Alan Price

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Speaker 10:05

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1982, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Speaker 30:30

This week our castaway is the musician Alan Price.

Alan Price0:34

Howard do you collect discs?

Alan Price0:36

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 I now I don't. It's only albums that I'm given or I uh I I have by happenstance.

Speaker 30:47

Did you find it very hard to select just eight disks for a desert island?

Alan Price0:51

Yes, I think so. I think anyone faced with this kind of choice could make, I think, about a dozen programmes. What we have now is my second list,'cause I lost the first.

Speaker 31:00

What was your plan? Is it nostalgic?

Alan Price1:03

Yes, I think that uh what I set out to do was to choose records which have some sort of memory for me, because I think that the basic principle of the programme would be you'd have to have music to sustain you in this island of yours.

Speaker 31:16

Where do we start? What's the first one?

Alan Price1:18

I think my earliest childhood memory is of dancing in the corner to the radio and this particular record is obviously the 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.

Speaker 32:35

The theme music of Housewives' Choice after all these years, and I find it's called In Party Mood and it was written by Jack Strachey.

Speaker 32:43

You were born in the northeastern county, Durton Island.

Alan Price2:46

Yes, Fatfield. A village. Well, it was a village. Now it's a roundabout. Oh, no.

Speaker 32:50

Oh no.

Speaker 32:52

Now, we all know that the area had a pretty rough time, but you were born during the war when industry was pretty hard at work.

Alan Price2:59

Yes, it took a war to actually bring some employment back to the North East. I was fortunate, as I say, because I lived out in a village and my father worked in a light industrial plant. You had the misfortune to lose your father when you were very young. Yes, he was killed in an industrial accident and it was uh

Alan Price3:15

Well, like it would be to anybody. It was an important event. Uh, it changed my life really. In that we moved from the country to live with my grandmother in a place called Jarrow.

Speaker 33:24

I come from a big family.

Alan Price3:25

No, small. I only have one brother, but fortunately we are we are close because he runs my office for me and looks after my affairs.

Alan Price3:31

So you were at Jarrow Grammar School. What were you good at?

Alan Price3:35

English. And mainly because of the encouragement I received from the teacher himself, who was a a wonderful man, called Mr Akum. Beekey 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?

Alan Price3:54

My father had uh two brothers, and they all either sang or played the piano.

Alan Price3:57

When they all played by ear, my brother was taught.

Alan Price4:00

And, um, 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 the pub, everybody'd stand around and had to do their piece. Mhm. It was required of you.

Speaker 34:12

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 34:14

Were you given lessons or did you have to learn?

Alan Price4:15

No, no, I'm self-defense.

Speaker 34:17

Now, you started to perform quite well.

Alan Price4:20

Durley.

Speaker 44:20

Mm-hmm.

Alan Price4:21

I think it was mainly because of the Skiffle explosion, Lonnie Donegan. He proved that you could actually make music with a guitar and and and three chords and uh there were there were groups on every street. Every town had a group and uh every street had a group and I was just part of uh probably say about half a million people who started to really take an interest in music at that age.

Speaker 34:40

So you've started banging about with the little skiffle group at local functions.

Alan Price4:42

A blog

Alan Price4:43

When I was about twelve years old.

Speaker 34:45

What was the very first fee you received?

Alan Price4:48

No, you're not.

Speaker 34:48

No, you're not.

Alan Price4:50

I think when I was about fourteen and we got ten shillings between the six of us.

Speaker 34:54

50p. Good. Record number two.

Alan Price5:00

is a version, uh a a very attractive version of a song written by Hoy Con Michael called uh Stardust, and the singer is a Country and Western man in America who has made what's called a a crossover, who has uh moved out the area of just Country and Western and has broad appeal, and his name is Willie Nelson.

Speaker 45:19

A paradise where roses grew

Speaker 45:24

And though I dream in vain

Speaker 45:29

In my heart.

Speaker 45:32

There always will remain.

Speaker 45:38

My star does mellow

Speaker 45:42

The memory of love's refrain

Speaker 35:49

Willie Nelson singing Stardust

Speaker 35:51

So you started at the age of fourteen as a semi professional musician to the extent of getting a a sixth share of ten shillings. Now you moved up from there what, talent contests?

Alan Price6:02

Yes, I appeared on the Carol Levis Show, but before that I had a group at school, but there was also a better piano player than me called Frankie Hedley 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 round the northeast uh places to play. And uh it was playing at a church at a rock club run by a very hip vicar in a place called Biker, a suburb of Newcastle, that uh I went to play with Frankie Hedley Five. 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, and who played very original music that I hadn't heard before, jazz bass and a lot of blues music, and uh the singer was particularly good.

Alan Price6:48

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 to join them. And that group was then called the Pagans. But it was the nucleus of a a group that was later to be known as the Animals. Where did the title, The Animals, come from? Well, um, eventually we we ended up playing for uh a load of fellows who were called the Squatters. They were the rough edge of youth hostlers who weren't allowed, because they broke up the youth hostlers, to sleep so they used to sleep rough in sleeping bags and go out to uh market towns in Northumberland that y that had alcohol on all day. And we used to be their resident entertainers, myself and Eric Burden. I used to play the piano and he sang. And uh their leader was a guy called Animal Hogg.

Alan Price7:28

And um 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 uh the name just gradually evolved.

Speaker 37:40

By this time you were firmly resolved you were going to be a professional musician.

Alan Price7:43

I couldn't feel there was any other way. I was a civil servant for five years. I was in the inland revenue. But uh I played a lot part time. And it was of an age, you know, 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.

Speaker 38:00

What what about the Inland Revenue? Was any part of it interesting?

Alan Price8:04

Yes, the security of having to turn up and see the same forty people every day. I think there's something slightly seductive and uh sort of wom like about uh having an office job.

Speaker 38:16

Was it a big step to quit?

Speaker 38:17

No.

Alan Price8:18

Yeah I I was enormously frustrated.

Alan Price8:20

You either are ambitious or you you feel that, you know, you'll take life as it comes, but I felt that I had to change my life and I wasn't satisfied. And you had started to play the org?

Speaker 38:29

were the animals.

Alan Price8:30

Mainly because all pianos were badly treated out of tune, so you had to take an instrument around with you. Uh I mean, I di I hated the organ, I still do, because it's not a very responsive instrument. But uh at least you were certain of having something in tune.

Speaker 38:43

So you were making a living playing gigs around the North East.

Alan Price8:47

No, I wasn't making a living. No. Within a month of leaving the Inland Revenue, I'd we were down in London. Who was looking after you?

Alan Price8:54

We were looked after by a manager called Michael Jeffery who unfortunately got killed in an air crash, but he gave us our first opportunity as a band because he opened up nightclubs in the North East. Very smart and clever man with a lot of vision. And uh he opened it up for us and came down and made, you know, uh negotiations. We actually swapped with a group called the Yardbirds. They came up to Newcastle and we went down to London and played their gigs.

Speaker 39:17

Yet

Alan Price9:18

And uh it happened all very uh very quickly. Within three months we were in the charts and within five months we were number one in Britain and uh and America. Were you writing numbers by this time?

Alan Price9:30

Very poor ones. It was it wasn't until a a a lot of years had gone by when I actually had enough confidence to put my name to any compositions and be sure of

Speaker 39:40

So really at that time there were three big groups. It was the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Animals. I mean, you were that big. Mhm. Were were you making a lot of money?

Alan Price9:47

Yeah.

Alan Price9:50

I never saw it. We were very young and innocent and uh

Alan Price9:55

Up till the the day I left the animals I was on fifty pound a week expenses and I never really saw it. It was like the gold rush. I don't think it was premeditated. 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 sixties and what happened then, no one could have planned what was going to happen or even could have foresaw the enormous impact that

Alan Price10:18

What you might call untutored musicians and very young people, uh, what sort of effect it would have.

Alan Price10:25

Yeah.

Speaker 310:25

You were right at the top and you quit. Was it because you felt you weren't getting a square deal?

Alan Price10:31

Perhaps instinctively I felt deep down, but I had an enormous fear of flying.

Alan Price10:36

And uh I still do, but I manage mi I debt really d gets rid of a lot of phobias. And so I managed now to force myself on an airplane, but very irregularly. But in in those days I felt also it made you uh live too fast a lifestyle. Uh it had always been my ambition, for instance, to go to America, but not to go to America and be locked in hotel rooms and just appear in huge stadia and uh and not see what life was all about. And after about fifteen months I just felt totally uh dried out.

Speaker 110:58

Yeah.

Speaker 310:58

Mm.

Speaker 311:06

So what did you do? You you went to the

Alan Price11:07

I ran away. I ran back to Newcastle and lived in a little flat for about six months till I sorted out really what I wanted to do and I felt that I'd j just had a bad start and uh I had to start all over again. Well, on that Uh

Speaker 311:20

Down, let's pause for your third disc.

Alan Price11:24

I think that if I was lost on this desert island with um a lot of time to be introspective, I think I'd have to listen again to uh The House of the Rising Sun. I remember the player write David Story once saying that uh your life only changes once, and I think this record, The House of the Rising Sun by the Animals, was the thing that changed my life forever.

Speaker 411:49

There is a house in New Orleans.

Speaker 411:55

Be cold around

Speaker 412:01

Let it speak!

Speaker 412:03

Better rule it

Speaker 412:04

Or menu for a boy.

Speaker 312:13

The House of the Rising Sun

Speaker 312:15

I hope that you got your royalties for that, because that must be a very valuable property.

Alan Price12:21

Yes, it's uh always been a bone of contention within the Animals because it was a cooperative group and they felt that I ought to have uh split the royalties five ways. But because it's uh traditional composition, the Performing Rights Society, who distribute the money that is earned from the performing rights of these records, felt that there's only a twelfth of uh the arrangement was original, so I only s receive a twelfth of the money.

Speaker 312:43

112. Well, even so, you must have had countless radio plays all over the world.

Alan Price12:48

Yes, I received a badge the other day from the American equ the equivalent organization in America called the Broadcast Music Incorporated. And it's a black badge. You can see I'm wearing it now with the two on the bottom. And they sent me a letter saying wear it with pride and it means that it the record has was played for the two millionth time. Two million plays in the States. Mhm. And having a lot of time in my dressing room at the moment, I worked out that as the record is four minutes twenty seconds long, if you multiply two million times four minutes twenty seconds, it comes out to roughly sixteen years.

Speaker 113:09

Bye.

Speaker 313:23

Right, let's go back to that time when you equipped the animals and you were sitting perhaps morosely in a flat in Newcastle thinking things out. What did you do?

Alan Price13:30

Next

Alan Price13:31

Well, I played football a lot and uh swam in the North Sea, which is quite uh invigorating if you know where it is. And uh

Speaker 313:37

Yeah.

Alan Price13:40

I decided that I would have to play again and I started my own band called the Allam Price Set.

Speaker 313:44

How close was it to the animals in sound? Or was it quite different?

Alan Price13:47

It was quite different, I think, because my main hero was Ray Charles, and uh he had a band with a baritone, saxophone and a and a trumpet. So in other words, had a front line of wood, wind, and brass, and I felt that was a thing that I'd missed a lot.

Alan Price14:00

And you had a lot of hits with that band. Yes, oh yeah. And half a dozen.

Alan Price14:04

I didn't see much at the time.

Alan Price14:07

Because I was I was constantly trying to rid myself of the animal's spectre. 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.

Speaker 314:19

Well, great success again. Success comparable with the animals.

Alan Price14:24

Near. Not worldwide. I only had a one hit in America. English speaking countries took kindly to me. New Zealand and Australia and South Africa and what have you. But, um

Alan Price14:34

I don't think anything could ever compare with that success, because it was part of an era, the animals, as you named it, were part of the triumvirate of the Stones and the Beatles, and mine was just the following on. Very second division, I would call it.

Speaker 314:45

And once again, Alan Price and his friends up to the top and at the top you quit.

Alan Price14:50

The band got bigger.

Alan Price14:52

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.

Alan Price15:00

And um I had a eleven piece band and about four road managers and my expenses and we're talking about the middle sixties now were a minimum of two thousand pound a week. And I don't know, if allowing for a 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 earn treble the money and it be just became too big uh a unit for me to run. So it wasn't a fact that I ran away from any sort of success, it was just that I felt that I couldn't uh maintain that um

Speaker 315:30

Lifestyle. So another rethinking, and in the meantime, what's record number four? You find

Alan Price15:36

Most musicians.

Alan Price15:37

Can't dance. And uh 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, Dion Warwick, and Marvin Gere. And they were all I mean, it was a very talented crew, and underneath was Muhammad Ali on the floor below.

Speaker 315:57

On the floor below.

Alan Price15:59

And next door to me was Marvin Gere.

Speaker 315:59

Got it.

Alan Price16:02

And this record is a nice one to dance to, and it's called I Heard It Through the Grapevine.

Alan Price16:08

Good. Uh

Speaker 416:09

Talk to yourself that you love someone else instead of her grapevine.

Speaker 416:20

That month's long would you be mad?

Speaker 416:24

Oh, I heard through the great mind.

Speaker 416:28

And I'm just about to lose my mind and holy heart.

Speaker 316:36

I HEARD IT Through the Grapevine by Marvin Gaye.

Speaker 316:40

Alan, Lindsay Anderson, the stage and film director, has been in and out of your life a lot. He first came on the scene about now, after you had given up the orchestra.

Alan Price16:49

Yes, I was I you go through these periods of R and R, I think they call it in the forces, rest and recuperation, where you you try and uh take a good look at your life. Because the the kind of life I lead is quite intense. You need a lot of energy. You you you do have to take a time out where you just sit and try and collect yourself.

Speaker 316:57

Yeah.

Alan Price17:08

And um

Alan Price17:11

I was living in Belgravia, just round the corner from the Royal Court Theatre, and uh I'd I'd met Lindsay Anderson, who

Alan Price17:17

then I'd heard was a famous both film and theatre director. I knew nothing about him, was a world I knew nothing about. And he asked for an introduction because he felt that I'd I'd written a a hit writer called Simon Smith and The Amazing Dancing Bear. He was under a misapprehension because that was written by Randy Newman, an American writer. But I met him and he asked me if I was interested in being in films or in the theater and I said no.

Alan Price17:39

But he kept in touch with 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, with Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud in it. He asked me if I had any spare tunes. And I sent him round a tape and he used that music in his play. So I struck 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 round the country. And uh it was the start of that relationship which involved me eventually working with him in O Lucky Man. In the meantime he went back

Alan Price18:21

Into the pod. I'm going to go to the next one.

Speaker 318:22

But

Alan Price18:23

Partnership with Georgiev. Fame. What was your th

Speaker 318:24

Uh

Alan Price18:25

Thinking though.

Speaker 318:26

Yeah.

Alan Price18:26

Georgie Fay and I first met when we came down to London.

Alan Price18:29

And he was o always had been a sort of idol of mine. He's a brilliant keyboard player, especially organ player.

Alan Price18:36

And uh when I was living up in Newcastle, wishing I was down in London, I used to buy newspapers 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. And 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 within a few days he came round and heard the band, came backstage and told us we were good.

Alan Price18:59

and uh to keep at it. And I never forgot that. Eventually when I started on my own I went with the same agency as him and uh we always had a lot of things in common.

Alan Price19:08

And I respect his work very much.

Speaker 319:10

That was an enjoyable period.

Alan Price19:11

Yes, three years. Well, sharing the lime rate is always good. The same as being second on the bill is a marvellous thing to be. You don't have to carry full responsibility, but you still get the glory of it, and it was very nice to share the load with someone.

Speaker 319:24

Now you've written all these successful numbers, and of course the music for O Lucky Man, which I seem to remember was a very long film and must have needed a lot of music. How d how do you compose it? You're a self taught musician. Can you write music fluently? Can you score?

Alan Price19:32

How d

Alan Price19:38

No, I use a tape recorder and uh 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. Uh it's a v 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.

Alan Price20:01

Record number five.

Alan Price20:02

Now this is someone who is enormously uh talented and uh takes a a very simple tune that most of us know called Body and Soul and does marvellous 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

Alan Price20:20

That there has ever been, and that includes classical players, and his name is Art Teatham, and here he is playing Body and Soul.

Speaker 321:27

Art Tatum and Body and Soul.

Speaker 321:31

A very, very varied career.

Speaker 321:34

And even more varied now because you took a starring part in a film Alpha Darling.

Alan Price21:39

I dare was that.

Alan Price21:41

Mine.

Alan Price21:42

I really am the innocent abroad actually. Because I I I felt that making films is gonna be obviously easier than going out in the road sitting on buses for hours on end and, um

Alan Price21:51

The hellish life that life on the road as a rock and roll musician is. And I thought making films was going to be simpler. So I saw I was offered this film called Alfie Darling, which was the follow-up to Alfie, and I thought, Oh, this is going to be easier Well, I was quite wrong and because I signed a contract which said you have to work the hours of daylight and they hired me during the summer. So I was getting up at five o'clock in the morning, working at ten o'clock at night for twelve weeks and they also wanted me to write the score. So from pre-production to the film being released and being promoted, it took nearly a year out of my life.

Alan Price22:22

It was a big mistake. And I'm not an actor really. I'm not not a very good actor at all. And uh it was a great mistake.

Speaker 322:29

You were following Michael Kane, who had played the original Alfie. So Alfie had changed his accent a bit.

Alan Price22:35

Yes, they did actually try to get me to lose mine. I was sent up to uh

Alan Price22:39

The Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, where somebody tried to make me lose my accent. Well, it didn't try to make me. I mean, they give me tips on it. And

Alan Price22:47

You had to do things like you had to put a little plastic piece between your teeth, which forces your jaw, and I'll try and demonstrate it for you family.

Speaker 322:55

Yes, it's rather like a punch and julie man with his swazzle.

Alan Price22:57

Yes, you put it in between your teeth. I'll try and do it now. You talk like this. It makes you make it round your mouth out terribly. Uh you can hear what I'm doing now.

Speaker 323:08

Yeah, but Alfie's supposed to be a cockney, he wouldn't talk sort of.

Alan Price23:11

No, I just it was meant to be working class. But I th they felt that the Geordie accent was so thick and strong that they would never understand the film in America.

Alan Price23:20

And so they tried to make me lose it. And uh it was it was an honourable draw. I learned how to do it, but I refused to on principle. Right, record number six.

Alan Price23:28

When I was eleven years old at grammar school there was a a teacher who doubled as a math teacher and music teacher called Eddie Bryce, who uh took myself and some other boys from school up to hear the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Alan Price23:45

And uh it was the first time I'd been in a concert hall.

Alan Price23:48

and they were playing Ratmarinoff's variations on a theme by Paganini and we were all giggling and joking and and laughing, you know, boys out on a on a spree.

Alan Price23:59

and we were listening to this piece of music, and when the violins came in it I was nearly moved to tears, and it was quite a shocking moment for me.

Alan Price24:08

And uh the piece I have chosen, which is orchestral, and uh I prob I probably would need on a desert island is the uh Beethoven's Symphony No. Six. And because it all is all Beethoven is very powerful, you can just drop the needle where you will, and I think what we have chosen is the storm.

Speaker 325:26

Part of the storm music from Beethoven Symphony No. Six, the pastoral, Carlo Maria Giulini conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.

Speaker 325:35

A few recent happenings, Alan. Music for another play by David Storey, Early Days.

Alan Price25:41

Yes, I did there a few, there was the farm and uh

Alan Price25:47

They were mainly all collaborations with Lindsey Anderson.

Speaker 325:50

And a couple more films, Plague Dogged.

Alan Price25:53

Yes, that's uh an animated film, it's the same man who did Watership Down chose this book.

Alan Price25:59

And uh I wrote the same tune for that, yes. And another Lindsay Anderson film. Yes, Britannia Hospital.

Alan Price26:06

A black comedy again, which uh had the misfortune, because it poked fun at the establishment and the country, had the misfortune to be released during the time of the Falklands crisis where I think w everybody in the end is patriotic, I'm afraid. Nationalism rides very high in all of us and uh I the film has to be re-released because it was a genuinely it's a great piece of work and Lindsay is a wonderful director. And it's sad that sometimes that um national events overtake a piece of work which t is about three or four years in the planning, in the making.

Speaker 326:36

And a musical play that's running in London at the moment, Andy Capp. You wrote the music for that?

Alan Price26:40

Mm-hmm.

Alan Price26:41

Uh was an idea I had when I was in California. I suffered in America where they 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 and provincial, writing about England, especially about the working class, and writing songs about hunger marches. And I felt it was very difficult to sell me in America. And I picked up the Los Angeles Times and in it was the cartoon strip Andy Cap, which actually depicts life as I knew it in the North East when I was a child. And I felt if there's anything parochial it's that. And here it is selling. And then I found I made inquiries and found out it was in about eight hundred 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 Andy Cap drinks alcohol. And uh I felt well if I could marry my music to this character then I'd have something which would make some money.

Speaker 327:24

Is it really

Speaker 127:25

Yeah.

Speaker 327:37

And you're appearing in the show too.

Alan Price27:39

Yes.

Alan Price27:40

Record number seven is my idol, really, someone who.

Alan Price27:45

Impress me.

Alan Price27:47

When I heard him, a wonderful piano player, a wonderful soulful singer with a lot of the church in him, and uh we're going to play uh the most emotive part of the record, which is towards the end of it. It has to be heard in its entirety because time is pressing. We'll hear the end of Ray Charles, a wonderful singer, singing uh Country and Western tune, and he does some marvellous things with it, and it's called Drown in My Own Tears.

Speaker 428:15

Well, that should be her one soon.

Speaker 428:21

It's alright.

Speaker 428:25

Said, I believe that I'm gonna try.

Speaker 428:33

You know sometimes when I hear you sing this song, it makes me wanna

Speaker 328:39

Gray shadows.

Speaker 328:41

Alan, you're a husky lad. How good would you be at looking after yourself on a desert island?

Alan Price28:47

Uh 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'd get very bored.

Speaker 328:56

Have you got any practical skills? Are you I can talk a lot.

Speaker 329:00

Sorry, keep yourself amused. I didn't notice that, it's fine. What about fishing?

Alan Price29:01

I just keep myself on you.

Alan Price29:05

Well, I've done that before, but I find it pretty gruesome taking the hook out of the mouth. Yes, I could do it. I mean, desperation, you know. Could you escape?

Alan Price29:14

I don't think I'd want to. I think I'd I'd be afraid. I'm not the best swimmer in the world.

Speaker 329:19

Don't do that one.

Speaker 129:19

Uh

Alan Price29:20

No, I'm one of these people who always fancies something. When the practical side of it comes up, I I tend to fall to bits. I've been on a boat. I took a a yacht once around the Greek islands and the Meltami was in force, that's the equivalent of the Mistral, and I was very, very seasick, and I gave up after about five days. Were you navigating? No, no, no, no, no, no. I was just being sick.

Speaker 329:39

Yeah. Uh

Speaker 429:39

Yeah.

Alan Price29:42

I think this is a marvellous thing to finish with. Be having had to record myself and not particularly enjoying the process. It's quite a plastic experience going in the studios and trying to create emotion that when you hear 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.

Speaker 430:12

Bring a new pop

Speaker 430:15

No matter kiss for me, this nobody kiss for me.

Speaker 430:27

I'm so sad and woolly, all lonely, lonely, lonely. Won't some sweet mother come and rescue me? Cause I ain't no

Speaker 130:27

I'm so sad and good.

Speaker 330:39

Louis Prima, I hain't got nobody.

Speaker 330:42

If you could only take one disk, which would it be?

Alan Price30:45

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.

Alan Price30:53

And one luxury.

Alan Price30:54

A piano.

Alan Price30:56

Because I'm self taught. It it would always amuse me. And I I'm trying to be smart. I thought of it the other day, is that it's the sort of calendar I could burn a key and still have an octave to play with after about three months.

Speaker 131:00

Uh

Speaker 331:08

It's a really good thing.

Speaker 331:10

And one book. You've got the the works of Shakespeare and the Bible already on the island.

Alan Price31:15

Wind and the Willows.

Speaker 331:16

Right. And thank you, Alan Price, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Alan Price31:21

It was a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Speaker 331:22

Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 131:49

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