath who took his own life when he was put on trial. It was a bit of a downer of a story.

• 43:53Speaker 04

  Keeler and all that, yeah.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  Christine Keeler, yeah.

• 43:56Speaker 04

  But, I mean, you know, that was.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  So that flopped.

• 43:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm just fine hearing about this, to be reassured.

• 44:11Speaker 01

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• 44:45Speaker 02

  How come you didn't stray, or maybe you did, um, over the years? I mean, you didn't get, you don't seem to have got carried away. Did you drink too much? Did you ever take drugs? Did you stray from the?

• 44:57Speaker 04

  No, I mean, no, because I have to be honest about this. Matt Monroe drank, John Barry drank. And, uh, it, I'm not a very good drinker. If I had two glasses of wine, I'd be in intensive care, I think. Um, I'm just not very good at that. And of course, I've had a stable life, being married. Yes, I'm, because you're going to ask me, have I ever, have I ever?

• 45:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:24Speaker 04

  You know, because people expect you, well, you must have.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:29Speaker 04

  No, I haven't, but it's funny because I thought you might ask me that. And I was thinking, I wonder if he's going to ask me if I've ever. And I haven't ever, but I could have done with the two people I've loved in my life, apart from Shirley. And nothing ever happened, but I'm only mentioning them because you know, you know them, and one is Petula Clark. I've known Petula since I was fifteen, because she was always in Denmark Street. And I've loved her for years, but not in that way, but anyway, love her. And the other one is Bernadette Peters, great big Broadway star.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  Yes, of course.

• 46:02Speaker 04

  And she did my Tell Me on a Sunday in New York, song and dance I did with Andrew. And, and that's it really, but Shirley all the way.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  Lovely. I suppose it's Born Free that breaks, makes you free, is it? The success of that, the Oscar, you go, you, did you go to collect the Oscar?

• 46:24Speaker 04

  Yes, I did. It was a night, you don't know you're going to win. I was sitting next to Hal David and Burt Bacharach, and they were nominated for Alfie, which I thought, that, that must win it.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, what are thoughts of Alfie?

• 46:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Great song.

• 46:40Speaker 04

  But anyway, when this choir came on and sang Born Free, it seemed to be more of a social comment. There were black faces, Chinese faces, all singing Born Free. And anyway, Dean Martin came on and said, the winner is Don Black and John Barry. And it was a wonderful, wonderful thing.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  And how did it change your life?

• 47:01Speaker 04

  It changed my life and it's my, like, great composers asked me to write lyrics. So Henry Mancini, I worked with Henry and did, uh, Pink Panther, Strikes Again, Elmer Bernstein, who I love and, and great friend, did True Grit, John Wayne. I did lots of films.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Working with composers is one thing. How are the artists? I mean, you mentioned Michael Jackson earlier. He obviously sang some of your songs. Did you work with him personally?

• 47:32Speaker 04

  Not with him, but I, I got to know him very well because I wrote the song Ben for him. And he got very, I was living in Los Angeles at the time with my two sons and Shirley. And he came over to my house and loved, loved my family. He did a painting with Shirley together. He played pool with Grant and Clive, my boys. And we saw so much of him. He used to phone every time he came to London. And then one day I got a call from his father, Joe, who was, who said, Don, if you want to speak to Michael, you have to go through me in future. It was a horrible phone call. I, I said, okay, you know, so he was a nasty man who took over his life.

• 48:16Speaker 04

  But this was, Michael was fourteen, so innocent.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  Oh, so you knew him when he was a boy?

• 48:21Speaker 04

  He was a boy, but that was his first hit, when he left the Jackson Five.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  So you wrote Michael Jackson's first hit.

• 48:29Speaker 04

  First single.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  Ben, and became a friend of his in a fatherly way, you and Shirley. And your boys and he played pool together.

• 48:36Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 48:36Speaker 02

  You knew him as a lad.

• 48:37Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  And then the dad phones up and says, now look.

• 48:41Speaker 04

  Keep, yeah.

• 48:42Speaker 02

  Keep, keep out, basically.

• 48:44Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, so come through me, yeah, but he was very, uh, you know, dictatorial.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  And the worst of these encounters, I asked you for the greats and you gave me Stephen Sondheim.

• 48:56Speaker 04

  Um, I haven't got, I mean, I must say, I've never. You, you, you don't argue with your collaborators. It's a funny thing because people say to me all the time, what's it like working with Quincy Jones, whatever, this, this one. And, you know, I've worked with so many different people, but they're all the same around a piano. There's no difference between Quincy Jones and Andrew Lloyd Webber. It just didn't. Um, because we're all looking for the melody and, you know, it's. So I've never, I've never had an argument with a collaborator. So, no, it's, uh, it's been all right.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Your collaborators, you say you've got to get on with them, but John Barry had a reputation of occasionally being a bit difficult.

• 49:41Speaker 04

  Well, he did. I mean, you mentioned Leslie Brickus, because I went to an amazing party at Leslie Brickus's house. Then you won't believe when I mention who was there. You just won't believe it. You shouldn't believe it. Because I went there. Danny Kaye was there. Edward G. Robinson was there. I played pool with Steve McQueen. That's a level of people. And, and John Barry's sitting there having a drink, as he does. And there's a guy at the couch next to him, and he's talking about Marla. Now, John Barry loved Marla. And he's listening to him talking, talking, loud, he's talking loud.

• 50:27Speaker 04

  Um, and John Barry suddenly put his drink down, he took out all his dollars, and he said, I'll bet you this, you can't own two bars of Marla.

• 50:42Speaker 04

  And the guy looked at him and he said, I think we should settle this outside. He, he was, and he got up and he never stopped getting up. He was about six foot nine. He was John Phillips of the Mamas and Puppers.

• 50:58Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 50:59Speaker 04

  And he just, and John was fearless. I mean, he, he said, right, you know. And he took us all, Burt Bacharach, Henry Mancini, all those people to stop the fight. But it was wonderful. There, there was a wonderful moment. He loved Marla, and in fact, when in his house in Oyster Bay, he used to swim every day to Marla. He had Marla going, oh, God, which proved that he's a very slow swimmer.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  You're a very funny man. And what is interesting about you, Don, is you've covered so much over such a long period.

• 51:38Speaker 04

  I know, I know.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  Um, I mean, I didn't realise until I saw it again on TV that The Italian Job, the movie with Michael Caine and of all people Noel Coward.

• 51:49Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  And I think even A Moment of Benny Hill is, is one of my favourite movies. But is, is that your song?

• 51:56Speaker 04

  Um, yeah.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  And your name flashed up at the end.

• 51:58Speaker 04

  Yes, that was me. There's two songs in there, actually. The Self-Preservation Society, where all the, you know, the prisoners sing. But the main one is, um, the song that Matt Moro sings over the titles. And we were, the brief was to write a summary song. Now Quincy Jones, who is the composer, a genius, now everyone will tell you that. He produced people like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Michael Jackson, the biggest people in the world. But he's not really a songwriter. And we had to write this simple song, so I said to him, I gave him copies of, um, Volare.

• 52:42Speaker 04

  You know, Volare, just to give him a clue what I'm talking about. There's a summary Italian songs. Anyway, I go to meet him in Marble Arch in his apartment. And, and he said, all right, and he, I said, I'll see you tomorrow. He came back the next day, nothing. Nothing at all.

• 53:05Speaker 04

  He said, I don't know, I don't know, man, man, you know, I don't know. He was so cool. And I said, well, shall I walk around the, yeah, walk around the park? Came back and, so I said, well, I'll give you a title. Will it help you, Quincy? He said, yeah, okay. I said, on days like these.

• 53:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, okay, okay. I could walk around again for a couple of hours. I come back and he plays two notes, daddy, on days, not even like these. And it was such an unbelievable moment. So I said, well, what are we gonna, there, there needs more than that. We can't just do on days. And it was so funny. And then I, I, he said, no, I, I'll, I'll work on it overnight. And he, and he came up with the most beautiful tune. It was so hard for him, because he wasn't, no matter how great he was, he wasn't a songwriter. He was an arranger, a producer, and all that. But anyway, and it was a lovely song.

• 54:08Speaker 02

  What do you end up with? Give us the opening phrase.

• 54:10Speaker 04

  On days like these, when skies are blue and fields are green, I look around and think about what might have been. And then I hear sweet music float around my head as I recall the many things we left unsaid. It's on days like these that I remember singing songs and drinking wine while your eyes played games with mine. Goes on like that.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  You know what you're doing, don't you? And is that happening mostly in your head and then being written down? Or are you writing it down as you think of it? Or is there a lot of walking around the park?

• 54:51Speaker 04

  Well, I scribble it down and then can't read what I've written. I don't believe all these anecdotes. You get lots of anecdotes in these stories that people tell all the time. You know, I wrote it. You know, how did you do that? And how did you do that? People ask me all the time, and I say, explain to them, I say, you don't understand, it's not always an anecdote, it's imagination. Some of the greatest songs. Yip Harburg wrote Somewhere Over the Rainbow, but he's never been over a rainbow. And Bart Howard wrote Fly Me to the Moon, but he's never been higher than thirty-five thousand feet. So, you know, there's, but people love to hear stories like that.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  We've known each other off and on quite a long time, but I think you once had a, even an encounter with my mother.

• 55:40Speaker 04

  Well, that was a fantastic moment. We were, Shirley and I were in La Jolla, which is an unusual name, J O double L A. I had a show called Dracula.

• 55:51Speaker 02

  This is in Southern California.

• 55:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, Southern California. And, you know, I was there rehearsing, we just opened, it was a lovely part of the world. We stayed at this magnificent hotel called Valencia. And we used to go for a walk every day along this incredible beach. And one day we sat on the bench, and this woman turned around to us and said, I can hear by your accent, you're from England. And we said, yes, that's right. And she said, what are you doing here? And I said, well, I'm involved in the theatre. She said, oh, my, my son's in the theatre, sort of. I said, really? She said, yeah, I don't know if you've ever come across him. His name's Gyles Brandreth.

• 56:32Speaker 04

  I said, I don't believe it. Gyles Brandreth, I'm here in La Jolla, and you're talking about Gyles Brandreth? I said, what are you doing here? She said, I, I'm in a care home here. I care, what, there? And she pointed to it behind me. Well, it was a Buckingham Palace type situation. It was unbelievable. You think it's got to be zar zaga boor's gonna come out of it or something. And so she said, would you like to see it? And Shirley said, well, well, we would. And she said, well, come on in. And she took us into this place. And it was lovely, but she was lovely. And we sat down and we had a cup of tea with her.

• 57:14Speaker 04

  And then Shirley said to whisper to me, she's absolutely lovely, isn't it? And then we had a game of Scrabble with her.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 57:21Speaker 04

  We had a game of Scrabble with her. And another, and we said we'd come again. I got her, this was the funny part. I got her seats to see Dracula. Yeah, she came to see the show. And then we came back to see, what was good about it is she was very critical of the show. It wasn't, she liked a lot about it, but she spoke about it like a polymath, which I, so I know where you get it from. Because she was, you know, she knew about the lighting and the choreography. She had something to say about the whole thing. And then we played Scrabble. We had about half a dozen games of Scrabble over two or three weeks. She's an absolute lovely lady. It was such a, a surprise

• 58:05Speaker 04

  to hear your name out there on the same bench.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  But this illustrates you, if I may say so, Don, because you're a powerhouse of positivity. Every story you always tell is an upbeat story. You just spread happiness. Well done.

• 58:21Speaker 04

  Well, she was a lovely lady. You should be very proud of her.

• 58:24Speaker 02

  Well, thank you for remembering her. So Shirley and you together, I mean, I, I can only, until she died, whenever I saw you, which was quite a lot over the years, you were always there when we met in funny places.

• 58:38Speaker 04

  Yes, we did.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  You know, in odd places, but you were always there, hand in hand with Shirley.

• 58:42Speaker 04

  Bill, Bill Kenwright used to call us the best double act since the Everly Brothers.

• 58:47Speaker 02

  That's nice. And you saw yourselves as a double act, did you?

• 58:50Speaker 04

  We were always together, you know, it was, uh.

• 58:55Speaker 04

  You know, what I liked about Shirley, I don't know how she did it, because she came from similar beginnings. But if I said to her, we're going out tonight, we're gonna have dinner with, uh, Julie Andrews, oh, sorry, with Julie Andrews and Henry Mancini. Her first thing would be, this was a catchphrase of hers, can we get out of it? And she always would say, can we get out of it? And I would say, no, we can't. Okay. Um, and she wasn't, she was lovely. She went with everything, but she was so down to earth.

• 59:29Speaker 02

  And did you, was your home life quite straightforward? Because obviously with the hits you've had, there was lots of money pouring in. Did you have staff?

• 59:38Speaker 04

  No.

• 59:39Speaker 02

  No.

• 59:39Speaker 04

  Well, the usual.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  Help, you had help?

• 59:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, help, yeah.

• 59:42Speaker 02

  People do the cleaning and a bit of that sort of thing, but you, you were not surrounded by butlers and cooks?

• 59:48Speaker 04

  No, I, I say this about my kids, you know, if it wasn't for them, I'd have homes all over the world.

• 59:56Speaker 02

  But you were never tempted by that? And describe-

• 59:59Speaker 04

  No, I don't do that kind of life, you know. I'm very happy with a

• 1:00:05Speaker 04

  with a normal existence.

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  Why do you never get bored, you and Shirley together? Sixty years is a long time to spend with the same person, even when you're both funny, as you clearly, you are and she was.

• 1:00:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, because I think it's down to, you know, you want the same things. If you don't want the same things, it doesn't last. And of course, we're so glued, she was such a family person. She wasn't just a one of a wife. She was a fabulous daughter, fabulous grandmother, fabulous sister. Her everything, she was just a one off.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. And how are you coping now? How long has it been since she died?

• 1:00:42Speaker 04

  Seven and a half years.

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  Oh, didn't realize it was quite so long. How does one cope with being a widower?

• 1:00:49Speaker 04

  Well-

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  In your case, given that you are totally wrapped up in each other?

• 1:00:55Speaker 04

  I remember when, when she died, soon after that, I was in an Uber and there was an Afghan driver, young boy. And he asked me about how you've been. I said, well, I've just lost my wife, you know. And he said, you haven't lost her. I said, what? He said, you haven't lost her. And you've been married all that time. She'd be so unhappy to see you unhappy. And it registered with me, you know. I would never want to disappoint her. It just, it keeps me sane.

• 1:01:34Speaker 02

  Do you ever write a song about her?

• 1:01:36Speaker 04

  All of them.

• 1:01:39Speaker 04

  In my new show, there are quite a few songs about her.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  What are you calling the show?

• 1:01:45Speaker 04

  From the Heart.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  From the Heart, lovely. And where's this playing?

• 1:01:49Speaker 04

  It's playing at the Garrick Theatre, opens in October, the 38th.

• 1:01:53Speaker 02

  And what are we going to get?

• 1:01:54Speaker 04

  Well, you're going to get, it's about my love of New York cabaret. Every time I went to New York, I would go off Broadway and there's wonderful shows there with three girls and two boys. And all the songs either make you laugh or cry. And I said, one day, I'm going to write a show exactly like this. We tried it out at the Fortune Theatre last year. Big success and we're doing it in a much bigger way. With, and this time it's with my hits as well.

• 1:02:24Speaker 02

  Well done you. We're coming to an end now. What is, I'm going to ask you three quick questions.

• 1:02:31Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:02:32Speaker 02

  And I want from you the immediate answer that comes into your head. A moment of joy.

• 1:02:38Speaker 04

  A moment of joy was Shirley's last birthday, her eightieth birthday, because everyone I loved was in that room. And my brother Michael, who was no longer with us, my sister Anita, no longer with us. All of us were in that room for her eightieth birthday. And it was her last moment where everyone I loved was in that room. So that would be that one.

• 1:03:03Speaker 02

  At that stage, did you know she was ill, that she was going to die?

• 1:03:06Speaker 04

  No, we didn't know. She just, she was always asthmatic. And she went to Florida, came in and had a bad thing and it just got worse and in hospital. She wasn't bad at all and suddenly sepsis came into it. It was such a shock. I was not expecting, not expecting it.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  And a moment of sadness, well, of course, it's going to be losing Shirley. But when did you lose your parents?

• 1:03:37Speaker 04

  Well, it's some time ago. My mother died at sixty-three, my father died at seventy-eight.

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  Sixty-three is young.

• 1:03:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  And did that throw you?

• 1:03:46Speaker 04

  Oh, very much so. Especially with the Oscar, because my mother did live that long. I mean, I won the Oscar in May. And she died in August.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  Hey!

• 1:03:57Speaker 04

  So she, she knew about that, yeah.

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  You delivered for her, fantastic.

• 1:04:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  And did your dad remarry?

• 1:04:04Speaker 04

  No, no, no, no. Oh, my father, which I didn't mention, smoked all his life. Terrible, terrible, terrible smoker. And, I mean, he smoked a hundred a day. It was just ridiculous at the time. And they said to him, they're going to take his legs off, amputate his legs unless he stops. And he said in that accent, he said, take them off. He said, when your time's up, it's up. That's how he spoke. And they did take him off.

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  Oh, Lord.

• 1:04:36Speaker 04

  They took his legs off. And he was fine, he was in a wheelchair, smoking.

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  Well, he enjoyed himself.

• 1:04:41Speaker 04

  Enjoyed himself.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  That's fine. What's your motto? Do you have a motto, a maxim?

• 1:04:47Speaker 04

  Um, I do. And it's, it's, yeah, I thought about this. It's never too late to dream. And it's good for you.

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  Oh, it's never too late to dream and it's good for you. And what's your dream right now?

• 1:05:06Speaker 04

  To stay well and enjoy what I have.

• 1:05:10Speaker 02

  There's always tomorrow, isn't there?

• 1:05:12Speaker 04

  Yes. But that's what Charles Aznavour said to me.

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  What did he say? Now, this is you, to you personally?

• 1:05:16Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:05:17Speaker 02

  This is Charles Aznavour, the great?

• 1:05:19Speaker 04

  The great French, everything.

• 1:05:21Speaker 02

  You, God, you've known them all.

• 1:05:22Speaker 04

  He said, a man will never grow old if he knows what he's doing tomorrow.

• 1:05:27Speaker 02

  Lovely. Well, I know what I'll be doing tomorrow, listening to this again and thinking how wonderful you are. So I've reached the end of the road. Oh, is that a song title? I don't know. End of the road.

• 1:05:37Speaker 04

  This could be.

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  It could be.

• 1:05:38Speaker 04

  Give me one for my baby and one more for the road.

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  Hit the road, Don. Anyway, as we reach the end of the road, Don Black, what has life taught you?

• 1:05:48Speaker 04

  I'll tell you one thing I've learned in life, just finishing up, which I often say to my children, and it's a bit of advice to people in the business. There are a lot of very happy people in Hackney and a lot of unhappy people in Belgravia.

• 1:06:06Speaker 04

  So never be envious of people.

• 1:06:10Speaker 04

  It's my little bit of wisdom to pass on.

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  It's a brilliant life lesson. You're a brilliant man. Don Black, thank you so much.

• 1:06:16Speaker 04

  Thank you, Charles.

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