You never asked but I would honestly always have chosen to be Johnny Dysfunctional rather than a Womble.
I say this because I listened to Womble songwriter Mike Batt on radio the other night telling how he made untold riches after his Womble hits. He moved into a mansion and started driving an expensive limousine. Song royalties flowed his way from every country.
Yet listening to him took me back to when I was scouting for a record deal. Batt went to most the companies I did, all in London. You knew then where to go not like today when the pop music business is a jungle, fragmented and full of crooks. Mind you, it was full of crooks in those days too. And musicians will testify too some of those used guns as tools of persuasion.
Batt and I met and exchanged only a cursory hello at a CBS Records Christmas Party. Also at the party was a band Lone Star being touted for the big time who later described their deal with CBS Records as the worst deal ever. The Kurzel Flyers were there and Vince Hill who was flying high in the charts with a song from The Sound of Music.
Also, attending were crew members of the touring US act Johnny Nash who topped the UK charts at the time with When A Child Is Born.’
My brother Chris and I wore a self-fashioned T shirt exclaiming ‘When A Childe is Born.’ Not I add a miss-spelling.
That bit of self-promotion was because CBS had decided without my help or permission to launch me by the name of Alan Childe, I’d already recorded two songs with a full orchestra, one of which you can hear at this link.
I confess, I appropriated with guile this recording. You won’t get it anywhere else because mysteriously it was never released. Never did get to the bottom of why not. It cost a bomb to make. They paid. It was a tax loss for them, so no loss at all.
Batt on radio revealed he had previously courted the same record companies as I did. I too came close to a deal with Dick Leahy at GTO where he also went close.
My first single release on CBS was called Rainmaker. Another mysterious thing occurred. After I’d left CBS The Wombles released a song which charted called, er ‘Rainmaker.’ Wonder where they got the idea for that from! Must go. Just off to clear some rubbish off the Common.