Pinball And Other Stories

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Pinball And Other Stories

Pinball And Other Stories

RRP: £99
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Brian Protheroe is first and foremost an actor. He was born in Salisbury in 1944 and joined the city’s repertory theatre, Salisbury Playhouse, in 1966. By the early 1970s, he’d made strides as an actor and composer in stage productions. In 1973, his life took an unlikely turn while he was appearing in William Fairchild’s play Death on Demand. “I wrote the music to a lyric my character Johnny Tomorrow sang during the course of the play called For Tomorrow” Protheroe explains. “It was a very simple pop song – “Tomorrow will be my day, the day that dreams come true / tomorrow, flying high day, something something with you”. It couldn’t have been more basic really but the author absolutely loved what I did with his lyrics. We made a demo recording of it and he took it round to various record companies – Decca, Chrysalis and one other.” Protheroe was signed by Chrysalis on the strength of For Tomorrow, and embarked on an unlikely second career as a pop star. His final Chrysalis album I/You, with it’s distinctive cover art, featured session musicians like Alan Parker, Simon Phillips and Michael Giles on drums, whilst label mates Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson and Barriemore Barlow added flute and percussion to the adaptation of Shakespeare’s Under the Greenwood Tree. Roberts, David (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19thed.). London: Guinness World Records Limited. p.441. ISBN 1-904994-10-5.

Very much in this mould is actor/singer-songwriter Brian Protheroe, who was Salisbury-born but came to London in the mid ‘60s, where his first band FBI (Folk Blues Incorporated) shared the same bill at a folk club with Paul Simon in 1965. I was playing a character in a play called Death On Demand in about 1971/2. We were touring around the country and the character that I was playing, called Johnny Tomorrow, sang this song. So the author had this lyric and he asked me to, or maybe I offered to write music to it. I did a little demo recording of it. He loved it and he took this demo recording around, to various people and record companies. Two companies were interested – Chrysalis was one of them. They heard some other songs I’d written and Pinball was one of them. That I can create something resonant/interesting/moving/funny/mysterious and makes people want to listen to it again and again.” Martin would write a lyric in different sections and I somehow had to find a way to bind them together, while giving each individual section the kind of musical choices the words suggested. There was a lot of criticism about Martin from the record company. They tried to take his name off the first album, so it would look like I was the only contributor. I threatened to stop working on the album if they did that so they relented. The producer Del Newman wasn’t sure about the songs Martin participated in either. He preferred the songs I wrote alone. My songs were varied, but they weren’t as mad as Martin’s! We used some songs Martin and I wrote for a musical called Lotte’s Electric Opera. They were totally out of context, so they were even weirder! But I like that. Martin’s a great friend so I always wanted him to be involved.” Working with song writing partner Martin Duncan, the album opens in style with Enjoy It, with it’s complex tongue twisting lyrics that work within the musical arrangements as well.I was living behind the Cambridge Theatre in Covent Garden having recently broken up with a girlfriend. The lyric is an extended diary entry of my experiences at the time. Loneliness and feelings of not being in control like a silver ball being flipped around in a pinball machine. It didn’t remotely cross my mind that the song would still be around 46 years later.” From one of the shows Brian was in, comes an incendiary version of Lucille which seems to fit the aesthetic of I/You perfectly and doesn’t feel out of place at all compared with what’s gone before. One of Brian’s few concerts was at London’s Troubadour in 2012, with a band featuring Steeleye Span’s Julian Littman and Manfred Mann legend Paul Jones amongst others. “I wanted to do a small gig somewhere, and I knew Julian would support me” he explains. “I’d played at the Troubadour with my folk group in 1965, and I went to have a look at it and it was virtually exactly the same as it was then! I just loved the feel of the place, it held just over 100 and it seemed like the right thing to do” There’s some beguiling footage from this rare event on YouTube with pitch perfect renditions. Brian sounds like a seasoned touring musician, his voice unchanged by 40 years distance. The traditional showmanship is brough to the fore on The Good Brand Band Song, which has echoes of The Beatles and 10cc running through it, there’s a wonderful element of showmanship and English music hall or Pythonesque humour that is drip fed through Protheroe’s songwriting.

I was living in Covent Garden at the time. I had one room in a friend’s house, and it was literally like a diary entry of what was happening to me then. We had a cat – the cat that finished off the bread. There was a Norman Mailer book about Marilyn Monroe that I saw when I was walking through Soho one morning. So that got included. Hey Jude you were alright, was a reference to the Beatles breaking up. So it was a stream of consciousness diary about what was happening to me at that time. Further informationAs both a musician and actor, Brian Protheroe has walked the walk since the 1960s. On stage and screen (both small and large) his acting work has included the recurring role of Edward IV in several BBC Television Shakespeare productions and that of Saruman in the stage musical of Lord Of The Rings. Credits in television shows such as Lovejoy, Holby City, Midsomer Murders and Doctors have established him a familiar face for several decades.



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