DISC BREAK

Every now and again I look back over my career and wonder how some surprising thing or other ever happened.

As an example, let me refer you to my involvement, back in 1992, with For All Time, a top-selling single (No. 36 in the UK charts no less!) from Catherine Zeta Jones.

Well, almost, but not quite...

My actual involvement was with the 'B' side of that record, performed by - name dropping again - Sir Anthony Hopkins...

It was some time around the end of the 1980s that I had got myself involved with one of my modern musical heroes: Jeff (War of the Worlds) Wayne as a replacement writer on what had already been a long-running project - a concept album based on the historical (as opposed to the filmic) character, Spartacus.

Like the phenomenally successful War of the Worlds album that had starred Richard Burton, Justin Hayward, Phil Lynott, Julie Covington and David Essex, Spartacus was to be a combination of rock music, songs and the spoken word.

It was an exciting and exasperating project: exciting, because I feel instantly in love with the idea and was thrilled to be writing words that would be scored with Jeff Wayne music and read by Hopkins who was so clearly a latter-day Burton; exasperating, because the process gradually degenerated into a nightmare of endless haggling over interminable re-writes.

It was like working on a Hollywood movie! A page of narration that everyone adored when they first read it on Monday morning became the subject of total hatred by Monday evening. Some sequences were required to be re-written so many times that it became almost impossible to find a new way of saying what had to be said and the narrative began to bend, break and disintegrate into a dust of word ends and punctuation marks...

I wrote the script for whole of the first disc and the conclusion of the second, but when the contract came round for renewal (and fearing for my sanity), I bowed out and left the project. John Spurling valiantly took up the task and completed the second disc and the album was eventually released, to sadly mixed reviews, in 1992.

The finished album featured - in addition to Sir Anthony - Alan King as Spartacus; Catherine Zeta Jones as his woman, Palene; Fish as his fellow gladiator, Crixus the Gaul; and Ladysmith Black Mambazo as the chorus (aka Voices of Spartacus' Army).

My name (and John Spurlings) appear in the accompanying booklet in very small print but I also picked up a shared credit with Jeff W on the 'B' side of that single which had Sir Ant reading my opening narrative entitled 'Animal and Man'.

Here, for your entertainment (or, depending on your view of such things, amusement), are the first two parts of this somewhat ill-fated project...

COPYCATS (MICE, DOGS & STONE-AGE PEOPLE)

I vividly remember the launch on British television of Hanna-Barbera's The Huckleberry Hound Show in 1961.

Huck was a fantastic character. A laid-back blue dog with a southern drawl and a penchant for singing "Oh, My Darlin' Clementine", Huck could be anything he wanted to be: caveman, gladiator, knight-in-armour, cowboy, farmer, fireman, taxi-driver, police officer, rocket scientist. Whatever the job - historic or contemporary - Huck would try his hand - I mean, paw!

I can still recall spending hours - probably days if I'm honest - filling a sketch pad with drawings of Huck and his animated repertory company of players: Yogi and Boo Boo Bear (and the long-suffering "Mr Ranger, Sir") as well as Pixie, Dixie and Mr Jinks.

"That's not going to help you get a job!" grumbled my Mum (aware that I was neglecting my math homework) and do you know what? She was right!

But I was unrepentant! I cut out and wore my Kellogg's Corn Flake box Huckleberry Hound mask (right), my love for H&B's animated stars undimmed by parental disapproval!

Of course, even then, I knew that the animation wasn't a patch on the stuff done by Disney - the films of Uncle Walt & Co were transcendent - but, unlike the Disney product, it were 'on the box' and pretty much every week.

After Huck Hound, came the meteoric rise of his co-star, Yogi Bear who (like Donald Duck with Mickey Mouse) eclipsed in popularity the founding father of the group, then there was Snagglepuss, Quick Draw McGraw, Touche Turtle, Augie Doggie (and Doggie Daddy), Top Cat (later re-named Boss Cat) and a host of others not forgetting, of course, The Flintstones.

Like Disney, H&B started their own record label and began issuing albums telling stories that were already well known through rather more famous Disney versions!

Cheeky, perhaps, but irresistible and - putting charges of plagiarism on one side - what wouldn't one give, today, to listen to any of the following...?

Click on images to enlarge

And I'm still rummaging through boxes of LPs in charity shops, hoping against hope to find a rogue (unscratched) copy of this undoubted masterpiece...


If you happen to spot one you will let me know, won't you?