Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Eight records
The First Time Ever I Saw Your FaceFavourite
as a songwriter, if ever I could choose one song that I wish I'd written, I wish I'd have written this song, because it stands up as a poem as well, some superb lines in it
I've always loved traditional Irish music and ... a song one of the loveliest of all traditional Irish songs
my first conscious memory of comedy, which I've drifted into, and I've always loved a humor of observation. And to me, the greatest comedian of of life's observation was the great radio comic, Al Reid.
The Crowd at Cardiff Arms Park
this is a song, well it's not a song, it's our anthem, the Welsh national anthem. ... I think again when my spirits are down on this island, you've cast me away on. I think I'd like to hear the crowd at Cardiff Arms Park singing Hern Laden Hadai, Land of My Fathers.
I've always loved reggae music ... my all-time reggae favourite
my particular favourite traditional Welsh folk song is a song called Hiraith, which is means longing. And maybe the people that feel it most are those away from home.
I deliberated uh very much which Welsh tenor I would choose. But I thought rather than spare any embarrassment I've gone for perhaps the greatest tenor in the world, certainly my favourite
I thought maybe I would need of in the need of spiritual uplifting after being on this island for so long. I remember singing in choirs when I was much younger and and thrilling to the sound of Hanel's Messiah
The keepsakes
The book
Laurie Lee
it's only a little book ... it had a great impression on me when it was sent to me when I was very low at one time ... the title, Being on an Island, it says, I can't stay long
The luxury
Oil painting equipment (easels, canvases, paints)
I've always wanted to dabble in oils ... I would take whatever it needs to paint with oils, easels and canvases ... Paint the dawn of my island
In conversation
Presenter asks
I believe your father was killed in a mining accident. How old were you at that time?
I hadn't been born actually. It was it was two weeks or three weeks before I was um actually born, so obviously I never knew my father.
Presenter asks
Do you think you had a happy childhood?
I never wanted for anything. We had a very we are a very close family. Some people say to me that uh or it's been put to me that the entertainer in me is nothing more than the cry of the fatherless child. But I don't think that's quite true because I never saw a need, I must admit, because of the closeness of my family and they all rallied around and my uncles and my grandfather especially was a great influence in me and he became my father figure. So I never saw any great need of love and generally it was a very yeah very happy childhood.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 1
Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.
Speaker 1
For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1983.
Speaker 1
And the presenter was Roy Plumley.
Presenter
On our Desert Island this week is the entertainer, Max Boyce. Max, have you ever imagined yourself as a Robinson Crusoe?
Presenter
No, not really. I I don't think I'd be
Max Boyce
Very good at either. I like people. Do you think the eight records would help very much? Some of them would help and some would would even cast me into greater gloom. Did you have any plan in choosing them?
Max Boyce
Um, I thought about it a great deal and uh
Max Boyce
The trouble was there were could have been about thirty or forty, I think, or I could have equ could have been as good, but having to choose eight was very, very difficult. Do you think you've chosen?
Presenter
Yeah.
Max Boyce
Nostalgically or because it's music that would last.
Max Boyce
A bit of both. I mean, Welsh people by nature are nostalgic and uh we tend to love sad melancholy things. So some of my songs I've chosen are sad songs and songs of longing. Right. What's the first sad song you've chosen for it? Well, it's not really a sad song. It's a lovely song though, written by a Scottish folk singer.
Max Boyce
Or singer-songwriter rather than a folk singer called Ewan McCall. And uh I heard him sing this song many, many years ago when nobody knew it. And then a couple of years ago Roberta Flack recorded it and became a big hit in Britain and in America. And it's uh this song to me as a songwriter, if ever I could choose one song that I wish I'd written, I wish I'd have written this song, because it stands up as a poem as well, some superb lines in it, uh a song called The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.
Speaker 1
The first
Speaker 1
Ever I saw your face.
Speaker 1
Thought the sound
Speaker 1
Uh
Presenter
Rose in your eye
Presenter
Roberta Flack, the first time ever I saw your face. Max, there's a rumor that you're a Welshman. Whereabouts in Wales?
Max Boyce
Village called Glynith. In the valleys. Yes. A mining village? Yes, very much so. Well, we we had five collieries, but or six in fact, but we don't know to just one. I believe your father was killed in a mining accident. Mhm. How old were you at that time? I hadn't been born actually. It was it was two weeks or three weeks before I was um actually born, so obviously I never knew my father.
Presenter
Okay.
Presenter
Have your brothers?
Max Boyce
No. I remember that we'll be married for three years, so obviously, yeah.
Presenter
Looking
Max Boyce
Yeah.
Presenter
Jack, do you think you'll have a hand? Happy childhood.
Max Boyce
I never wanted for anything. We had a very we are a very close family. Some people say to me that uh or it's been put to me that the entertainer in me is nothing more than the cry of the fatherless child. But I don't think that's quite true because I never saw a need, I must admit, because of the closeness of my family and they all rallied around and my uncles and my grandfather especially was a great influence in me and he became my father figure. So I never saw any great need of love and generally it was a very yeah very happy childhood. As a youngster you played a lot of juvenile rugby.
Max Boyce
Well, what cricket is supposed to Yorkshire than rugby is to South Wales and I suppose everyone in Wales has played rugby for Wales at some time or other. We may not have put on the scarlet jersey of Wales and run on to the arms park where we played in streets where Owen Phillips' garage became the pavilion end and I remember we said he was a big cricket as well and one of those games where you you played in the street. I remember my mate Russ once he was in for twenty-three weeks and he'd chalk the wickets on the wall and and he'd claim he wasn't out unless it was chalk on the ball. But yeah, we played in the streets as children. I remember the first time I played against England, it was in Showellyn Street. I remember we had twenty-eight on our side and three on their side. Whoever lost the toss had to be English. Yes, yes. And it wasn't fair but it was my ball.
Presenter
Yes, yes.
Presenter
Uh despite family tragedy, when the time came, you went down the pit yourself? Yes, not through choice. Yeah.
Max Boyce
Yeah.
Presenter
Yeah.
Max Boyce
It was the last place my mother wanted me to go, the last place.
Presenter
How old were you?
Max Boyce
Fifteen. Fifteen. But there was no money coming into the home, obviously, so I had to go to work. And I tried apprenticeships in various engineering factories, but there was no way I could get uh work anywhere. They would no one would take me on'cause I had no qualifications.
Max Boyce
So I finally got an apprenticeship with the with the National Coal Board.
Presenter
How did you start? What was your first job?
Max Boyce
Uh
Presenter
Yeah.
Max Boyce
When I was a a craft apprenticeship I was a coalface altruistian.
Presenter
Mm-hmm.
Max Boyce
It was hard. And as I say, my mother didn't want me to go because of what had happened. But looking back, it was a marvellous, marvellous experience, and which I'm so glad I did. In your case, was it a big colliery? No, not really. No, it was a fairly small colliery. How deep down were you working? Well, it wasn't so much down, it wasn't a pit. When you think of going down, it w it was a pit. But ours was it was a what do you call a drift or a level, which is actually just driven into a mountain. So we were working about six miles into a mountain, but vertically probably not so high. But it was a long, long, long way in and a long, long, long way to walk out. Right.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Your second record, Max.
Max Boyce
Well, I've always loved traditional Irish music and uh a band or a group called the Dubliners and a song one of the loveliest of all traditional Irish songs a lovely song called Carrick Fergus.
Speaker 1
I wish I was.
Presenter
In Carik Fergus.
Speaker 2
Only for night.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Presenter
Game
Speaker 1
Mm ball.
Presenter
Grand.
Presenter
Caddick Fergus sung by The Dubliners.
Max Boyce
Uh
Presenter
Max, as a youngster, did you sing in the choir?
Max Boyce
Yes, not not terribly well. Even though I'm not terribly gifted singer, more of a storyteller than a singer. But I I suppose I my singing could be described as adequate. I g I get by. I sang in choirs, yes, of course. I think everybody in Wales sang in choirs. In in Eyes Stefod? In Esther Voda, yes, and in chapel choir and uh whatever.
Presenter
Did you like Sang?
Presenter
It was a very important day when you bought a guitar. Yeah, so
Max Boyce
I remember seeing a paper shop at the bottom of my street, and it said guitar for sale, four pounds or four guineas, or whatever it was. A lot of money. Absolutely in those days, yes. So I went round to this chap's house in a place called Meissmark, and I went round and I pretended to tell this lad that owned the guitar that I knew everything about the fork guitar. And I examined the neck for warp and the strings. I wasn't sure how many strings they're supposed to have. But after a while, I persuaded him I was the leading authority in the fork guitar. So I knocked him down to about three pounds fifty. Well done.
Presenter
Who taught you to play it?
Max Boyce
Oh I bought uh as everyone did I think I bought the Bert Whedon Play in a Day guitar guide.
Max Boyce
Was that accurate? How well you at the end of the day? Not much bad at all.
Max Boyce
I keep seeing those black dots and all those strings. But I think Paul McCartney bought that so same guy too. Everybody bought that. It was incredible. And I bought another book then. Uh, two thousand and one chords of a guitar.
Presenter
Yeah.
Max Boyce
Uh
Presenter
For the average player?
Presenter
What was your first appearance as a solo performer in front of an audience?
Max Boyce
Well, going back to the Astel Vodai, the first public performance was as a again as a child in um an Estado, which is a a singing cultural festival we have in Wales. And I was reciting a poem
Max Boyce
Called the Squirrel how we were
Max Boyce
I had a mirror stunning up there and
Max Boyce
when your mother put you a new white shirt and a new red tie with a dragon on the front and she polished my shoes nineteen times that morning and you stood up there amongst about forty other children and and I went on stage and with my clenched hands as as was the way then and and I started off.
Max Boyce
How we were.
Max Boyce
And that's all I remembered. He went completely blank. And the adjudicator came across and he put his arms round my shoulder and he said,
Max Boyce
De Revettor, boy, he said, try it again You started really well
Max Boyce
I went back again.
Max Boyce
How we were.
Max Boyce
But no squirrel came. And I can see it now all the front row all my family's aunties and uncles all knew it backwards, like a great row of goldfish, helping me on. And it never came. And this woman behind my mother, she said, Isn't that your little boy up there now, misses Boyce? And my mother said, No, she said, I've never seen him before.
Max Boyce
And that uh I was never allowed on the stage after I and that's true, I was never allowed, I was never encouraged till about fourteen, fifteen years later, such as the shame that
Presenter
Right, well we'll hear about this Renaissance 14 or 15 years later in a minute. Let's have your third record.
Max Boyce
Fourteen of the
Presenter
Yeah.
Max Boyce
Well, my first conscious memory of comedy, which I've drifted into, and I've always loved a humor of observation. And to me, the greatest comedian of of life's observation was the great radio comic, Al Reid. Oh, yeah. And uh I I I absolutely
Max Boyce
Loved Al Reid. I don't think he was quite as effective on television, but on radio I thought he was uh the greatest. So this is just a little taste. And when I'm feeling down on that island, I like to put Al Reid on just to cheer me up.
Speaker 2
What greater pleasure than to buy a car of your own?
Speaker 2
But have you noticed?
Speaker 2
It's only got to cough back a couple of times when you crank it or start knocking a bit when you get it going and you begin to wonder if you've done the right thing.
Speaker 2
And the Johnny Knoll you take it to the garage. It doesn't help.
Speaker 2
You've met him.
Speaker 2
How do you do?
Speaker 2
How did a
Speaker 2
Will you tell us what you want to do with this back axle? Um
Speaker 2
I don't want you to do anything. You will do, it's just dropped off.
Presenter
I'll read.
Presenter
Right, Max, fourteen or fifteen years later you returned to the stage. Did you start writing your own songs and material straight away?
Max Boyce
No, I tried my hand at um folk singing and um country western singing, and uh I wasn't really good. I shudder now to think of some of the things I attempted. I mean it was so false.
Max Boyce
I remember going on to a place called Hopkinstown, which is near Ponte Prithe, Hopkinstown Miners' Welfare, with a new, brand new guitar and a check shirt and and I thought I was the greatest thing in country music. Were you getting paid or was this just Yes, but not a lot.
Speaker 1
Yes.
Max Boyce
And I remember singing this song Detroit City and on the first line went and I shudder and he went there's a big slide on six string and he went down Home folks think I'm big in Detroit City And this lad, this miner of the bucket up and he said they might think a lot of you in Detroit He said we think nothing when you're in Opkinstown.
Max Boyce
It's it's absolutely true. And I remember th they they pulled the curtains. There was a huge place, converted cinema, and I was halfway well, three quarters way through the song, and I heard this buzzin'
Max Boyce
And the curtains were actually closing. And I sang the last verse in about twelve seconds. They actually saw me ending the song. Did you get your money? Half of it, I think.
Max Boyce
And then I was overpaid.
Presenter
You used to play in rugby clubs.
Max Boyce
Yes, that's really how it all started. I mean, I was a failure really as a country singer, as a straight folk singer. So I thought I'd maybe write the odd little thing. And I was very conscious of not being able to get through in the first five minutes, because I'm a firm believer that the first three minutes on stage determine how you're going to get over the next 30. So I remember I was going down to sing in a little village called Tumble, which is near Schnechli, and they had just played in the semi-final of the West Wales Cup against a side called Cumavon. And I noticed in the paper that they'd won in the semi-final. So I thought, great, I'll write a little very simple few lines just to get them on my side. So I went on and I sang, everybody sing with me, Tumble Ten, Cumavon 3. Oh, total attention!
Max Boyce
So I thought after that I wrote like other little little things that had happened in the game. This guy, Tyvion has scored two tries. And I wrote something very simple, I know, but it was very effective and very topical'cause it only just happened. And something there was a tear in committeeman's eye when Tyvion scored his second try.
Max Boyce
Hey, hey, best act, we've had in this club for years, lads, you know. I was a big s it was great. So it was obviously heartbreaking that I'd had this effect and couldn't take it to the next show or the next concert because it was obvious of that local stuff. Yes. And and that was when it happened first, where when I did this this little song, somebody threw on a scarf of the club colours onto the stage, which I put on a neck and it's a big roar.
Presenter
Okay.
Max Boyce
Then someone threw a bobble cap on. I put that on.
Max Boyce
I thought, Great, that says great So whatever this ragbig club I played in after that, I bought the club scarf and the club bob lap. I had I had more caps and scarves than anybody in the whole world. I would have a colour I was thinking, Right, what colour do you play in, lads? Right, blue and white, okay, out came the blue and white scarf. But after a while I was playing
Max Boyce
Not rugby clubs, I was playing like small theatres and things. So I thought, well, I can't sing now. I felt naked without. I know it's an ah. I'll write a song about what happened to Wales when they played England last Saturday at Tuckingham. So I wrote a song about what happened, and that's how a song called Hymns and Arias was born. Just completely by accident. It wasn't a pre-motivated thing. I didn't set out to be or to write rugby songs. It just completely happened accidentally on that night. And what about the giant daffodil and the big leak? Well, that became a gradual sort of progression from the scarf and the hat. Gradually I got a a leak and all that, and gradually the daffodil. And it just, as I say, it progressed, it evolved over the years.
Presenter
But
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Were you still playing rugby yourself? On
Max Boyce
No idea.
Max Boyce
I was never a great rugby player. Um I played for the village and that, but there were too many Garroth Headers about
Presenter
But you used to follow it. You you'd go to Cardiff Arms Park for the big matches.
Max Boyce
Yeah.
Max Boyce
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I wouldn't I've never missed a game at Cardiff for maybe eighteen years.
Presenter
and to foreign parts like Twickenham.
Max Boyce
Murrayfield? Yes, I I missed the French game this year, but um I haven't missed an away game probably for about twelve years. Really? I love still. Yes, yes. All our tours, I mean our concert tours, which are right in the middle of one now, they are planned around the rugby internationals. I remember it's true, and I remember a few years ago, uh, we were playing Skegness and the people listening to Skegness now can vouch the story's true.
Presenter
Really?
Max Boyce
Normally the internationals are maybe from January up until April. But I'd forgotten that there's an international against New Zealand in November. So I had a concert or in November. Oh and I thought, crumbs, all the tickets are gone now for this particular concert, and New Zealand the All Blacks are playing in Cardiff and I was of all places Skegness two thousand tickets sold. So I'd have put a piece in the paper, Due to unforeseen circumstances, the concert has been cancelled.
Max Boyce
Are you put first things first?
Max Boyce
But I said, but but but they all knew why because every that could have come to the concert would have realized that the match was on that day by the time the match came. But I said it's back on the Saturday after. And it was great because we put in the paper, but if anybody wants their money back, obviously they'll have their money refunded and all keeping tickets for the Saturday after. And out of two thousand two hundred, eight people asked for their money.
Presenter
Back, which is great. I should think so.
Presenter
When was it that you decided you could come up out of the pit and be a professional entertainer? Pressure of work, I think.
Max Boyce
I went actually from the colliery after about six years to work in a an engineering factory and it was then I left to be a full-time singer. And I didn't want to go.
Max Boyce
At all.
Max Boyce
I had terrible trouble getting time off work.
Max Boyce
But it was heartbreaking to say I couldn't be on television, I couldn't appear on this television but'cause I was afternoons. So I said to the phone, How could I say I said, I can't tell the BBC I can't come on the programme'cause I'm working nights I said how could I tell him that?
Max Boyce
So he said, Okay, so he was great to me, a man called Lot Darrell, who I'll always be grateful to. Probably if it hadn't been for Lot I I perhaps wouldn't have drifted into maybe I would have stayed in in industry much longer anyway. And they had a system where you had cards, attendance cards, and they're very strict in this factory. And if you if you were absent for any reason, they'd they they'd put down reason for absence. And uh and if a pattern developed over a period of time
Max Boyce
Then you were sent in front of the manager and maybe suspended or whatever. And and they asked me right the reason for absence. So they used to put on your card a D.
Max Boyce
For domestic trouble.
Max Boyce
So my car was full of deals. So I s I used to be walking to the factory and the personnel officer used to come up to me and he said, Do you know, Max? He said, I I'm
Max Boyce
Terrible at my reviewers, he said, You're so happy, such a happy chap, for someone who's had so much domestic trouble.
Max Boyce
When I left the Satisfactory, he said he was like lifting welfare all off his shoulders.
Max Boyce
We got to rec
Presenter
Yeah.
Max Boyce
Well, this is a song, well it's not a song, it's our anthem, the Welsh national anthem. And talking we just have been about the great fervour and the great warmth that exists in rugby circles and the great memories I have of Cardiff Arms Park and seeing whales play all over the world. I think again when my spirits are down on this island, you've cast me away on. I think I'd like to hear the crowd at Cardiff Arms Park singing Hern Laden Hadai, Land of My Fathers.
Presenter
I've got to be in love with you.
Presenter
Close from everyone.
Presenter
Oh very good.
Presenter
Oh my god.
Presenter
Land of Our Fathers has sung at Cardiff Arms Park before a match, and it's been said, I believe, that that singing is worth six points a game to the Welsh team. Is that right, Mac?
Max Boyce
Well, I I firmly believe that, which is why uh Wales have got such got a formidable record at home. But in fact, that particular game, we lost actually twenty seven three.
Presenter
Going back to your beginnings as as a professional, was it a worrying time to start with? Was there plenty of work about?
Max Boyce
Yes, well
Max Boyce
Once I recorded the first album, which was done in a rugby club in Triocy in the Rhonda Valley, that's the thing that launched me. I was completely unknown and I went to this rugby club, which is the next valley to where I live.
Max Boyce
And we put the tickets on sale and I remember vividly it only held about two hundred and fifty people and the tickets are fifty P and we we'd only sold about ninety because I was completely unknown. So my friends went into the streets of the Rhonda Valley and into the pubs and clubs and saying, Listen, there's a lad from Gleneath over the Valley and no one's coming to his concert. It's a live concert and he's got of an audience because there's a lot of songs and community singing and and audience participation. You don't have to pay, will you come along? And they said, Oh yeah,'cause there's a big tradition between Triocy and Gleneath, the two villages through rugby. They said, Yeah, we'll go So they formed the audience and so we virtually dragged them in and and the album afterwards sold nearly three quarters of a million albums.
Presenter
Get it now.
Max Boyce
And I think the outlay was about £150 with a brick under the piano, remember?
Presenter
With a brick
Presenter
Uh
Max Boyce
And the band turned up that afternoon. I'd always be grateful. And it actually it's ten years now coming this November, November the twenty-third. And uh we have a plan where we're going to go back to that same rugby club on the same night, November the twenty-third, with the same band, bevying the same, and the tickets at fifty p. And I'm going to put an advert in the local paper that two hundred and fifty people that came ten years ago, those who are still alive, we come again and and we can sort of um
Max Boyce
Well
Max Boyce
Turn the thing all over.
Presenter
Right. Well, it won't be short of an audience that night. Well, I hope not, anyway. Right, records help. And television, of course, you you had started television on Opportunity Knox. Way waiting for you. Oh, everybody asks me about that. Well, tell us about Opportunity Knox. Come on.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Max Boyce
Wait a minute.
Speaker 2
Uh
Max Boyce
I was a disaster, an absolute disaster. That's another occasion when my mother disowned me. Some people thought I should go on it and and I did desperately. I had such well, so much desire to do well and to succeed that I would have sung anywhere, done anything, swallowed longer and sharper swords than anybody, anything, just to have got on. I went on again, singing when I song I wrote actually.
Speaker 1
Do you
Max Boyce
But in the confines of studio which I'd never seen before,
Max Boyce
To an audience that obviously didn't know me and given two minutes, fifty seconds.
Presenter
Tado
Max Boyce
Oh, it was heartbreaking and well, I think you must know television techniques to to establish yourself in two minutes, fifty seconds. If you're a straight singer, then fine. But anybody that uses a storyteller, you have no chance at all to to succeed. And I wasn't really good enough anyway. And I remember I was beaten into second place by Bobby Crush.
Max Boyce
The teenist Bobby Crush. And ah, and I met him since, and we had a great laugh about it. Oh, it broke my heart,'cause again I was working in the factory that we mentioned earlier, and they left me off I was afternoons when it was shown. Domestic trouble. Yes, yes. No, I only had an hour off domestic trouble, yes.
Max Boyce
And I went across to watch it, and I watched it, and I came back. And the night shifter coming into work that night, obviously, everybody watched it. All my mates in work, and they were coming into work, and I was trying to search out for their eyes. And I was saying things like, What do you think of the boys? What do you think of it? And they were saying, Oh, oh, very good, Max, very good. With insincerity blazing in their eyes. I knew then that I had no hope. But I came second, but I didn't deserve to come second in. Anyway, that.
Presenter
That was a little peak at the beginning, the first television.
Max Boyce
Well, it made what what it did for me, it put steel in me, I suppose, and I I I suppose I I experienced great not defeat, but
Presenter
And I
Max Boyce
Um the agonies of failure for the first time and when that happens, either you just finish or it gives you renewed strength. And looking back now, it was a good thing that happened for me at that time, and it made me even more determined to swallow longer and sharper swords.
Presenter
And it wasn't long before there was the Albert Hall, absolutely packed, too.
Max Boyce
Yeah, that was that was great.'Cause after the album, which which followed Opportunity Knox, the album did it just went absolutely crazy.
Presenter
Yeah.
Max Boyce
And seeing them come outside the Albert Hall is what, eight thousand people?
Presenter
When you first played outside Wales, were you worried? Did you feel that you were among foreigners?
Max Boyce
Yeah.
Max Boyce
Well, not foreigners, but I realize I spoke much too quickly.
Max Boyce
And especially on the album, the first twenty minutes of any album was so excited, the producer just cut out the first twenty minutes, it was just total gibberish. And he says, Slow down
Speaker 1
Down slow.
Max Boyce
But I find it very difficult'cause it's a it's a very enthusiastic type of performance anyway. That's key to
Max Boyce
Well further, and it's it's akin, I suppose, to the build up of a sportsman rather than an entertainer. So I find it very hard to be disciplined in that opening sort of
Max Boyce
Twenty minutes. So I found it difficult outside Wales for the first part of the act because people didn't understand a word I said.
Max Boyce
Yeah.
Presenter
Let's have your fifth record.
Max Boyce
Well, we move on a little bit. Um I've always loved reggae music and I was in the West Indies a couple of years ago and I heard the song first and it wasn't a hit then at all. And I thought, Oh, what a great song And I saw an old, old, old man and this marvelous rhythm that the Caribbean has and he had two tins of a Coletti street box.
Max Boyce
And he's played this incredible rhythm on it and and he sang this song, which is uh, well, my all-time reggae favourite by Sadly No Longer With Us by Bob Marley and and The Wailers. It's it comes off my favourite album called Exodus, and it's a track called Three Little Birds.
Presenter
Brilliant!
Presenter
This is my message to you.
Speaker 1
Uh Words.
Speaker 1
Batter than
Speaker 1
You rebound the moon.
Speaker 1
Uh
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Max Boyce
Wanna do it?
Speaker 1
We are
Max Boyce
Yeah.
Max Boyce
Torhey.
Max Boyce
Make it all worth it.
Max Boyce
Father Thanks.
Speaker 1
Uh
Max Boyce
I want more it.
Max Boyce
Uh
Speaker 1
Every
Presenter
Three Little Birds by Bob Marley and the Whalers. So you were in the Caribbean. You played several times in Australia and New Zealand.
Max Boyce
Um, three times. First time in nineteen seventy eight, and then again in eighty and eighty two.
Presenter
Yes. Now we hear about the Caledonian societies all over the place which welcome Scottish artists. Is there a similar kind of Welsh organization which exists in most
Max Boyce
Hmm.
Presenter
Cities in the Commonwealth.
Max Boyce
Yes, I know.
Presenter
Yes, it has indeed.
Max Boyce
In London you have London Welsh and Birmingham Welsh, but also you have Cameradorion Societies and President of South Australia Cameradorian Society. Or you have them away from home and I think the first time I realized what longing was all about was when I went to Australia and Hong Kong, the Middle East and New Zealand. And these people really, really felt for their homeland. And there's an old saying we have in Wales, Camri Gore, Camrio the Catre. The best Welshman is the Welshman who's away from Wales. I don't necessarily agree with that, but
Max Boyce
I saw the great, great feeling and the great longing they had for Wales. So there's a great basic Welsh audience for you wherever you go. Yes. The overseas tours were incredible. They weren't like concerts at all, they were like um religious revivals. Before I went to Australia I learnt all Australian terms and mannerisms and stories I had about dogs became stories about kangaroos.
Max Boyce
Yeah.
Max Boyce
I changed all sorts of things round. And Barry John became Dennis Lilly and all sorts of things. But after the first ten minutes on stage and then we opened in Perth and I was just like appearing in Britain, it was no no no problem at all. And Sydney, I'll never ever forget the Regents Theatre in Sydney, three thousand people. And I finished the concert and I was having a shower in my dress room and I heard this great this great sound. And I thought, what's that? Must be a record. No. I went back out onto the stage and and peeped around from the wings and about fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred people stayed behind in in the theatre and this one ladder got up and sang a Welsh hymn Carlon Lan and Laounda Yon.
Max Boyce
Tekohi, and they all joined in'cause it was the one occasion where something brought them all together and they stayed behind for must have been over an hour, and all the cleaners are wondering what had happened was this extra concert. And it was absolutely incredible. And I'll never forget that as long as I live, people were crying. And it was and two years later, I didn't want to say anything, but the concert ended again. Two years later, in the same theater, went off stage again, and that same chap got up and sang the same song, and they all joined in again. And they set a precedent. And every year since, every time I've been back, same man comes and the same audience stays behind and they sing for hours after the whole concert is finished. And some experience, that, some experience.
Presenter
Have you played in Canada?
Max Boyce
No, I'm going um my first tour, hopefully.
Max Boyce
It's not definite, but it's sort of 90% definite. I'm doing a six-city tour.
Presenter
Uh
Max Boyce
Uh
Max Boyce
Yeah.
Presenter
October of this year. Of course your your records must help sell you in advance. You you've had a golden disc, haven't you? Five, five. Five, five. I didn't know about that. And a Royal Variety performance?
Presenter
You've got in you a second instrument now, as well as the guitar, you play the banjo.
Max Boyce
Ah yes, I've always loved American folk music, and I've always loved bluegrass banjo. And I said that I would always master one day I would master the five string bluegrass banjo.
Max Boyce
And I'm driving everybody on tour at the moment wild because it's such a loud instrument. In fact, I wasn't, I haven't chosen it, but one of the records I thought of was I was going to have a record, Teach Yourself to Play American Banjo, which I've got a little plastic thing which goes inside this book called Bluegrass Banjo. So I was going to take that as one of my records, but I haven't. Record number six.
Max Boyce
Well, we're talking about being away from home and in Australia and and the the longing that we spoke about. And my particular favourite traditional Welsh folk song is a song called Hiraith, which is means longing. And maybe the people that feel it most are those away from home. But Hiraith takes different forms which the song tells about. Sang you by Ainir Wino Win.
Speaker 1
There is in the hero
Presenter
Here is the mom.
Presenter
Rahiraith Kraila.
Speaker 1
Here I've sit on a Tory.
Speaker 1
Uh
Speaker 1
Anvoid Ramar no s and kaski
Speaker 1
Oh, come death free.
Presenter
I near Wynne Owen singing Hiraih. You still live in the same district in which you were born, don't you? Mm-hmm. Next door to the rugby pitch. Yes.
Max Boyce
Yes. I didn't choose that, it just happens to be that way. People think I bought it especially, but I didn't. It just happened that the the house I wanted was next to a rugby ground.
Presenter
So you can see everything from the window without having
Max Boyce
Okay.
Presenter
You take it.
Max Boyce
Yes.
Presenter
Uh
Max Boyce
Uh
Presenter
Do you have a family?
Max Boyce
Um it'll
Presenter
Girl two and it'll go
Max Boyce
Uh
Presenter
Built.
Max Boyce
And
Presenter
How long are the tours you do? How much of the year are you away from home?
Max Boyce
On average I would say about four, six months of the year, I would say. Well, I'm I'm home for the odd weekend, but I tour Britain usually twice a year and every other year I go to maybe Australia or America or somewhere like Hong Kong, Middle East.
Max Boyce
On average I would say six months a year. One question about your career, Max. What happened to Johnny Mildew in the school? Got
Presenter
But they're still around.
Max Boyce
They're still around.
Max Boyce
Yeah, it was it was a little oh, a daffodil thing I did when when punk rock was at its uh height. I was doing a television series for for the BBC, so I was trying to keep up with the vogue, so I formed a band called Johnny Mildew and the Scum. And uh we all dressed up and had safety pins through us and all this, and it was incredible because the week after, old woman are stopping me in the streets in Gleath and saying, Max, don't change back, she said, I don't like that at all, you a new image.
Max Boyce
They take an absolutely gospel. Wales, as you know, is full of great tenors and I I I deliberated uh very much which Welsh tenor I would choose. But I thought rather than spare any embarrassment I've gone for perhaps the greatest tenor in the world, certainly my favourite, Luciano um Pavarotti, and he's singing you Ness and Dormer.
Max Boyce
Oh that's the
Presenter
Luciano Pavarotti singing Nesson Dorma from Guccini's Turin dot. Max, how are you going to manage on the island? Could you look after yourself? I don't
Max Boyce
I think I'd be terribly successful having been spoilt by my mother all my life. I think I'd have to uh
Max Boyce
get myself together. But I think I'd manage. I I I I'm not one to give up very easily, so I think I'd bend hooks and shape stones and sharp flints somewhere. I'd manage somewhere and catch fish, even if I have to do fishing.
Presenter
And I'm not sure.
Max Boyce
Oh yes, but not I mean I fished when I was much younger, but uh no not a great fisherman. Uh but I live in a little village well the next village is with superb uh fast-flowing trout streams. So I did a lot of fishing but I never had the heart to kill a fish so I gave it up after wife. Would you try to escape? Do you know anything about navigation? Could you make a boat? No, the only way I thought of getting away and I don't know but I assume that this island is surrounded by shark infested waters. Very likely.
Presenter
Good morning.
Max Boyce
Well, I thought probably it would be, so I thought I would take with me a T-shirt.
Max Boyce
With on the T-shirt I would have England for the triple crown, and then I would swim to safety and not even the sharks could swallow up. Right.
Max Boyce
No comment.
Max Boyce
Last record. Well, I thought maybe I would need of in the need of spiritual uplifting after being on this island for so long. I remember singing in choirs when I was much younger and and thrilling to the sound of Hanel's Messiah, so I've chosen a pastoral symphony out of um Hannell's Messiah.
Presenter
The Pastoral Symphony from Handel's Messiah, the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Colin Davies. If you could take only one disc of the eight you've played us, which would it be?
Presenter
Very difficult.
Max Boyce
Very, very, very difficult. But I think um my first record, which I chose, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, written by Ewen McCall and sung, as we said, by Roberta Flack. Right.
Presenter
Yeah.
Max Boyce
And one luxury.
Presenter
Nothing of any practical
Max Boyce
Well
Max Boyce
I've always wanted to dabble in oils, and if I hadn't been an entertainer
Max Boyce
I'd like to think I'm a creative person. I've always wanted to paint. I've tried to paint in oils over the last four or five years, with not a great success because I've not a lot of time. But I would take whatever it needs to paint with oils, um easels and canvases and
Max Boyce
Yeah.
Presenter
Paint the dawn of my island. You shall have full equipment. And one book. You already have the Bible, you already have the complete works of Shakespeare.
Max Boyce
Can I swap Shakespeare for Dylan Thomas?
Max Boyce
Well
Max Boyce
Well, in that case, I would take it's only a little book. Yes. But it had a a great impression on me when I it was sent to me when I was very low at one time. And I've always cared for the book, um, written by Laurie Lee, who wrote Sidy with Rosie. Oh, yeah, but it's not that book. I mean it's a little book, and it says at the back of the book that you should always buy it in twos.
Max Boyce
One for yourself, and one to give to a friend, and I'll send you I'd like to send you, as a friend, this book.
Presenter
Thank you.
Max Boyce
Because it's the book I would like to take with me to this island. And perhaps it's very apt as well. The title, Being on an Island, it says, I can't stay long.
Presenter
I Can't Stay Long by Laurie Lee. You should have it. And thank you, Max Boys, for letting us hear your Desert Island Dis
Max Boyce
Riley.
Max Boyce
Thank you as well. It's been a thrill. I listened to your programme over the years and it's
Max Boyce
Smashing. I really enjoy it. I look forward to it, and I hope I'm not there on the island too long. God bless your heart.
Presenter
Uh
Max Boyce
Goodbye everyone.
Speaker 1
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.
Presenter asks
Despite family tragedy, when the time came, you went down the pit yourself?
Yes, not through choice. ... It was the last place my mother wanted me to go, the last place. ... Fifteen. ... But there was no money coming into the home, obviously, so I had to go to work. And I tried apprenticeships in various engineering factories, but there was no way I could get uh work anywhere. They would no one would take me on'cause I had no qualifications. So I finally got an apprenticeship with the with the National Coal Board.
Presenter asks
What was your first appearance as a solo performer in front of an audience?
Well, going back to the Astel Vodai, the first public performance was as a again as a child in um an Estado, which is a a singing cultural festival we have in Wales. And I was reciting a poem Called the Squirrel ... and I went on stage and with my clenched hands ... and I started off. How we were. And that's all I remembered. He went completely blank. ... I was never allowed on the stage after I and that's true, I was never allowed, I was never encouraged till about fourteen, fifteen years later, such as the shame
Presenter asks
When was it that you decided you could come up out of the pit and be a professional entertainer?
Pressure of work, I think. I went actually from the colliery after about six years to work in a an engineering factory and it was then I left to be a full-time singer. And I didn't want to go. At all. I had terrible trouble getting time off work. But it was heartbreaking to say I couldn't be on television, I couldn't appear on this television but'cause I was afternoons.
Presenter asks
Tell us about Opportunity Knocks.
I was a disaster, an absolute disaster. That's another occasion when my mother disowned me. ... I went on again, singing when I song I wrote actually. But in the confines of studio which I'd never seen before, To an audience that obviously didn't know me and given two minutes, fifty seconds. ... Oh, it was heartbreaking and well, I think you must know television techniques to to establish yourself in two minutes, fifty seconds. ... And I wasn't really good enough anyway.
“Welsh people by nature are nostalgic and uh we tend to love sad melancholy things. So some of my songs I've chosen are sad songs and songs of longing.”
“I'm a firm believer that the first three minutes on stage determine how you're going to get over the next 30.”
“I experienced great not defeat, but um the agonies of failure for the first time and when that happens, either you just finish or it gives you renewed strength. And looking back now, it was a good thing that happened for me at that time, and it made me even more determined to swallow longer and sharper swords.”