Herbert Kretzmer

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Presenter0:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and three, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a lyricist. He made his fortune late in life at the age of nearly sixty. He was called in to write the lyrics for an ailing musical. He did such a good job of it that it's still running in the West End nineteen years later, and he's a millionaire many times over. He was born in South Africa, which he left aged twenty-two for the bright lights of London and Paris. He became the theatre critic of the Daily Express and wrote the lyrics of such hits as Asnavour's She and Peter Sellers and Sophia Lorenz's Goodness Gracious Me.

Presenter0:59

Songwriting and journalism provided a decent living until the producer Cameron Mackintosh asked him to write the lyrics for Les Miserable. On such slim threads our lives and careers sometimes depend, he says. He is Herbert

Presenter1:15

How did it happen, Herbert, that Cameron should ask you? After all, you were you were known much more as a journalist than as a lyricist.

Herbert Kretzmer1:21

Uh i this was in 1984 and I was very keen to revive an old musical of mine called Our Man Crichton. I wrote to Cameron asking him whether he'd ever seen it and whether he'd be interested in getting behind a revival of it.

Herbert Kretzmer1:34

He wrote back and said he didn't think he wanted to do it, but would I come and talk to him just so that we could meet each other?

Herbert Kretzmer1:42

When I arrived there we sat on his sofa and talked about everything and nothing.

Herbert Kretzmer1:47

At the end of a half an hour or so I felt it was a good idea to leave the busy man, so he saw me to the door.

Herbert Kretzmer1:54

On the way from the sofa to the door, he asked me, why didn't you go on writing lyrics? I said, but I had continued.

Herbert Kretzmer2:03

And he said, Well, name me something you've written. And when I mentioned uh

Herbert Kretzmer2:07

She Cameron gave a reasonable imitation of a man in a dead faint.

Herbert Kretzmer2:12

He was extraordinarily impressed and he said anything else than I said yesterday when I was young and again his enthusiasm couldn't have been more

Herbert Kretzmer2:21

are exuberantly expressed.

Herbert Kretzmer2:23

The response couldn't have been more gratifying. And something about that little conversation stayed with him, so that six months later, when he was in deep trouble about Les Miserable, because he didn't have a producible book,

Herbert Kretzmer2:36

or a a producible set of lyrics, he suddenly sat bolt upright at six thirty in the morning.

Herbert Kretzmer2:43

This is by his own admission, and remembered that little snatch of conversation about the two Asnobo songs made the connection, the French connection.

Presenter2:52

Mm-hmm.

Herbert Kretzmer2:53

and got on the phone to me.

Presenter2:54

Uh on such slim threads, as you say. And how long did it take you to write?

Herbert Kretzmer2:56

Indeed.

Herbert Kretzmer2:58

Well, I only had five months and then they had to go into rehearsal with only the first act because we hadn't finished it yet.

Presenter3:04

But it's it's amazing, isn't it, that something that you can do as quickly I'm sure it was hard work, but you do as quickly as that can it's out of all proportion to the effect that it has on your life.

Herbert Kretzmer3:14

Absolutely. But there are certain activities on this earth which provide rewards which are out of all proportion to the effort involved.

Herbert Kretzmer3:23

when I think of novelists slaving away for seven, eight years

Herbert Kretzmer3:27

And then achieving perhaps a few thousand sales and so on and so on. One mustn't look for just desserts. There are only unjust desserts, I think.

Presenter3:36

And it's played all over the world, and it is, as I say, in its nineteenth year here in London. And do you still go and see it from time to time?

Herbert Kretzmer3:41

No, I never go and see it. I only go to uh well, I go to First Nights anywhere I can. And I've been to openings in Tokyo and I've been to openings in Boston and Washington.

Presenter3:43

I own

Presenter3:52

But you don't pop in and see how the London went?

Herbert Kretzmer3:54

No, I never do. It's become almost a superstition now that uh having seen the hand-picked original cast, my memories are so clear.

Herbert Kretzmer4:05

and sharply defined.

Herbert Kretzmer4:07

And I really cannot bear the idea of them being blurred.

Herbert Kretzmer4:11

But I always enjoy new productions.

Herbert Kretzmer4:14

Cole Porter, on the other hand, used to go back as often as he could to all his shows, even his flops.

Herbert Kretzmer4:19

and bring along as many people as he could.

Presenter4:22

Well, you can take that very clear memory of that opening night in London 19 years ago with you to your desert island, and you can take eight records. Tell me about the first one.

Herbert Kretzmer4:31

Well, I think the master songwriter of our time is Stephen Sandheim. There are so many songs I could choose of Sundheim's, but I rather like the one called Not While I'm Around.

Herbert Kretzmer4:43

It's sung by a young, scruffy, psychopathic adolescent who imagines himself to be

Herbert Kretzmer4:50

The Projecto

Herbert Kretzmer4:52

of the middle-aged misses Levitt.

Herbert Kretzmer4:54

And it's a song full of menace and underlying threat. And yet, on one level, it's a sweet love song.

Presenter5:03

I'll send them howling, I don't care, my God, way Of course she did, what a sweet, affectionate child it is.

Speaker 15:07

I got what

Presenter5:15

No one's gonna hurt you.

Presenter5:18

No one's gonna dare.

Presenter5:23

Others can desert you, not to worry, whistle, I'll be there.

Presenter5:30

Not While I'm Around, from the original cast recording of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street by Stephen Sondheim, and that was performed by Ken Jennings and Angela Lansbury. Having said that Les Miz transformed the life of Herbert Kretzmann, the fact is it wasn't that bad before that, and I want to hear about the bit in between, but let's go back to your origins in South Africa, where when you were a boy, I gather your father sold furniture and fish at the same time from the same place.

Herbert Kretzmer5:56

Well, they sold a lot of things, my parents. They were shopkeepers in a small town called Kronstadt.

Herbert Kretzmer6:02

This is the origin

Presenter6:02

This is the orange tree stage.

Herbert Kretzmer6:03

Yes, it was absolutely idelic.

Herbert Kretzmer6:06

Uh my boyhood we had one river, one high school.

Herbert Kretzmer6:10

One football team for which I played, Flank,

Herbert Kretzmer6:13

It was almost a Tom Sawyer existence on some levels. I mean, I had my own flock of pigeons, for instance. I could look up into the clear blue African sky, and there, right above my head, wheeling and soaring about, were my own pigeons. I can't tell you what a delicious feeling that was.

Presenter6:29

And your parents were immigrants, are they?

Herbert Kretzmer6:32

My parents were Jewish immigrants from

Herbert Kretzmer6:35

Lithuania. Well, my mother didn't hear English spoken until she was about 14 or 15. My father wouldn't have heard English spoken until he was in his early twenties.

Presenter6:44

What they spoke Yiddish with each other.

Herbert Kretzmer6:45

They spoke Yiddish and they spoke German and a form of Latvian.

Presenter6:50

But it's interesting, isn't it, that you should end up making your living u using the English language?

Herbert Kretzmer6:55

It's often occurred to me that it seems really weird because I'm the first English-speaking generation.

Presenter6:56

But your family has no discourse.

Herbert Kretzmer7:01

I was born in South Africa when it still happened to be a member of the Commonwealth, so it was a historical and geographical fluke.

Herbert Kretzmer7:08

that I happen to

Herbert Kretzmer7:10

Speak English at all.

Presenter7:11

But did you always know you would use English? You would

Herbert Kretzmer7:14

I knew from the age of about eleven or twelve, I remember standing in the corner of my parents' living room near the radio.

Herbert Kretzmer7:23

And I suddenly conceived the idea, and I saw it in a picture form, of myself standing on a

Herbert Kretzmer7:29

Hilltop with a microphone in one hand and the wind in my hair and a tie flying behind me, and I was communicating something I was seeing.

Herbert Kretzmer7:38

and in me at that moment was born the conviction

Herbert Kretzmer7:41

that I would devote my life in some form or another to observing and communicating.

Herbert Kretzmer7:47

In other words, become a journalist. And I never really wavered from that.

Herbert Kretzmer7:52

So I was very lucky to have been pointed

Herbert Kretzmer7:55

On my way that early in my career.

Presenter7:56

You had a vision.

Herbert Kretzmer7:58

Well

Herbert Kretzmer7:59

Yes, but it doesn't give me sainthood.

Presenter8:02

No, but it's very interesting that I mean you don't strike me as being a particularly mystical person, but obviously this was a life-changing moment.

Herbert Kretzmer8:07

Obviously this was a live

Herbert Kretzmer8:09

My memories are very real to me, my very earliest memory.

Herbert Kretzmer8:13

I must have been less than one year old, cause I was spread eagled across the back of a black woman who was washing

Herbert Kretzmer8:20

or she seemed to be washing something in a in the back yard.

Herbert Kretzmer8:24

I remember being

Herbert Kretzmer8:25

I was held to her back by a big, huge, wraparound basutu blanket tied with a huge safety pin in front.

Herbert Kretzmer8:32

And she was rocking and she was singing.

Herbert Kretzmer8:35

And the bliss of that moment, the African singing, the heat of the African sun on my back, the movement back and forth, it was an entrancing moment in my life. All my earliest memories of Africa have to do with song, with music. So I would like to take with me on my desert island something that celebrates the new freedoms in South Africa. And so it's the anthem, In Corsi Sicole, Africa, written in 1897 by a man called Enoch Sotonga, who was a teacher at a Methodist mission.

Herbert Kretzmer9:10

and who died some eight years later totally unknown, totally unrecognized. And it wasn't until the Mandela Revolution that Nelson Mandela himself decided that that song, which had been hitherto used as a song of protest, an anthem of

Herbert Kretzmer9:26

the oppressed, that that song should be joined up with the existing Afrikaans anthem, DeStem, to become the new South African anthem. O sisi gele

Speaker 39:41

Palupagani Su tumolayo.

Speaker 19:45

I don't

Speaker 39:47

Iso Mitanaso Yetu.

Speaker 19:47

Iso Imitanas.

Presenter9:52

That's a

Speaker 39:53

Gaussi.

Speaker 39:56

See Lam.

Speaker 39:59

See you.

Speaker 110:01

Uh Uh Blue Sapo

Speaker 310:02

Oh no. Uh

Presenter10:05

Cozi Sigule Africa, sung by the Teal Choir. How aware were you then, Herbert, during um that idyllic childhood in South Africa? We're talking now late twenties through the thirties, up to the war. How aware were you of racial discrimination?

Herbert Kretzmer10:20

Oh, that you were hardly aware of it at all. You were simply

Herbert Kretzmer10:24

uh moved into a form of society which took all these things for granted.

Herbert Kretzmer10:29

There was a benevolent feeling between master and servant, which was understood on both sides.

Herbert Kretzmer10:35

There was very little evidence of anger.

Presenter10:37

But you would have had black servants, as you say. We had black servants. Your parents would have known. I mean, they'd they'd

Herbert Kretzmer10:39

We had black servants.

Presenter10:43

run, hadn't they, from Europe before the First World War, they would have known what it was like to be subjugated, to be considered.

Herbert Kretzmer10:52

One would have thought, in fact, that that experience would have made them more benevolent employers, and it probably did.

Herbert Kretzmer10:59

The servants we had were given simple names like Mary, John, Jim, and so on, which is what always happened in South Africa. This helped to distance.

Herbert Kretzmer11:09

uh the servant from the master by denying his very name.

Herbert Kretzmer11:14

I persuaded my own parents to revert to the African names, so they were called names like Lukas and other names which I forget now, but which had their origins in the tribal languages.

Presenter11:24

But there was no doubt in your mind, ultimately, after the Second World War, that you had to get out. You really wanted to leave, didn't you?

Herbert Kretzmer11:31

Yes, I had grown up during the war, so Europe for me and for all of us was a closed book. It was a dark continent. It was under the heel of the oppressor.

Herbert Kretzmer11:43

So when the war was over, it was like a portcullis being raised, a curtain being thrown apart, and we were irresistibly drawn.

Herbert Kretzmer11:52

to Europe, my people of my generation after the war.

Presenter11:55

And when you got here?

Herbert Kretzmer11:56

We took the Union Castle ship to Southampton, then the boat train to Waterloo.

Herbert Kretzmer12:01

Then across Waterloo Bridge, where my first disappointment was the unexpectedly and disappointingly squat

Herbert Kretzmer12:09

Big Ben, I thought that tower nudged the very clouds, or so it had seemed to me to my childhood imagination.

Presenter12:17

Tell me about record number three.

Herbert Kretzmer12:18

I simply love Paris. Hemingway said somewhere that if you have lived in Paris as a young man...

Herbert Kretzmer12:24

Then wherever you go for the rest of your life, Paris will follow you, for it is a movable feast.

Herbert Kretzmer12:30

or in my case a movable fast, really, because uh while I was never starving, I was never quite satisfied with anything. I played the piano, for instance, for about six months at a little brosserie called the Brosserie Luminal.

Herbert Kretzmer12:46

I would play between six and eight in the evenings and at eight o'clock I would sit down with the patron and his wife and the baby was in a high chair and the four of us would have the one good meal of the day.

Herbert Kretzmer12:59

I didn't sing for my supper, but I certainly played for it.

Speaker 113:01

Ce soir jaton, Madeleine, Giaporte, Du Lila, Jean-Aporte, Toucles Men, Madeleine Hélène Biaza, Ce Soir Jaton, Madeleine, en prendrende pourment, Madeleine Hélène Tanza, Madeleine C'est Monourelle, C'est mou mirie, camois, Man que les trovien bourmois, Comdison cousin Joel, Mais, Ce Soir Jaton, Madeleine, On your house, cinema, Que Louis Dire des Jutel, Madeleine Element, Elle, Element.

Presenter13:31

Jacques Prel and Madeleine. So, um, post-war Paris set you aliked, Herbert. You even rubbed shoulders with Jean-Paul Sartre, I gather. Would you go as far as to say you knew him?

Herbert Kretzmer13:40

No, I wouldn't go so far as to say I knew him. I I caught him at the last months of his public appearances. Once or twice we actually uh went up to this little club called the La Rose Rouge.

Herbert Kretzmer13:52

I played a little bit of piano, I remember at about two in the morning, and he said to me, Joe Calcashau soud Afrikan, play something South African to me, and I put in my little memory book that I had actually once been spoken to in my life by the great man himself. That's all he said, but it's a memory.

Presenter14:11

But you did know and get to know very, very well indeed another great Frenchman, Charles Aznavour.

Presenter14:16

Um how did you come across him? How did you start working together? Because in the end you translate is not the word you like, I think, of all his French songs into English, but you put them into English.

Herbert Kretzmer14:24

Yeah, as well.

Herbert Kretzmer14:26

Yes, I don't translate so much as reinvent. I don't think you can translate.

Herbert Kretzmer14:32

a song, because a song is a distillation of nuances and inferences and words which reverberate and resonate in a certain culture. And when you're translating a song, you have to find

Herbert Kretzmer14:46

Not only how the word, but the word that will have that same appeal in another language to another culture.

Presenter14:51

It's like Yer encore.

Herbert Kretzmer14:53

Even that is untranslatable because literally it means yesterday again, but it doesn't quite mean that. I reinvented that song as yesterday when I was young.

Presenter15:04

But in the beginning they wouldn't sing it, would they? The Sinatras and Ko because there's that kind of implicit ageism.

Herbert Kretzmer15:09

No, I w we tried to get that song yesterday when I was young. We tried to get it to Sinatra, to Tony Bennett or but uh none of them would touch it because of the title.

Herbert Kretzmer15:18

America with its obsession with youth.

Herbert Kretzmer15:21

Sinatra particularly would never allow himself to sing a line like yesterday when I was young, implying that he had let go of his own precious youth.

Presenter15:30

Yesterday, uh when I was young was a big hit, I think in the late sixties, but um this next record you're taking to a desert island was the big biggie, wasn't it?

Herbert Kretzmer15:39

London Week and television had come to me.

Herbert Kretzmer15:41

and ask me to write

Herbert Kretzmer15:43

a song for that would act as a theme.

Herbert Kretzmer15:47

for a new series of plays called The Seven Faces of Woman.

Herbert Kretzmer15:51

They were by seven different playwrights.

Herbert Kretzmer15:54

And they wanted a theme that would link them together.

Herbert Kretzmer15:57

and they asked me to write it for Marlene Dietrich.

Herbert Kretzmer16:01

But I didn't feel that she was right.

Herbert Kretzmer16:03

I thought a woman couldn't sing about the mysteries of being a woman without sounding unattractively knowing.

Herbert Kretzmer16:12

So I persuaded the producer, a man called Richard Doubleday.

Herbert Kretzmer16:17

that Dietrich was not a good idea, and suggested Asneburg, and out of it came she.

Herbert Kretzmer16:23

He played it for me once, I remember. The moment he hit that long, first extended note, the word she jumped into my brain.

Herbert Kretzmer16:31

And the song all hung from that first note, she.

Presenter16:36

She may be the face

Speaker 116:40

I can't forget a trace of pleasure or regret.

Speaker 116:45

Maybe my treasure are the price I have to pay.

Presenter17:05

Charles Aznavour and she, with lyrics of course by Mike Castaway, Herbert Kretzmer, that went to number one, didn't it?

Herbert Kretzmer17:11

We went to number one. What gave me particular pleasure in June 1974 was that when we went to number one, we knocked Gary Glitter off the top of the hit parade.

Herbert Kretzmer17:21

And um

Presenter17:21

And it's come round again, of course, because it was used in Notting Hill.

Herbert Kretzmer17:24

It was used in Nottinghill. It was used in an American film called Tadpole. It's becoming...

Herbert Kretzmer17:30

bit by bit, a kind of a standard way of introducing interesting characters, women.

Presenter17:36

You were forty nine when you wrote that. Was that written from personal experience?

Herbert Kretzmer17:40

She

Presenter17:41

Uh-huh.

Herbert Kretzmer17:41

Well, certainly uh it's no secret that

Herbert Kretzmer17:45

In the summer of 73, I had

Herbert Kretzmer17:48

Enjoyed what

Herbert Kretzmer17:49

You might call a luminous romance.

Herbert Kretzmer17:53

with a delightful girl from Ajordi.

Herbert Kretzmer17:56

And uh

Herbert Kretzmer17:58

When we broke up after some uh year or so, I remember saying to her,

Herbert Kretzmer18:04

In a pub.

Herbert Kretzmer18:06

in King's Road, called Man in the Moon, I think.

Herbert Kretzmer18:09

I said something along the lines of there'll be a song in this one day, or something like this. And six months later, when I was offered she,

Herbert Kretzmer18:16

She was very much in my mind when I was describing the personal attributes of a woman.

Herbert Kretzmer18:23

She whose eyes can be so private and so proud. She who always seems so happy in a crowd. All the references.

Herbert Kretzmer18:31

Personal references in that song were very uh accurately uh aimed.

Herbert Kretzmer18:37

At this dear lady who lives in California.

Presenter18:40

Yeah.

Herbert Kretzmer18:41

Yeah.

Presenter18:42

But this of course was all a sideline because your day job, you know, the background of all of this was in Fleet Street, wasn't it, throughout the fifties, I mean, seventeen years you spent on the Daily Express.

Herbert Kretzmer18:49

Yeah.

Herbert Kretzmer18:51

Oh, more than that. Yeah, a little more. I was 18 years on the express.

Presenter18:53

Thanks.

Presenter18:54

But that was when Fleet Street was really. And it was all that hot metal, the noise. It was hot metal then.

Herbert Kretzmer18:56

Well, I and it was all that

Herbert Kretzmer18:58

It was hot metal. The noise of the machines beneath your feet added a certain excitement. Everybody smoked cigarettes. Everybody wore hats. Everybody put their feet on the desk.

Herbert Kretzmer19:10

and had three or four hour lunches and yet managed to turn out a reasonably good newspaper in the morning. I know this all sounds like romantic lunchtime a boo stuff, but it was actually real. It was quite wonderful.

Presenter19:23

Let's pause there for record number five.

Herbert Kretzmer19:25

Which is a jazz record.

Herbert Kretzmer19:28

I have lived and loved jazz all my life and if I have to go to my desert island I would want to take a representative jazz record that expresses it as what somebody once called the music of goodness, of good. I just love it, and I think a good representative uh record

Herbert Kretzmer19:45

would be Louis Armstrong when he tied up back in 61 with Duke Ellington.

Herbert Kretzmer19:50

Trummy Young on Trombone and Barney Bigard and they did a number called

Herbert Kretzmer19:54

It don't mean a thing if you ain't got that swing, and I defy anybody not to feel a surge of pleasure.

Herbert Kretzmer20:00

When Mr. Armstrong takes the stand.

Presenter20:03

And all you got to do is sing.

Speaker 120:04

Yeah.

Speaker 120:06

Starlight limits the limit

Herbert Kretzmer20:12

Sweet or hard

Herbert Kretzmer20:15

Shout out.

Speaker 120:16

Yeah.

Speaker 120:17

Everything you got

Speaker 120:19

Oh, don't mean a thing, boy, if it ain't better than a swinger.

Speaker 120:26

Blah blah blah.

Speaker 120:28

Take it, Jummy.

Presenter20:32

Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, and it don't mean a thing. How many of the celebrities you were meeting and interviewing um during all of that time, Herbert, made a lasting impression on you, or were they simply grist to your mill?

Herbert Kretzmer20:44

Well, I met a great number of people, writers and fighters particularly, Steinbeck and Henry Miller and Muhammad Ali, George Foreman. Judy Garland, I spent roughly an hour or two with them, so this is not exactly a deeply based

Herbert Kretzmer20:58

friendship came out of any of these things.

Presenter21:00

Which of them still resonates with the other?

Herbert Kretzmer21:01

Those who resonated mainly were, I would say, two American writers, three, Steinbeck.

Herbert Kretzmer21:09

uh who I met here at the Dorchester

Herbert Kretzmer21:11

Truman Capote, who was endlessly quotable, endlessly amusing. My God, he was a one-man three-ring circus.

Herbert Kretzmer21:19

and Henry Miller.

Herbert Kretzmer21:21

All of them were extraordinary men.

Presenter21:24

Your char lady, I understand, because of all these celebrity contacts you had, was often sort of taken. Well, there was one thing.

Herbert Kretzmer21:29

Well, there was one famous occasion. I don't want to be too name-droppy here, but I had one phone call in my life from Carrie Grant and one in my life from Judy Garland.

Herbert Kretzmer21:41

both of whom called within the same hour while I was out.

Herbert Kretzmer21:46

I came back and I said to the child lady, whose name was Mrs. Sydenham,

Herbert Kretzmer21:50

The Denver call while I was out, misses Sidden, and she looked at me with her eyes absolutely popping with shock and awe.

Herbert Kretzmer21:57

and said

Herbert Kretzmer21:58

Carrie Grant and Judy Garland.

Herbert Kretzmer22:01

And she almost fell back.

Herbert Kretzmer22:04

As did I, be I never heard from him again, by the way.

Presenter22:07

She probably put him off. And then, of course, there was Peter Sellers, whom you did know really quite well. How did he come to commission you to write Goodness Grace?

Herbert Kretzmer22:15

Peter was making a movie called The Millionaires based on Shaw's play.

Herbert Kretzmer22:22

And he was making a scene with Sophia Lorraine and he phoned me up, he said, I play an Indian doctor and Sophia plays a patient whose heartbeat fascinates me. And even though we cannot use the song in the film,

Herbert Kretzmer22:37

I would like to see whether we can fashion uh some sort of little novelty song out of that situation. To promote it, to promote the song, to bring it to the attention of the nation.

Herbert Kretzmer22:47

The brief was so impossibly dense and complex, the Indian doctor, the heartbeat, how do you get all this into a

Herbert Kretzmer22:54

Comic song

Herbert Kretzmer22:55

And on the last day, Dave Lee, my composer, came in and came up with that boom, titty, boom, titty, boom, titty, boom little riff.

Herbert Kretzmer23:04

Well, the moment he did that, it was like a door opening. It all came in about ninety seconds, and it became, goodness gracious me.

Presenter23:12

I'm in trouble.

Herbert Kretzmer23:14

Will

Speaker 323:14

Well, goodness gracious me!

Presenter23:17

For every time a certain man is standing next to me

Speaker 323:21

Mm-hmm.

Presenter23:21

A flash comes to my face And my pulse begins to race It goes boom booty boom booty boom booty boom booty boom boody boom boody boom boom boom Boom booty boom boody boom booty boom

Speaker 323:34

Well, goodness gracious me!

Herbert Kretzmer23:34

Uh

Speaker 323:37

How often does this happen?

Presenter23:40

That is terrific. Goodness Great as Me. Peter Sellers and Sophie Loren, of course, written by my costaway, Herbert Kretzmer. Bangers and Mash on the other side, also one of yours, also a hit. But Peter Sellers himself, not the easiest of.

Herbert Kretzmer23:53

Well, I mean Geor George Martin, who produced Goodness Gracious Me and Brangens and Mash, told me uh years later that they practically had a drag Peter

Herbert Kretzmer24:01

out of bed on that Saturday morning to go and record, goodness gracious me. Peter had gone cold on it, as he uh alas, he went cold on

Herbert Kretzmer24:09

On so many projects.

Herbert Kretzmer24:11

He is a man who had no belief in his own system of judgments. He he lived in terror of making the wrong decisions and consequently he made a great number of wrong decisions, I think. He left a lot of wreckage in his wake, but my own memories of him are all of wonderful fellowship and a lot of laughs.

Presenter24:31

You also wrote in the sixties some very different material, um, social comment satire, because you got involved with um Ned Sherron and that was a very good idea.

Herbert Kretzmer24:38

Not at first, not at first. It wasn't until they were actually recording the first L P of T W three material that Ned Sharon asked me to write for That Was the Wick That Was. And when I said I didn't think I had the

Herbert Kretzmer24:52

The power to do those sort of songs. He said, Anybody who can write, Goodness Gracious Me, can write, well, that was the week that was.

Presenter24:58

Is there a piece looking back that you would class as the most effective piece you wrote for?

Herbert Kretzmer25:04

Well, it was the time that the civil rights workers were shot by white racists in the American South.

Herbert Kretzmer25:10

So we dreamed up a song called

Herbert Kretzmer25:13

I want to go back to Mississippi, which Millie Martin sang.

Herbert Kretzmer25:17

with a chorus of

Herbert Kretzmer25:19

dancers and singers, dressed like the black and white minstrels.

Herbert Kretzmer25:23

So and she was dressed in fishnet stockings with an Uncle Sam glittering top hat.

Herbert Kretzmer25:28

And it was all based on Happy Black Carnival songs.

Herbert Kretzmer25:32

But the words themselves were angry and bitter.

Presenter25:36

Can you quote them?

Herbert Kretzmer25:39

I want to go back to Mississippi.

Herbert Kretzmer25:42

where the scent of blossoms kiss the evening breeze.

Herbert Kretzmer25:45

where the Mississippi mud kind of mingles with the blood of the niggers who are hanging from the branches of the trees.

Herbert Kretzmer25:54

It was a song which Millie Martin really gulped.

Herbert Kretzmer25:58

When she saw the lyric.

Herbert Kretzmer26:01

Certainly I was proud of that song.

Presenter26:03

Was that informed at all by

Presenter26:06

Kretzma the White South African.

Herbert Kretzmer26:09

What I was aware of in South Africa, even though as I say it was a sweet and idyllic childhood, I was very much aware that a life we were living in South Africa

Herbert Kretzmer26:18

was due to one thing which had nothing to do with us, which was the the privilege of a white skin.

Herbert Kretzmer26:24

and earned, unased for, and sought.

Herbert Kretzmer26:27

So that idea of the inequalities based on race.

Herbert Kretzmer26:31

and colour.

Herbert Kretzmer26:33

has always struck me all my life as one of the great injustices.

Presenter26:37

Record number seven.

Herbert Kretzmer26:38

Of all the famous songwriters, and my favourite without a doubt is Richard Rogers, there is a freshness and a melodic inventiveness about him which never ceases to

Herbert Kretzmer26:49

Delight me. I'm particularly keen on his walzes. The one I like is

Herbert Kretzmer26:54

The Carousel Waltz.

Herbert Kretzmer26:56

It's touching, it's mysterious, and it carries an undertone of menace.

Presenter27:30

The Carousel Wolfs from Rogers and Hamstein's Carousel played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Paul Gemagnani.

Presenter27:37

Um so, Herbert, you're now um approaching, if I'm allowed to say so, the end of your eighth decade. Which makes you sound older than you are, you're seventy eight. Um still working. I mean, that's the beauty of such a talent, isn't it? That, you know, if the words keep flowing, you can go on doing it forever.

Speaker 127:44

Uh

Herbert Kretzmer27:44

Yeah.

Herbert Kretzmer27:45

I don't think it's MDA.

Herbert Kretzmer27:52

Well, I just love now just thinking about songs and writing songs. And for the last few years, I've been working with the two men from EBBA, Benny Anderson and Bjorn Ulveus. They asked me to join them for a new musical which is based upon a bestseller in Sweden called The Emigrants. It concerns a group of Swedes going to Minnesota.

Herbert Kretzmer28:14

In the middle of the 19th century,

Herbert Kretzmer28:16

And the focus is on Christina.

Presenter28:18

But it's quite a sad tale, isn't it? It's quite a melancholy tale.

Herbert Kretzmer28:21

Yes, Christina never loses her sense of never going back.

Herbert Kretzmer28:26

She put such a distance between her origins and where she grew up and where she died.

Herbert Kretzmer28:34

that there are obviously autobiographical echoes and undertones with me.

Presenter28:39

In a sense, again, it's this theme of immigrants knowing in their bones that they're never going back again to where they came from.

Herbert Kretzmer28:47

Yes, that is absolutely central to uh my view of myself.

Presenter28:51

But there was something, was there not important that you did when finally blacks got the vote in South Africa?

Herbert Kretzmer28:58

Well, I was under the impression that I wasn't allowed to vote in that election because I had long since relinquished my South African passport.

Herbert Kretzmer29:06

But I was told that the very fact that I

Herbert Kretzmer29:09

was born in South Africa.

Herbert Kretzmer29:11

Entitled me.

Herbert Kretzmer29:13

To vote.

Herbert Kretzmer29:15

I rushed off to South Africa House and for £37, £25 for the passport and £12 for some sort of stamp anyway, gave me the right. It was all rushed through in about 24 hours and I was able to take my place, Central Hall, Westminster.

Herbert Kretzmer29:31

and vote in that election.

Herbert Kretzmer29:32

That gave me enormous pleasure and a sense of homecoming. You don't have to go home, but I still have links with that country.

Presenter29:40

Tell me about your last record.

Herbert Kretzmer29:41

I've always been intrigued by Eric Sarty's Gymnopedia. I would play it.

Herbert Kretzmer29:46

At the end of the day, as the sun went down and I was feeling thoroughly miserable, I would play.

Herbert Kretzmer29:52

this thing because it would reinforce my feeling of isolation and loneliness.

Presenter30:52

Part of Erik Zarti's Gymnopody, played by Yitkin Xiao.

Presenter30:57

Now, Herbert Kretzmer, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take?

Herbert Kretzmer31:01

I would take the last one. I would take the gymnopedi because it's what better record for a soul lost on a desert island than a song that in a way celebrates loneliness.

Presenter31:12

What about your book? Yeah.

Herbert Kretzmer31:14

The book I would want to take with me, I want to be greedy and take the new dictionary of quotations, which was selected and edited by H. L. Mencken.

Herbert Kretzmer31:23

Back in nineteen forty two.

Presenter31:24

And if I say to you, the rule is that you can't take a reference book of any kind.

Herbert Kretzmer31:28

Then you'll start.

Presenter31:29

Then you're stumped.

Herbert Kretzmer31:32

Then I would take uh

Herbert Kretzmer31:34

A book

Herbert Kretzmer31:35

called The Great War in Modern Memory.

Herbert Kretzmer31:38

By Professor Paul Fussell.

Herbert Kretzmer31:40

One of the most remarkable books about the First World War.

Herbert Kretzmer31:43

I've ever read, and if anybody hasn't read it, I urge you to do so. It is a revelation.

Presenter31:49

And what about a luxury?

Herbert Kretzmer31:51

Am I allowed a Zippo lighter? Of course. Because it would be tantamount to the man's discovery of fire.

Herbert Kretzmer31:58

If I had a lighter

Herbert Kretzmer31:59

I could light beacons in case any ships pass by.

Presenter32:02

Oh no, you can't no no no, you've just got to sit and flick it and enjoy flicking. You know, you can't you can't use it for any practical purpose. That's another rule.

Herbert Kretzmer32:09

That's another rule. But it would make a fire, I'd be able to cook with it.

Presenter32:13

Listen, what's good with a Faro?

Herbert Kretzmer32:14

What good would a Ferrari do me on a desert island? I insist on my Zippo lighter.

Presenter32:19

I give in, I give in. Herbert Gretzmer, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert islands.

Herbert Kretzmer32:23

Thank you. It's been a pleasure being here.

Presenter32:32

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.