Hello, I'm Christy Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For Wright's reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1982 and the presenter... Was Roy Plumlee. This week on Cuphead, the World Cup. this week on cop- Next to him is the musician Alan Price. Alan, do you collect discs? I used to until I had a burglary and the things I loved most were taken and I don't think you can replace them so now I don't. It's only albums that I'm given or I have by happenstance.

You'll find it very hard to select just eight discs for a desert island? Yes, I think so. I think anyone faced with this kind of choice could make, I think, about a dozen programs. What we have now is my second list, because I lost the first. What was your plan? Is it nostalgic? Yes, I think that what I set out to do was to choose which have some sort of memory for me because I think that the basic principle of the program would be you'd have to have music to sustain you on this island of yours. Where do we start? What's the first one? Earliest childhood memory is dancing in the corner to the radio and this particular record is obviously one everybody knows. And I quite enjoy the idea of being alone on a desert island, hearing the sound of housewives choice across the air.

The same music of

Housewives Choice after all these years, and I find it's called In Party Mood, and it was written by Jack Strachey. You were born in the north-eastern Carte d'Or at Mallet. Yes, Fattfield. A village. Well, it was a village, now it's a roundabout. Oh, no. Now, we all know that the area had a pretty rough time, but you were born during the war when interest rate was pretty high. Yes, it took a war to actually bring some employment back to the Northeast. I was fortunate as I say because I lived out in a village and my father worked in a light industrial plant. Misfortune to lose your father when you were very young. Yes. He was killed in an industrial accident, and it was well like it would to anybody. It was an important event. It changed my life really and that we moved from the country. With my grandmother in a place called Jaro. Do you come from a big family? No, Small, I only have one brother, but... Fortunately, we are close because he runs my office for me and looks after my affairs. So you were at Jarrow Grammar School. What were you good at?

And mainly because of the encouragement I received from the teacher himself. He was a wonderful man called Mr. Acom. Biki was his nickname. And he did take... Me to one side and did say I had a talent of sorts for writing and I think it's that sort of encouragement which changes your life. How did music come into your life? My father had two brothers and they all either sang or played the piano. They all played by themselves. My brother was taught and I can always remember music around and I think in my grandmother's also there was a piano and the family used to come and visit and on a Saturday night after Everybody had been to the pub, everybody would stand around and had to do their piece. It was required of you. Or did you pick it up yourself? No, I can't read music. Now, you started to perform quite early. I think it was mainly because of the skiffle explosion, Lonnie Donegan. He proved that you could actually make music with a guitar and three chords. And there were groups on every street. Every town had a group and every street had a group.

Was just part of, I'd probably say about half a million people who started to really take an interest in music at that age. So you started banging about with the Little Skiffle Group and local functions? No, I was about 12 years old. What was the very first feat? You received the first time you played for money. I think when I was about 40 Then we got ten shillings between the six of us. 50p. Good. Record number two. A version, a very attractive version of a song written by Hoi Ko Michael called Stardust. And the singer is a country and western man in America who has made what's called a crossover Moved out the area of just country and western and has broad appeal and his name is Willie Nelson. Oh Paradise where roses grew ♪ Though I dream in vain ♪ ♪ In my heart ♪

♪ There always will remain ♪ My star does melt The memory of love's refrain Willie Nelson singing Stardust. So you started at the age of 14 as a semi-professional musician to the extent of getting a sixth share of ten shillings. Now you moved up from there, what, talent contests? Yes, I appeared on the Cara Leves show, but before that I had a group of... School but there was also a better piano player than me called Frankie Headley who had a rock and roll group and he was also very much of an entrepreneur and had his own little circuit of gigs all the way around the northeast places to play. And I was playing at a church at a rock club. By a very hip vicar in a place called Biker, a suburb of Newcastle, that I went...

With Frankie Headley 5. I played the bass at that time in this group and I came across some very extraordinary... Looking people who wore striped county caps, had dark sunglasses on and striped shirts. Played very original music that I hadn't heard before, jazz based and a lot of blues music. The singer was particularly good and I asked if I could sit in with them. When our band was off I asked if I could sit in with them and they asked me... Join them and that group was then called the pagans but it was the nucleus of a group that was later to be known as the animals. Where did the title the animals come from? Well, eventually we ended up playing for a lot of fellas who were called the squatters. They were the rough edge of youth hostellers who weren't allowed, because they broke up the youth hostelers. We used to sleep rough in sleeping bags and go out to market towns in Northumberland that had alcohol on all day. And we used to be there resident entertainers, myself and Eric Burden. I used to play the piano and he sang.

And their leader was a guy called Animal Hog. And we actually took our name from him. And also our behavior on stage was quite exaggerated and rough and ready. We were the original punks, I think. And the name just gradually evolved. By this time you were fairly resolved you were going to be a professional musician. Feel there was any other way. I was a civil servant for five years, I was in the inland revenue. I played a lot part-time and it was of an age when everybody felt everything was possible and I wanted to take the chance. I didn't ever want to look back on my life and feel that I'd never tried to do it. What about the Inland Revenue? Was any part of it interesting? Security of having to turn up and see the same 40 people every day. I think there's something slightly seductive and sort of womb-like. About having an office job. Was it a big step to quit? No. I was enormously frustrated.

You either are ambitious or you feel that you'll take life as it comes. But I felt that I had to change my life and I wasn't satisfied. To play the organ with the animals? Mainly because all pianos were badly treated out of tune, so you had to take an instrument around with you. I hated the organ, I still do, because it's not a very responsive instrument. But at least you are certain of having something in tune. Making a living playing gigs around the Northeast. No, I wasn't making a living, no. Within money... I believe in the Inland Revenue, we were down in London. Who was looking after you? We were looked after by a manager called Michael Jeffery, who unfortunately got killed in an air crash. But he gave us our first look at the situation. Opportunity as a band because he opened up nightclubs in the Northeast. Very smart and clever man with a lot of vision. And he opened it up for us and came down and made, you know, negotiations. We actually swapped with a group called the...

They came up to Newcastle and we went down to London and played their gigs. Yes. And it happened all very quickly. Within three months we were in the charts and within five months we were number one in... in Britain and America. Were you writing numbers by this time? Very poor ones. It wasn't until a lot of years had gone by when I actually had enough confidence to put me near into any compositions. Sure. So really at that time there were three big groups. There was the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the animals. I mean you were that big. Mm-hmm. Were you making a lot of money? I never saw it. We were very young and innocent and up to the day I left I was on 50 pound a week expenses and I never really saw it. It was like the gold rush. I don't think it was premeditated.

Meditated, I think that no one knew how long that rock and roll explosion was going to last. I mean, I think if you look back in retrospect and think about the early 60s and what happened then, no one could have planned what was going to happen. Or even could have foresaw the enormous impact that what you might call Untutored musicians and very young people what sort of effect they would have. You were right at the top and you quit. Because you felt you weren't getting a square deal? Perhaps instinctively I felt deep down, but I had an enormous fear of flying. And I still do, but I manage, debt really gets rid of a lot of phobias. And so I manage now to force myself on an airplane, but very regularly. But in those days I felt also it made you live too fast a lifestyle. It had always been my ambition for instance to go to America but not to go to the US.

To America and be locked in hotel rooms and just appear in huge stadia and not see what life was all about. After about 15 months I just felt totally dried out. What did you do? You went away? I ran away. I ran back to Newcastle and lived in a little flat for about six weeks. Until I sorted out really what I wanted to do and I felt that I just had a bad start and I had to start all over again. This. David Storey once saying that your life only changes once and I think this record

House of Rising Sun by the Animals was the thing that changed me life, forever. There is a house in New Orleans, they call the rising sun. And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy. And God, I know I've won. The House of the Rising Sun, I hope that you got your royalties for that, because that must be a very valuable thing. A liberal property. Yes, it's always been a bone of contention within the animals because it was a cooperative group and they felt that I ought to have split the royal these five wares, but because it's a traditional composition, the performing right society who distribute the most...

That is earned from the performing rights of these records felt that there's only a twelfth of the arrangement was original, so I only receive a twelfth of the money. One twelfth? Yes. Have had countless radio plays all over the world. Yes, I received a badge the other day from... The American, the equivalent organization in America called the Broadcast Music Incorporated. Black badge, you can see I'm wearing it now with a 2 on the bottom. And they sent me a letter saying Wear it with pride and it means that it's... The record was played for the two millionth time. Two million plays in the state. And having a lot of time in my dressing room at the moment, I worked out that as the record is four minutes twenty If you multiply 2 million times 4 minutes 20 seconds it comes out to roughly 16 years. 16 years. Right, let's go back to that time when you quit the animals and you were sitting perhaps grossly in a flat in Newcastle thinking things out. What did you do next?

I played football a lot and swam in the North Sea, which is quite invigorating if you know where it is. I decided that I would have to play again and I started my own band called the Alan Price set. How close was it to the animals in sound or was it quite... It was quite different I think because my main hero was Ray Charles and he had a band with a baritone saxophone and a trumpet. So in other words he had a front line of woodwind and brass and I felt that was a thing that I'd missed a lot. You had a lot of hits with that band. Yes, oh yeah, and half a dozen. I didn't see much at the time. Because I was I was constantly trying to rid myself of the animals specter. I was always billed as the ex-animal, Alan Price. It became such a standing joke that friends would come and knock on the door and if I opened it they'd say, Ah, it's ex-animal. Well, great success again. Success comparable with the animals. Near. Not worldwide. I only had one hit in America. English-speaking countries...

Took kindly to me, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa and what have you. But I don't think anything could ever compare with that success because it was part of an era, the animals, as you named it, part of the triumvirate of the stones and the beetles in that very second division I would call it. And once again, Alan Price and his friends up to the top, and at the top you quit. The band got bigger and there are very limited opportunities, first of all if you don't fly, but there's very limited opportunities to work continuously in Britain. And uh... my had eleven piece band and that for road managers and my expenses and we're talking about the middle sixties now were Of two thousand pound a week and I don't know if allowing for inflation that would probably be about five thousand pounds, six thousand. I don't know now. And it just, if you took two weeks off work, you know, you had to travel the money. And it just became too big. A unit for me to run. So it wasn't the fact that I ran away from any sort of success, it was just that I felt that I couldn't...

Maintain that lifestyle. In time what's record number four. You'll find that most musicians can't dance. And this is one of the few records I can dance to. It also will bring back a memory because I remember we stayed in Lowe's Midtown Motor Inn in New York in 1964. And on the same floor there were the Animals, the Supremes, Dionne Warwick and Marvin Gere. And there were all, I mean it was a very talented crew and underneath was Muhammad Ali on the floor below and next door to me was Marvin Gaye and this record is a nice one to dance to.

And it's called I Heard It Through the Grapevine. I heard it through the grapevine by Marvin Gaye. Alan, Lindsay Anderson, the stage and film director, has been in and out of your life a lot. On the scene about now after you had given up the organisation? Yes, I was... you go through these periods of R&R, I think they call it, in the Forces. Rest and recuperation, where you try and take a good look at your life. Because the kind of life I lead is quite intense.

Need a lot of energy. You do have to take your time out where you just sit and try and And I was living in Belgravia, just around the corner from the Royal Court Theatre, and I'd met Lindsay Anderson. I'd heard was a famous both film and theatre director. I knew nothing about it. It was a world I knew nothing about. I asked for an introduction because he felt that I'd written a hit record called Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear. He was under a misapprehension because that was written by Randy Newman, an American writer. I met him and he asked me if I was interested in being in films or in the theatre and I said no. Touched me and wrote me some letters and asked later when he needed some music, just instrumental music for a play called Home written by David Storey. And John Gielgud in it. He asked me if I had any spare tunes and I sent him round a tape that music in his play. So I stuck up a relationship with Lindsay, enjoyed the theatre and we...

Toyed with the idea of doing a documentary film because he felt the way I worked was rather akin to the Victorian theatre actor manager taking... His band or his company around the country. And it was the start of that relationship which involved me eventually working with him in 'Oh Lucky Man'. In the meantime, you went back into the pop scene, you began... A partnership with Georgie Fame. What was your thinking there? Georgie Fame I first met when we came down to London and he was... I always had been a sort of idol, mind you. A brilliant keyboard player, especially organ player. And when I was living up in Newcastle wishing I was down in London used to buy was like the melody maker and see Georgie fame and the blue flames playing down the flamingo which had a sort of romantic air about it. When we came down with the animals to play in a little club called the Scene Club, he actually came round, he'd heard we were down, and when the feud... He came around and heard the band, came backstage and told us we were good and to keep at it.

And I never forgot that. Eventually when it started on me, I went with the same agency as him and we always had a lot of things in common and I respect his work. Much that was an enjoyable period yes three years were sharing the limelight is always good the same as being second on the bill is a marvelous thing to be mm-hmm Have to carry full responsibility but you still get the glory of it. It was very nice to share the load with someone. Written all these successful numbers and of course the music for Oh Lucky Man which I seem to remember is a very long film and must have needed a lot of music how do you You're a self-taught musician. Can you write music fluently? Can you score? I use a tape recorder and I thank God for technology really because whatever I do invent is very fleeting and I can at least switch on a tape recorder and it's kept for me. It's a very painful process. I don't enjoy it really. It's mainly desperation when it actually does come out. It doesn't flow.

It's not as though the muse sits upon my shoulder. Record number five. Now this is someone who is enormously talented and takes a... Very simple tune that most of us know called Body and Soul and does marvelous things with it, stretches it, uses the chord sequence as a basis and plays absolutely wonderful music. I think this is the best piano player that there has ever been and that includes classical And his name is Art Tatum and here he is playing Body and Soul.

art atrium and body and soul. A varied career and even more varied now because you took a... Starring part in a film, Alfie Darling. Whose idea was that? Mine. I really am the innocent abroad, actually. Because I felt that making films is going to be obviously easier than going out on the road, sitting on buses for hours on end and... The hellish life that life on the road as a rock and roll musician is, and I thought making films is going to be simpler.

I offered this film called Alfie Darling which was a follow up to Alfie and I thought, oh this is going to be easier. But I was quite wrong and because I... A contract which said you have to work the hours of daylight and they hired me during the summer so that i was getting up at five o'clock in the morning working at ten o'clock at night for 12 weeks and they also wanted me to write the score so from pre-production to The film being released and being promoted took nearly a year out of my life. It was a big mistake. And I'm not an actor. Really, I'm not a very good actor at all. And it was a great mistake. - You were following Michael Caine, who had played the original Alfie. So Alfie had changed his accent a bit. As they did actually trying to get me to lose mine. I was sent up to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford where somebody tried to make me lose my accent. Well I didn't try to make me, I mean they gave me tips on it. And you had to do things like, you had to put a little plastic piece between your teeth,

Forces your jaw and I'll try and demonstrate it for you. Yes, it's rather like a punch and duty man with his swazzle. Yes, you put it in between you, I'll try and do it now. Yes sir. You talk like this. It makes you make it round your mouth out terribly. You can hear what I'm doing now. Dalfie is supposed to be a cockney, he wouldn't talk. No, I just, he was meant to be working class. But I, they felt that the Geordie accent was so thick and strong that they would never understand the film in America. So they tried to make me lose it and it was an honourable draw. I learned how to do it but I refused to on principle. Right, record number six. When I was 11 years old at grammar school there was a teacher who doubled as a math teacher and music teacher called Eddie Bryce who myself and some other boys from school up to here the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

And it was the first time I'd been in a concert hall. And they were playing Rachmaninoff's variations on a theme by Paganini. And we were all giggling and joking and laughing. Boys out on a spree and we were listening to this piece of music and... When the violins came in, I was nearly moved to tears. It was quite a shocking moment for me. And the piece I have chosen, which is orchestral. I probably would need on a desert island is the Beethoven's Symphony No. 6. Because it all, albeit often, is very powerful. You can just drop the needle where you will, and I think what we have chosen is the storm.

Part of the storm music from Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, the Pastoral, Carlo Maria Guilini conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. A few recent happenings, Alan. Another play by David Storey, Early Days. Yes, I did a few. There was The Farm and... There were many, all collaborations with Lindsay Anderson. And a couple more films, 'Plague Dogs'? That's an animated film. It's the same man who did Watership Down chose this book. And I wrote the same tune for that, yes. And another Lindsay Anderson film? Yes, Britannia Hospital. A black comedy again, which had the misfortune, because it poked fun at the establishment and the country, had the... It's fortunate to be released during the time of the Falklands crisis where I think everybody in the end is patriotic, I'm afraid. Nationalism.

Rides very high in all of us. And the film has to be re-released because it was a genuinely great piece of work and Lindsay is a wonderful director. And it's sad that sometimes that... Events overtake a piece of work which is about three or four years in the planning, in the making. Play that's running in London at the moment, Andy Capp. You wrote the music for that. Mm-hmm. There was an idea I had when I was in California. I suffered in America where they felt that they couldn't package me and sell me correctly. So they sent me to America to be produced by an American. I caught pleurisy. And I was lying in a hotel bed after having been lectured on the mischief of being a parochial artist, unprovincial, writing about England and especially about the work... Class and writing songs about hunger marches and they felt it was very difficult to sell me in America and I picked up... Los Angeles Times and in it was the cartoon strip, Undie Cap, which I...

Depicts life as I knew it in the Northeast when I was a child and I felt if there's anything parochial it's that and here it is selling and then I made inquiries and found out it was in about 800 American newspapers. Is it really? Yes. And it's the second biggest cartoon in the world next to peanuts. The only reason it doesn't go to Muslim countries is that it handicaps drinks alcohol. I felt well if I could marry my music to this character then I'd have something which would make some money. And you're appearing in the show too. Yes. Is my idol really, someone who impressed me. When I heard him, a wonderful piano player, a wonderful, soulful singer with a lot of the church in him. And we're going to play... Most important. Singing country and western tune and he does some marvellous things with it and it's called Drown in My Own Tears.

♪ Sometimes when I hear you sing this song ♪ ♪ It makes me wanna ♪ ♪ Round and round ♪ - Ray Charles. You're a husky lad. How good would you be at looking after yourself on a desert island? In the beginning quite good. I think most things tend to bore me. I've got a very short attention span and I think I'd be very good for about the first two weeks, and then I get very bored. Have you got any practical skills or you... I can talk a lot. I just want to keep myself amused. I did notice that, it was fine. What about fishing? Before but I find it pretty gruesome taking the hook out the mouth. Yes I could do it. I mean desperation you know. Could you escape? I don't think I'd want. I think I'd be afraid. I'm not the best swimmer in the world. Anything about sailing? No, I'm one of these people who always fancies something when the practical side of it comes up I tend to fall to bits. I've been on a boat. I took a yacht once

Around the Greek islands and the Meltami was enforced, that's the equivalent of the mistral, and I was very very seasick and I gave up for about five days. Were you navigating? No no no no no no, I was just being sick. Got to your last record. Going in the studios and trying to create emotion that when you're here on record, somebody having a wonderful time and... Obviously enjoying it. I think this record would always cheer me up and always makes me laugh. It's the wild man himself, Louis Prima, giving his variations on a theme called I ain't got nobody.

Louis Prima, I ain't got nobody. If you would only take one disc, which would it be? I think that one, because I think it would be the sort of thing I could play when I was at my lowest, which would always make me smile. That's wonderful nonsense. And one luxury? A piano. Because I'm self-taught. Always amused me. And I'm trying to be smart, I thought of it the other day, is that it's a sort of calendar, I could burn a key.

Still have a nocturne to play with after about three months. And one book, you've got the works of Shakespeare and the Bible already on the island. Wind in the willows. Right. And thank you, Alan Price, for letting us hear your desert island discs. It was a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Thank you. Goodbye everyone. Listening to a podcast from the desert island discs archive for more podcasts please visit BBC

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