Welcome to A Breath of French Air with Sandy Kaye. Hello, my friends. Thanks for being here.
I’m still on a high this week because A Breath of French Air has just been awarded second place in the fabulous Over 50 Awards out of Florida. We came in runner-up to that well-known author and podcaster, Mel Robbins, so not a bad effort, if I do say so myself. Anyway, enough gloating.
Let’s get on with hearing from our guest today. If I play you this, will you know who it is? Wait a little while from now If I’m not feeling any less sour I promise myself to treat myself And visit a nearby town Climbing to the top Will throw myself off In an effort to make clear to everyone It’s like when you’re shattered Left standing in the lurch At a church where people are saying My God, that’s tough, she stood him up No point in us remaining The day is well gone As I did on my own Alone again Naturally Yep, you got it. Sharing the story of his climb to the top is none other than Irish-born Raymond O’Sullivan, better known to most of us these days as Gilbert.
As part of a wave of singer-songwriters who followed a path carved out by Paul McCartney and the Bee Gees, Gilbert O’Sullivan doggedly pursued his ambitions, despite creating a very unpopular image for himself. I created a sort of character called Gilbert, based on a kind of Charlie Chaplin, used to hire a Chaplin jacket from a theatrical costume, putting base in the haircut, which of course is very fashionable now. Of course.
Long hair was here to stay, so I looked a bit freakish. So none of the record companies I went to liked the image. They liked my songs though.
And the thing about image for me was that I didn’t mind the playfulness of the image because the serious work was the song. So it meant that with a serious song, serious about writing songs, I could get off on this image thing and then just have fun with it for myself. And so I liked what I wore, but nobody else did.
When did you first decide that music was your love? I think just love of radio. Radio introduced us to music and stuff without having to be able to buy records. So radio was the key factor in the beginning.
Loved early pop music, late 50s, early 60s. From there on it just grew as an interest. We all wanted to be in a band after The Beatles came out, and so I had a band, school band, played the drums, then a more better band called The Prefects, and then I was a drummer in a band called Rick’s Blues.
Really good band. That was with Rick Davies, who later went on to found Supertramp, right? Absolutely. So yeah, he ended up joining a band called The Lonely Ones, which became The Joint and became Supertramp.
No, there’s not a lot I can do Dreamer Now you put your head in your hands and go You started writing your own stuff during those years? Yeah, yeah. In fact, in Rick’s Blues we made a couple of demos in London. I was writing, if you like, in the way that Supertramp had Roger who wrote the commercial songs and Rick writes the album stuff.
A bit like that when we were together. Rick would write the odd tune, but musically he was brilliant. He taught me blues piano.
Great musician. Better drummer than me, of course. But I wrote the kind of commercial type songs, and so that was the beginning of the kind of writing process for me.
And it kind of developed from there up to when I was making my own records. Right. Were your songs already dark then? Dark? Yeah.
Why do you say that? Do you think my songs are dark? Well, I think that they were sad sort of songs. They weren’t happy, poppy, I’m in love type of songs, were they? Well, I think that my first songs were influenced by the Beatles in terms of writing, influenced by Bob Dylan in terms of voice. They were the main catalyst for me.
So my early pop songs were pretty much quite youthful songs, a lot about love and no real serious matters. That came up later. I mean, Dylan didn’t just write love songs.
He wrote songs about the world events. So there was an influence there. Every day’s a holiday in Mr Moody’s garden Where little girls say pardon me, how do Yeah, do, my name’s Nosy and this here’s me sister really Really? But she is at St. Jude’s Now just across the lawn is Pat Sitting on his favourite hat Waiting for the barber to arrive I started to incorporate events into my love songs.
If I was writing a love song, I’d maybe have a middle eighth that might go off into another area and then come back to what the song is about. I quite like that approach. And I like to include things that are going on in the world in a kind of subtle way.
Not to be up front and bono about it or something. So I like that thing of just sticking things in that are going on around you because I’m very influenced by what’s going on around us. So I take an interest in that.
So it’s nice to stick a bit of that into my work. Nothing Rhymed would be a classic example. That was the first success.
And the song, at the time that I wrote that, for the first time ever on television, Biafra, starving children were seen. We’d never seen film of starving children before. It just shocked the nation.
It was just horrendous to see these children. So that came into Nothing Rhymed. There’s an element in that, when I look, glance at my screen and see real human beings starved to death right in front of my eyes.
So that’s where I was able to incorporate it as part of the song, but not all about the song. If I give up the seat I’ve been saving To some elderly lady, oh man Am I being a good boy? Am I your pride and joy? Mother, please, if you please, say I am And if while in the course of my duty I perform an unfortunate deed Would you punish me so unbelievably So never again will I make that mistake? This feeling inside me could never deny The right to be wrong if I choose And this pleasure I get from saving a better place Were your family on board with what you were doing? Or were you being pushed in another direction? Well, my mother was the musical one in the family in one sense. She had the radio, she had the piano in the house.
Working class families always had a piano. They didn’t have much money, but there was always a piano. Why? Because if their kids learned to play the piano, they could earn a few bob in the pub later at night.
So the piano was in the house. I’m one of six children. None of my other brothers or sisters are musically inclined.
I had piano lessons, but I didn’t last very long. I got found out. I put up the music that I was supposed to be playing and I played what I thought was on the music.
By ear. But it wasn’t. So the teacher said to my mother, you’re wasting your money.
I do remember that Irish families get together, they have sing songs and stuff. I do remember a moment that will always be important to me privately. As mum said at one of these sessions with all the Irish people there, Raymond writes songs.
And so they all go, oh, really? And so, Raymond, will you sing them one of your songs? So I sang a song called Disappear, which I really liked. I was happy with the song. Well, there was complete silence at the end of it.
They didn’t quite know what I was doing and stuff. And it wasn’t an Irish song that they remember. So it didn’t go down too well.
So from that day on, I vowed never, ever to play my songs to a group of people like that. I was asking for a drink last night Never noticing that things just weren’t quite right For the bartender said you look queer So disappear Mum was good again. She made the, you know, I wanted to look a bit scruffy.
I wanted the sleeves of the shirt to be loose. And mum had to cut the sleeves of the shirt to get that kind of character that I was creating. You know, I wore the Charlie Chaplin jacket, which I used to hire from the costumers.
Normally you hire them for a show or for a film or for something. When I went in on a weekend to hire the Chaplin jacket, they used to say, what’s the production for that you’re doing? And I said, it’s not a production. It’s just for me to stand in front of the mirror and look at it over the weekend.
The nice thing was that when I started to get a bit of success before major success, and I went into them, they gave me the jacket. So that was nice. Where had you constructed this image of Gilbert? Where did he come from? What were you trying to get to? Because growing up with you, I thought that’s who you were.
I thought that’s how you dressed. No, it’s to create a character because I didn’t call myself Gilbert O’Sullivan as a singer. I just called myself Gilbert.
I could just William character, just Gilbert. And so therefore the image to go with that is what I had, one long trouser, one shorter than the other, Pudding Basin haircut, schoolboy tie and stuff. So the character was good because he always felt, and Elton John has said this too, and Billy Joel, it’s very difficult for us.
If we’re guitar players, we’d be all over the stage, running from left to right and everything. But pianos, you’re stuck. You can’t move.
And you can go like that and go like that. You can turn to your left. So you can’t do much.
So to have some kind of an image issue, the way I was dressed, I looked really odd. But it was interesting. So there was some interest there.
And the catalyst for me anyway on the image front were the Beatles because the Beatles had the hair, the colourless jackets. So they didn’t have to do that to be successful. So I kind of took the image issue and made it something very different.
I had a lot of fun doing it. Even if the world didn’t quite understand it, you enjoyed it. So you’re sending out demo tapes everywhere and nobody’s picking them up.
They’re all saying that you’re looking too weird to accept it. But what happens when you were working at the London department store? Then you fell into a bit of luck, didn’t you? Yeah. I mean I was working in C&A’s in the clothes department over Christmas.
Because you moved to London, where are you going to live? How are you going to pay for it? My mother couldn’t afford for me to pay rent in London. So three of us got together. We looked for a job on the day we arrived in London and we found a basement flat that three of us could live in and look for work.
And so C&A’s had a male clothes area. And I met somebody there who was being offered a recording contract at CBS. So I gave him my little cassette and said would he take it to them and stuff.
And three or four songs on that cassette. That’s the only one I had because I didn’t have a tape recorder. I borrowed it in Swindon to make on my piano in the garden shed those few songs and stuff.
But they liked it. And so they were very interested in my songs, but they had no idea about how I wanted to look. So I said, you know, you’re not getting my songs if I don’t get a recording contract.
So they gave me reluctantly, they gave me a recording contract. Because as I say, the songs always got me through. Because even at the point when Gordon Mills, who managed Tom Jones and then got with Humberdink, when he got interested in my songs hearing a tape, he didn’t like the image.
But he said you’re going to be successful not because of the image, it’ll be because of your songs. And I like your songs because he’s an ex-songwriter himself. He co-wrote It’s Not Unusual for Tom Jones.
I want to die It’s not unusual to go out at any time But when I see you out and about it’s such a crime If you should ever want to be loved by anyone It’s not unusual, it happens every day No matter what you say You find it happens all the time Love will never do What you want it to do Why can’t this crazy love be more? Gordon really liked my songs and he didn’t mind. He said, you want to wear that? Be my guest. That was really good for me.
It’s interesting that he didn’t try to change the image at that point. Well, if he hadn’t wanted that, I would have walked. There’s no way he’s going to alter the way I want.
I was that determined. The one thing about me is I’m very shy. I’m quite a shy person with people I don’t know.
But in terms of the music career, I was right there. When the first record producer I worked with, who was very successful, when it looked like we were going to be working anymore, they keep you under contract. That’s how they do it.
So I used to go to the office where CBS Records where he was and wait there till I could catch him coming out the back door to say, let me out of my contract. So that went on for a long time before he eventually got caught by me. I said, please, let me go.
I’m not making any more records with you. Just give me the break I needed. So that’s how I got out.
Then moved to another record company and similar scenario, got out of that. And then the next one was Gordon Mills, of course. When he got my tape, he saw the pictures and just threw it in the bin because he was this guy with putty based haircut and Charlie Chaplin jacket and he looked stupid.
But later in the afternoon, his secretary said, he picked out the tape and thought, let’s have a listen anyway. And he really liked the songs I sent him. I don’t know if you’ve heard the news But I’m a boy Who’s got himself a problem So he gets no joy You see, I’m something that people claim To bring me fortune and instant fame So that you can hardly blame anybody for saying so I think I’ll bury myself deep beneath the ground I come up only when there’s no one else around And if by chance someone approaches me And that someone happens to be a she You can bet your life in time of worry I’ll be searching for to be their queen Oh, why can’t a girl just look at me and smile? I went to his home and never seen anything like it.
It was Disneyland. He had to hear that I could do more than was on the tape. So I played him a few more songs.
I hadn’t written nothing around or anything at that point. But he really liked my songs. And the interesting thing is when I left that evening to go back to London on the train, because he lived outside London, I missed the last train.
So I spent the night on the bench at the station. But I was on the high. A real high.
Because I knew I was going to be successful. You were on the precipice, yeah. It felt really good.
It felt really good. I was very happy to spend the night on that bench.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. Once you did write Nothing Rhymed, it made the top ten in the UK in late 1970.
Yeah, a big success in Australia too. I know, we loved you. Normally you would go there on the first success and stuff, but I didn’t do that.
I didn’t do my first concert until 1972, which was great for me because it meant that I could do the writing, which is the most important thing. The danger of going to Australia in 1970 on the success of Nothing Rhymed, where do you write the next song? Where is the next album coming from? It was good for me to be able to stay at home, maybe go to Europe, Germany, France, Holland, do a TV comeback. So I was writing during that two-year period.
So my first concert was in 1972, and from there on in, it worked out really well. It’s over now, you’ve had your fun Get up them stairs, go on quickly, don’t run Take off your shoes, both of yous Leave them down outside the door Turn the landing light off, no wait, leave it on It might make the night that much easier to be gone And in the morning pool be quite awake And eating snowflakes, as opposed to those flakes We will, we will, we will Gordon was plotting your career all the way, wasn’t he? He was managing you every step of it. Yeah, absolutely, he was a huge influence for me in the very beginning.
He was great, because he had the power to take an image he didn’t like and see it. You know, people found the image interesting and stuff, there’s no doubt about it. And I dropped it in 1971, I moved on to a sort of G-sweater thing and stuff.
And again, having fun with the image. But the seriousness was… In the music? In the music, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I hear you.
When you look back at yourself now and see pictures of what you looked like with that sort of street urchin look, are you embarrassed by it? No, because the street urchin look in my head is now the height of fashion. So you were just ahead of your time. I look very fashionable from the waist up.
I look as though I’m as hip as anybody today. So I’m going to be proud of it. It could have been long hair and high-heeled boots and stuff, and flare trousers sticking out here.
And I would look upon that as horrendous. But no, no, the image, it looks really good. Decades ahead of your time.
Gilbert, what was the writing process like for you? Did you have to lock yourself in a room for hours on end to come up with things, or did stuff sort of drop for you and come really easily? Tell us a little bit about that. Well, it’s discipline. It’s a Brill Building mentality.
Have you heard of the Brill Building? That’s where people like Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Neil Sedaka, Neil Diamond would clock in at 9 o’clock, own a building owned by Don Kirshner, a famous publisher. You clock in at 9 o’clock, leave at 5, in the room is a piano. You sat there to write songs.
And so I have that attitude to songwriting. So if I need songs short of a melody, the discipline is I’ll sit there from 9 to 5 to come up with it. And I maintain that discipline.
When I need to write, rather than haphazardly throw it around in between this, I’m very, very disciplined in terms of that. And even if after five days of sitting at a piano, 9 to 5, nothing really comes, you haven’t wasted your time because you are practising. So your fingers are doing something if you’re not.
And did you have times where nothing came, or were you always pleasantly surprised that good stuff did come to you? Not surprised. I knew I had it in me. And, again, the confidence was there.
And I didn’t need to let people hear my songs if I was happy with it. That’s it. I didn’t need you to say to me, or I didn’t need me to say to you, do you like this? And for you to turn around and say, it sounds great.
Because when I used to go to publisher’s offices, I always noticed I would be in the room with the people at the publishers. And if somebody would come in with a song they’d written and give it to the publisher and say there, what do you think? They’d put it on their record player. And they’d say to the person, that’s really good.
Yeah, go away and do some more. As soon as he went out, they turned and said it was rubbish. But it’s that kind of difference.
I don’t need you to tell me if it’s good. Self-belief is really important to have that. Because you may not be as good as you think you are, but thinking you are is good.
No matter how I try I just can’t say goodbye No matter what you say Looks like I’m here to stay No matter where I go I don’t know if you know But everywhere we’ve been I’m kept in quarantine It’s easy to say why She’s over six foot five I’m only five feet two Is there a tower somewhere That might take me as a spam Is there a bank in town That might cash me as a pound Is there a place you know Where I can open doors How did you develop that? Had you had that since being a child? No, I’m very shy in companies. I’m not the greatest school. I didn’t really make friends, very much a loner.
That came out of just getting into the craft of songwriting, which I loved. And still love to this day. It’s just the most important thing to me musically and stuff.
And when I write what I think is a good song, that is success. Because it has nothing to do when it’s released. When it’s released and out into the public, you’re not in any control of that.
So you have to accept that nobody may like it. Or if you’re lucky, they will like it. I think that’s a really important lesson and really good advice for people to hear.
Because if you satisfy yourself, it actually doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks of you, does it? Well, I just feel sad for people who need you to tell them if they’re good. Because if you don’t have that self-belief, you’ll get washed away. And the music business is notorious for the way it treats artists.
And better now, perhaps, than it was in the 50s and 60s. I was underage when I signed my first CBS publishing contract. Rick Davis, the superfan, he countersigned it for me.
And my mother had to sign it for me. Now, here’s the thing. April Music, the publisher, said, we’re going to give you a five-year contract.
And here’s me naively saying to myself, wow, five years. It could have been three. It could have been two.
If it had been three, it would have been better than the five years it was. Because I called my mother and said, Mom, I’ve just got a great publishing grant. And guess what? It’s for five years.
And it could have been shorter. I said, if it had been 10 years, it might have been even better. But that’s a lesson that today wouldn’t do you much good.
Because now, as you know, with court cases, the way things are established, you cannot sign an artist now without them having independent advice and stuff. But there were no lawyers assisting us in those days. So five years was a long time to be signed.
And did you see much in terms of reward financially from that five years? Well, yeah, of course, because it was 67, 70, three years. During that time, there were cover versions. I did two records with CBS and stuff.
You know, it’s progress forward. They’re not successes, but it’s a learning craft. You’re in a big studio with a producer, and it’s your songs.
But they’re not really turning out the way you would like them until eventually when we get to Nothing Rhymed. So you’re into two years of the publishing agreement left when Gordon Mills signed me. He ought to be sure that I wasn’t signed to another company before he would manage me.
And the person who was representing me at that time had me signed to quite a long-term agreement, which I’d agreed. And so I knew I had to get out of that before I wrote to Gordon Mills. So I went round to his mother’s house late at night, stood at the door, tears in my eyes, and said, Please, let Jay let me out of this contract.
Why don’t we have this contract? I’m not going to get out of here. His mother said, Jay, give this boy back his contract. So I got out of the contract.
That’s how I did it. Determination. That determined.
Not shy about anything musical. Really, really confident. I think that’s such an important thing to have.
It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be the success you dream of, perhaps, but it’s going to help you on the way there. Such a contradiction to the way you are and everything else in your life. Well, yeah, because how can you go on stage, you know, I go on stage for two hours.
I’m very comfortable on stage. I’m only singing my songs, so I’m really very comfortable. If I was singing your song, somebody else’s song, I might panic a little.
You know, I’m not comfortable around people. It’s just, you know, you never lose shyness. You’re born that way.
I didn’t know what to do And I didn’t know where to go Cause when I looked at you I saw that it was snow on the ground And not me Pretending that I was a bee Fresh from Antarctica Frozen to ice Mother dear, I want some sound advice Cause I didn’t know what to do And I didn’t know where to go When someone looked at me And said politely, growing a beard can be fun Let me show you how it is done I said, don’t bother, I’d rather go see Uncle George in Antimarch helped me Cause I didn’t know what to do When you said you were ready to go away And there stay Until such a time Permit me to say I love you We get up to 1971, when you finally break through to the American market. You’ve had a few successes till then, and Gordon’s leading you through on your path. And you write this incredible ballad that we all know and love, Alone Again Naturally, which topped the US pop charts.
This time you change your image again. You said that you start wearing sweatshirts with the letter G on it for Gilbert, obviously. Tell us a little bit about that supersonic hit.
That would have been 72, I think, Sandy. Once Gordon Mills signed me, I was able to give up my job. I was a poster clerk earning £10 a week and my bets didn’t run.
When Gordon Mills signed me up, he had a bungalow near his property in Weybridge, in a kind of guarded estate. And so I moved into that. And it was a joy because instead of being a poster clerk and only being able to write on the weekend, I had my piano in my flat, but, you know, I must have annoyed the people below and stuff, but they didn’t get offended.
And so I was able to write full time. I mean, it was luxury for me to have that. And so that was during one of those sessions of writing.
It was time for a new single. So Gordon said, what have you got? I said, well, I’ve just finished a song called Alone Again Naturally and stuff, which is a ballad. And the other song is Out of the Question, which I think is a good commercial song.
Out of the question. You’re kissing me in the next you’re not. One bit you remember and the next you forgot.
I don’t like it one little bit. You’re giving me the slip. Don’t think that I don’t know I do.
Don’t think that I won’t go if you want me. Three out of the question. I said, right, let’s go to the studio.
So we go to the studio. Everybody liked Alone Again, but they felt out of the question because it was more commercial should be the next single. And then at the end of the evening, Gordon said, you know, it may not be as commercial as the other song, but I think it’s a better song.
So let’s go with that. So there you are. So that gets really I was happy with the song, happy with both songs.
I didn’t put one in front of the other. I like both of them for different reasons. Alone Again is a serious song dealing with about death, suicide.
And those are important issues. But I like that aspect of songwriting. I like to get into a subject.
I like to get into the character. I like to get into people who are going through those kind of situations. In other words, my attitude to songwriting is that you don’t have to experience it to be able to write about it in a serious way.
An understanding of the subject gets you through what you’re writing about. That’s the fascinating thing about lyric writing, is that you get in, you get into a subject, you know, not to have experiences. I’m not on the heart on the sleeve.
You know, very few of my songs are based on real experience. So what was this one based on? Just an understanding of somebody going through those kind of situations. Well, why did that come to you at the time? Why were you connected to that? Well, in the same reason that the Matrimony, which is one of my most popular songs, is about going to Gretna Green to get married, not having any family there, just the two of you, not going to a church.
I mean, I’m a Roman Catholic. You know, I go to church on a Sunday. Well, my songwriting on that song had nothing to do with me.
It’s to do with my scene, a young couple who don’t have very much money, want to get married. So they decide to just go off and do it without telling anybody. So again, so I go into those kind of areas.
And that’s the fascinating thing about lyric writing. I find it on my own Alone again Naturally To think that only yesterday I was cheerful, bright and gay Looking forward to What I wouldn’t do The role I was about to play But as if to knock me down Reality came around And without so much as a mere touch Cut me into little pieces Leading me to doubt Talk about God in His mercy If He really does exist Why did He deserve In my heart of me I truly am indeed Alone again Naturally It seems to me that there are more hearts Than in the world that can be mended Left unattended What do we do? What do we do? After you’d finished that song and you were going to release that, did you have any inkling how big it would be? No, you shouldn’t. That’s a dangerous thing.
If you had it, you’d want it every bloody time afterwards. So the key is I knew it was a nice song. But I must tell you that when it was released first in England, it took weeks for it to break through in terms of radio stations beginning to play it.
It wasn’t an instant success. And in America, when it took off in America, six weeks at number one, it came out and went back. It was a small radio station in some part of America because it came out, weeks went by and this radio station, it’s a classic thing, you hear very often about this.
They played it and played it and played it and suddenly it boomed all over. Then it becomes their song. It’s become America’s favourite song of mine, which I had no idea.
Big surprise to me. Success for me was always about where I lived, in England, maybe Europe, America. Wow, yeah.
So how did that feel for you? I was very happy. Not as happy as the record company. No, I wasn’t looking for that, but of course I was very happy to get that and no question about that.
Alone Again Naturally turned out to be Gilbert O’Sullivan’s only American number one. It sold two million copies, spent six weeks at the summit in the US and earned him three Grammy Award nominations. In 1972, the song was the second best-selling single of the year in America, behind Don McLean’s American Pie.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. You’re still with Gordon Mills and he’s guiding you and cashing in on you big time.
After that one, you do it again. In late 72, you had a British number one with Clare, which was amazing. You’re really in a position in those early 70s where you can’t put a foot wrong.
Well, Andrew, you mentioned Clare. Clare’s one of the nicest songs. I wrote Clare as a thank you to Gordon and his wife.
Gordon for managing me. His wife for cooking meals for me. And I babysat for them.
Clare was one of the four children. She’s the one that would wake up. So they asked me to babysit.
We go to Ray, he’s around, he’ll come up. And so I wrote the song as a thank you to them. And Gordon plays the harmonica, the solo, and Clare does the laugh at the end.
She’s one of those children, it’s a very affectionate relationship because kids always get drawn to an adult of some kind. So I was Uncle Ray. And I’m going to marry Uncle Ray and stuff.
But the sad thing for me, Sonia, and this is something which to this day really kind of hurts me a little, is that I read an article by a famous journalist here who was meeting a radio presenter on a children’s radio program every weekend in England. It’s called Children’s Choice something. And he said to this presenter, he said, I’ve got this friend of mine, his daughter, would love you to play Clare by Governor Sullivan.
She loves that. He said, ooh, can’t do that. Wow.
No, no. Grown up with a child? No way. It’s a different world in those days, the innocence of all that.
Now it’s serious child abuse. And, you know, so it’s sad. We do it on stage, of course.
People love it and stuff. But to a lot of people it’s… It has sinister undertones. It’s a real indictment on the state of the world, isn’t it? It’s terrible.
Clare The moment I met you, I swear I felt as if something, somewhere Had happened to me Which I couldn’t see Then The moment I met you again I knew in my heart that we were friends It had to be so It couldn’t be no but try As hard as I might do, I don’t know why You get to me in a way I can’t describe Words mean so little when you look up and smile I don’t care what people say to me We are more than a child Oh, Clare Clare I hear that it brings Clare to tears when she hears you or sees you play it now as an adult. Yeah, well, we meet her. We meet up with her, which is nice.
After all the falling out with her manager and the family. Bad times. But we meet up with her.
And we did a concert in London with the radio station in Hyde Park. So 30,000 people and stuff. And she came along with my wife and daughters and stuff.
And she was on the stage to watch it. And Tara, my daughter, said that, you know, she had tears in her eyes when we played it. So that will always be special for me.
Yeah, that’s lovely. And talking about the falling out with her dad, with Gordon Mills, what happened there? Because you started to become notorious for all the court cases with him just as much as you were for all of the fabulous music. What went wrong? Well, it isn’t that difficult, to be honest with you.
By mid-70s, things were easing off, right? We had a hit in 74, 75. Things are slowing down, right? So I’m still ambitious now. I’m still driven.
I want to get more. And I say to Gordon, who produced my records as well as managing me, I said, Rod Stewart’s produced by this big American producer. Why didn’t you let me work with another producer? That can only benefit both.
You’re still my manager. And Gordon said, no, if I don’t produce it, nobody’s going to do it. I said, you know, please.
Because he said, look, you’re rich. Don’t worry about things leveling off. You know, you’re rich.
You’ve got plenty of money. Don’t be happy. And I wasn’t happy.
So I kind of tried as best I could to get Gordon to change his mind, and he wouldn’t change. And he was spending a lot of time out of music because he had his own private zoo with tigers and gorillas, and he was going on safari a lot. So I felt he was losing out working together and stuff.
Anyway, I made the decision that because I knew I had to move, despite all the success we had, I felt I had no choice but to do it. And so I met up with him on a weekend, and I said to him that you still won’t work with me if I work with another, but you won’t let me do that. He said, if you work with another producer, it’s over.
I said, well, I’m going to do that. So I said, can we shake hands? He said, yeah. And then the one thing I said was that, will you still give me that interest in my songs that you promised me in 1970? That was an agreement which was being given to songwriters, giving them an interest on the publishing side of their song.
And he said to me in 1970, look, you’re not successful. If you’re successful, I’ll give it to you. So over the years, 1972, I would occasionally say, any news on that interest you were going to give me? Oh, don’t worry.
You’re going to get it. A couple of years go by in 1976, and I would say, any news on that? And so here we are when we’ve broken up, and before I leave his house, I say, will you still give me that interest? And he said, yeah, go into the office. And Bill Smith, the chairman of the company, will sort it out.
So my wife, we go in, because it was the weekend when I went to his home. On the Monday, I go in, go up to the office, and Bill Smith, his head is there. And I said, Gordon said, you’re going to give me that? He said, you’re not getting anything.
You can F off. And so I left the building. I’d never worked with an independent lawyer.
So I rang up somebody I knew who now represents me. I said, can you help me get a lawyer? Because I want to fight to get this interest. And so I was introduced to lawyers.
And what becomes a small issue in my mind becomes a whole can of worms, conflict of interest. That really hurt him, because he’s managing the artist, and he owns the record company. How on earth can he give the artist a good deal? So that hurt him.
But none of that need have happened. He never would. That court thing should never have.
All he had to do was give me what he promised me. But his grade got the better of him? Well, it’s just horrible. How did you travel through that period? I mean, that must have really destroyed you as a person.
I can imagine how uncomfortable, how difficult that would have been, because you would have had such a close relationship with him for the previous years. How did that affect you? Well, a lot, because of his family. I was close to the family.
Joe, his wife. They must have had meetings where my name must have been dirt around the dinner table. Because remember, I was a part of the family.
You were living on the property. I was there, so it was a bad time and stuff. But musically, I could separate that private anxiety I had on how they were feeling about me.
I got through it and stuff, and got back to songwriting, got back to the career, found other producers to work with. So things started to move up again. So I was happier in the end, but it took a long time for it to really pass.
Obviously you did keep writing music during that time because you released the Graham Gouldman-produced Life and Rhymes in 1982. The Key of G followed in 89, and even though you weren’t seeing the same level of success that you’d seen in the early 70s, you started to develop or continued to develop a cult audience, particularly in Japan at the time, didn’t you? Well, yeah, but the first record producer I worked with after Gordon was not Graham. Graham was the second album.
The first album was CBS, and we had the hit with What’s in a Kiss, which was a Top 20 hit for us, which is one of my best songs. What’s in a kiss? Have you ever wondered just what it is? More bites than just a moment of bliss. Tell me what’s in a kiss? What’s in a dream? Is it all the things you’d like to have been? All the places that you haven’t yet seen? Tell me what’s in a dream? That was a good way of being able to go into the future.
So what you were saying there now… That you developed this huge cult following, particularly in Japan. Well, we had a number one record for about 10 weeks with a song called Tomorrow Today. That was actually written about Gordon.
You seem to be wanting everything yesterday. So yeah, that was a massive hit. And Japan, they like my songs, and they tend to use my lyrics, how they learn English and stuff.
So it’s really nice. We have a great time in Japan, because it’s a wonderful place to go, very special. You seem to be wanting Everything yesterday Always the impossible That’s what you seem to portray Give me one good reason Why even if I stay You won’t walk away from me Tomorrow today Your widow Sullivan, by the time 1991 comes around, you’re back in court again.
Well, then you have a situation where the album I was recording at that time, a famous rapper in America called Biz Markie. He was huge, hugely popular, wanted to use a part of Alone Again on one of his tracks. So I said, as you do, let’s hear it, because we’re very protective of the song.
So when I got it, I didn’t like it. And I didn’t realize he was a comic rapper. So I said, no, I refused it.
But they went ahead and did it anyway. So he went in and used the sample and rapped over it. So what am I going to do? Just say nothing.
So I took him to court. I had to go to America to do it. I had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to American lawyers to do it.
And when I went into court, I was the first person to go on the stand. And Biz Markie didn’t even turn up. But they were assigned to Warner Brothers, massive label.
So the judge said to them, if you don’t remove this track immediately, I’ll have every Warner Brothers record removed. Well, the S hit the fan. And by the time we walked back to the office, it was all over.
But who needs them? So is that how sampling works, that the original artist has to give their permission regardless of any payment offer? The original artist has to agree. Well, my sampling case set a precedent. It was the first time the sampling had been made officially.
People were sampling before getting away with it. From my case onwards, you had to have permission to do the sampling. Oh, I see.
Set a precedent. So there was a positive to come out of it. Well, you’ve had enough court experiences now to last you a lifetime.
The 90s saw you busy again, and you’ve got a whole lot of new stuff. Elton John produced the album called Driven. Driven was the last time I released, which was two years ago.
to when you weren’t hitting the top of the charts again? Of course I would have liked to have been had more success but I mean it it doesn’t prevent me writing it doesn’t I don’t have a writer’s block I’ve never suffered from that so that in a way that gets me through the feeling that I’m that I’m not getting you know no music magazine would do interviews with me to write about songwriting which I felt was why not for god’s sake I write songs I’ve wrote every song I’ve ever recorded I wrote I love songwriting why wouldn’t you want to talk to me about something so you can see that would get to me but not to the extent that when I wrote what I think was a good song I would sort of jump up in the room and think you know I’m really happy with that and that gets me through those kind of areas. What an absolute delight chatting with you thank you so so much for having this talk. Brilliant Sandy good to talk to you and look forward to meeting you.
Bye-bye. you’ve been listening to a breath of fresh air with sandy kaye it’s a beautiful day