Paul Jones

Paul Jones0:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights' reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty three.

Paul Jones0:11

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

Our Castaway this week has achieved distinction in two fields, as an actor and as a singer and entertainer. It's Paul Jones.

Presenter0:38

Now, Paul, this Desert Island problem, did you find it very difficult to whittle down your choice to just eight discs? I've found it impossible. I could have chosen another eight, or a third eight, or a fourth, and I would have been equally happy with each batch. But in in the end I just sort of threw my hands up in the air and said, That's it, it is finished. Do you think, in a miserable situation like this Desert Island one, that eight discs would help very much?

Presenter1:06

Yes, I think they would help enormously. What's your first one?

Presenter1:11

My first one is actually the one that I have least acquaintance with. I was introduced to it by the musical director of Guys and Dolls.

Presenter1:20

We were talking about various.

Presenter1:22

wonderful records that had uh changed our lives, you see.

Presenter1:27

And he said, Ah, yes, but have you heard, Don Sibeschi? And I said I haven't even heard of Don Sibeschi.

Presenter1:33

And I'm very glad that he

Presenter1:36

Introduce me to this man.

Presenter1:37

And to this LP, it's just called Three Works for Jazz Soloists and Symphony Orchestra. There's one very long one, which is called Bird Meets Bella in B-flat, which is a combination of Charlie Parker, Bella Bartock and a key.

Presenter1:52

But the one I've chosen is the Rite of Spring. The Rite of Spring? Well, it isn't. It's called a Reconstruction and Arrangement of the Composition of Igor Stravinsky.

Presenter3:13

An unconventional recording of The Right of Spring by Stravinsky Don Sabersky's recreation of it with Haddy Rabinowitz conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and there are some very distinguished jazz soloists.

Presenter3:28

Paul, whereabouts do you come from? Portsmouth. Your father was in the Royal Navy. He was indeed, yes.

Presenter3:34

I moved around a conventional variety of naval establishments as a as a child. Abroad as well? Uh I didn't go much abroad, although I mean, while I was a boy he was um in Ceylon in Korea.

Paul Jones3:39

Now

Speaker 23:50

Hmm.

Presenter3:50

And in Malta. I spent some holidays in Malta, but mostly I was at boarding school. And of course you were in Portsmouth long enough to sing in the Cathedral choir. I was, yes. I got roped into it. The um organist and uh choir master at the cathedral was the music master of the grammar school in Portsmouth, and so he tended to recruit boys, sopranos and did you rise to Sir Louis? Yes, actually I had a rather beautiful Treville voice, and he persuaded my parents to put up twenty-five pounds for me to make a recording of Over the Wings of a Dove.

Paul Jones4:09

But I was a

Presenter4:25

Which is now fortunately lost.

Paul Jones4:27

How do you

Presenter4:28

I suppose

Presenter4:31

Eleven or twelve. Were you given music lessons? Did you play the piano? No, I didn't have any. I had some singing.

Presenter4:37

coaching obviously at Portsmouth Cathedral, but and then again not very much of that. I always had a very quick ear and so I avoided learning how to read music by simply singing what the person next to me was singing a split second behind.

Presenter4:51

Uh to school in Portsmouth, of course. And then you went up to Oxford to Jesus College to read what? I have to tell you that before I went to Oxford I actually spent two very enjoyable years at school in Edinburgh. Oh, did you? I did. Yes, I I honestly think that if I'd uh tried to get into Oxford from Portsmouth I probably might not have made it. Academically I was rather

Paul Jones5:05

Do you think that?

Presenter5:14

I wasn't doing too well. In fact, I wa I wasn't really doing too well in any way, shape or form. It was very fortunate for me that at that stage, which was just after O levels, my father came home from Malta and got um posted to just outside Edinburgh.

Presenter5:29

And uh I think it's a good job really that I was able to leave Portsmouth Grammar School before anything worse happened to me. And I spent two very, very enjoyable years in Edinburgh at the Academy and then I went up to Oxford.

Paul Jones5:36

Uh

Speaker 25:36

Yeah.

Paul Jones5:36

Uh

Presenter5:42

Well, before we talk about your university career, let's have your second record. Ah, well, just about that time, in fact, I encountered this LP, The Best of Muddy Waters. I'd already met the blues, but as sort of the folk blues that uh Big Bill Brunzy used to play and Huddy Ledbetter and that sort of thing, with unamplified instruments. And uh that had really been uh an extension of my first musical steps as a skiffle group.

Presenter6:15

Which I did when I was at school. That was the big stuff in the world.

Paul Jones6:18

That was your own group?

Presenter6:19

Yes, when I was about fourteen I did that. It was your washboard, so it was your group. It was my washboard. Exactly, that's exactly right. You you you were in charge if you supplied the washboard. And then one day I just discovered electric blues and this was what it sounded like. It's muddy waters. And I must also point out one of the great harmonica players.

Paul Jones6:21

Yeah.

Paul Jones6:23

It's my

Presenter6:41

Of the blues, in fact of any kind of music, Walter Horton.

Presenter6:44

who died just last year.

Presenter6:46

Muddywaters died only this year.

Presenter6:49

And I believe that Murray had one of the great voices of any kind. And what's the number he's singing? Hoochie Coochie Man.

Speaker 36:58

The hoochikoochimae, but you know

Speaker 37:06

Everybody knows.

Speaker 37:14

Yeah you know the hoochie coochie man

Speaker 37:19

Everybody knows I'm here.

Presenter7:29

Maddie Waters with Walter Horton.

Presenter7:32

Hoochi Koochi Man

Presenter7:34

Sir Paul, you were up at Jesus College. What were your activities apart from reading? And what were you reading, by the way? I was reading English which had been recommended to me by an English teacher at school, who said, Look, it's great. All you have to do is sit down with a good book and you're working. That sounded like a good idea to me. What else were you doing?

Presenter7:54

That really was when I discovered the blues in my first vacation.

Presenter7:58

I'll tell you exactly how it happened. My father was then the captain of Plymouth Dockyard.

Presenter8:04

And I went home from my first vacation from Oxford, and there was a man in Plymouth who had a shop called Pete Russell's Hot Records Store.

Presenter8:12

and I bought occasional jazz records from him, and I went in there one day and he said,'You like the blues. What do you think of this?

Presenter8:19

And he played me this record by T Bone Walker which was called Play on Little Girl, and it had an amplified harmonica.

Presenter8:26

Great big they had three electric guitars, saxophones all honking away and a great big backbeat on the drums, and I said, That's what I'm going to do with my life.

Presenter8:36

I went back to Oxford.

Presenter8:38

managed to assemble four other like minded souls. Well, they were in varying degrees like minded actually. I found a pianist who was completely into the music. That was wonderful for me. He wasn't a student actually, he just happened to live in Oxford. And we played together and we gradually assembled some people who really sort of preferred jazz, I suppose, but they didn't mind playing this stuff as long as I got them some places to play on Saturday nights or something. And so we played in the um

Presenter9:08

University Union Cellars, occasionally. What did you call yourselves? We had various names, actually. The one I liked best was Thunder Odin and the Big Secret.

Paul Jones9:15

Yeah.

Presenter9:22

And you did quite well, you but at least I was playing the blues occasionally and and rehearsing it and um oh, I mean, most of our playing was just done in back rooms. How about your exams, your prelims, anything like that? I failed them. Oh no. Not terribly surprising.

Presenter9:37

Now, after that, Paul, you did a number of odd jobs while you were looking round. You were a lockkeeper for a while. Now, I'd always wanted to be a lockkeeper. Nice restful occupation, surely. Wonderful. Where was it? Which lock? It was on the Thames, just somewhere outside Oxford. I can't precisely remember the place. And you worked on the railway for a while.

Presenter9:56

That was very brief. That was just a sort of Christmas job, really.

Presenter10:01

They were all quite brief, I'm happy to say.

Paul Jones10:01

They were all

Presenter10:03

Yes, there's another rather unusual job, a marker of O level papers. Yes, that was a summer vacation job in in Oxford. Well, let's see. Actually my favourite job was demolishing the gas works in St. Ebbs, in Oxford.

Speaker 210:11

But

Presenter10:16

Oh. There used to be a gas works. On your own? No, I had help.

Presenter10:21

There was a a company called the West Meon Demolition Company.

Speaker 210:26

What you give

Presenter10:27

No, no. All we had was one of those great big lead bulls on the end of a a crane, you see, and uh I wasn't allowed to operate that. Pity. Then there was another thing which was a small but very tough little lorry.

Speaker 310:35

Pity.

Presenter10:40

which had steel ropes. When the ball on the chain had done its work, ropes were attached to the remaining bits of the gasometers and so on, and then the other end to the back of this little lorry which would then be driven very toughly away from the scene of crime, and uh things would come crashing to the ground. And really my job mostly was to cart away these great chunks of cast iron which had previously been gasometers.

Speaker 211:01

Hmm.

Presenter11:02

You know, it's quite a bluesy sort of a job, that, isn't it, I think? Oh, indeed.

Presenter11:07

Let's have another record. A bluesy sort of record. Well, it sort of is, yes. Billie Holiday really began life as a a blues singer, but she developed into again one of the

Speaker 211:09

Yeah.

Presenter11:18

Greatest voices in history, I think. When I was doing a play called Conduct I'm Becoming in New York.

Presenter11:26

My dresser, who was a seventy year old black man called Clarence.

Presenter11:30

told me that he actually knew Billie Holliday. He had known her very well in the last years of his life. He used to tell us that he knew George Raft and

Presenter11:39

Oh, fat waller, everybody. And I never quite believed him. And then he actually one day brought in to the theatre a great sheaf of photographs of himself with Lena Horne, himself with Billie Holliday, and so on. They were taken about the time that this recording was made, which was 1958, which is latish for Billie Holliday, and a time at which people used to say that her voice had finally gone and really she couldn't sing much anymore. Well, I would like to steal a remark of Humphrey Lyttelton's. He said.

Presenter12:10

I just wish that I had been unable to sing as well as this. It's Billy Holiday and you've changed.

Speaker 312:22

You've changed.

Speaker 312:27

That sparkle in your eyes is gone.

Speaker 312:35

Your smile is just a careless yawn

Speaker 312:42

You're breaking my heart.

Speaker 312:45

You've shamed.

Presenter12:51

Billy Holiday

Presenter12:53

You change.

Presenter12:54

Paul, you were doing these.

Presenter12:56

Sort of uh fill-in jobs. You very nearly became a Rolling Stone as a fill-in job, didn't you? Well, that wouldn't have been a fill-in so much. I met Brian Jones, who was actually the original founder of the Rolling Stones, because we both used to go to a club in Ealing where Alexis Corner used to play. Alexis Corner was very important to all of us because he was the first person really who demonstrated that it was possible to make a living in this country playing blues.

Presenter13:26

and rhythm and blues.

Presenter13:29

and that sort of music. And he and Chris Barber together were responsible for bringing over some of the great musicians' muddy waters.

Presenter13:38

James Cotton, a brilliant harmonica playo I had the pleasure of working with a few days ago in

Presenter13:44

Isaly.

Presenter13:45

And they brought them over in oh, the late fifties and by this time, which was sixty, sixty one, sixty two, Alexis was playing very regularly at uh this club in Ealing and at the Marquis club in Oxford Street and um everybody used to go. Mick Jagger and Keith Richard used to come over. They used to come all the way from Dartford or somewhere.

Presenter14:06

I came from Oxford, and we used to get up.

Presenter14:10

I used to get up and sing with Alexis, and so did Mick.

Presenter14:13

And various people like that?

Presenter14:15

And I had in fact before all this had started, when I was still desperately keeping my band together in Oxford, our guitar player left, and I asked Brian Jones if he would like to join the band, and he said, Well, I'll join the band if I can be the leader, and you'll work for me.

Presenter14:31

And I thought egotistical little creep, I won't have any of this. And I said, No, you can't join the band.

Paul Jones14:32

Yeah.

Presenter14:38

But then a few months later Brian said, Look, I'm sick of listening to other people. I'm going to get this together myself.

Presenter14:45

I'm going to move to London. I'm going to start a band with Keith Richard on guitar. And would you like to be the singer?

Presenter14:53

And I said no.

Presenter14:55

Because I I'd sort of got disillusioned. I thought, oh, well, look, Alexis is playing every Saturday in Ealing, but I mean, really?

Presenter15:03

We're never going to make a living playing this music because we like it okay, but there's only a few hundred of us.

Presenter15:10

I had a job. I had a regular job singing regular but not very frequent singing with um Gordon Rhys and the Adelphians at the Palais in Slough. I had to put on a

Presenter15:21

a sort of red blazer.

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and sing what was then currently in the hit parade.

Presenter15:26

Which I didn't actually do terribly well, I don't think. Now, you went and joined Manfred Mann.

Presenter15:32

How had you met him?

Presenter15:34

This was all to do with this sort of sitting in network. I moved to London and got a job as a travelling salesman for Esquire Records.

Presenter15:44

Which was quite nice because I was selling jazz records to record stores. And as often as I was able.

Presenter15:51

I would go and see Alexis Corner at the Marquis, and always say to Alexis, Can I do a couple of numbers? and he would say yes, and I would stand up and sing two songs, and then get down again.

Presenter16:00

Meanwhile Manfred Mann and Mike Hug.

Presenter16:03

had been playing in a sort of group which crossed the modern jazz quartet with Thelonius Monk.

Presenter16:10

at Butland's in Skegness.

Presenter16:12

And they got the sack because they were too avant garde.

Presenter16:16

and they decided that they were not going to be able to make a living playing jazz.

Presenter16:20

at least not in the way that they wanted to.

Presenter16:22

and they did not want to sell their souls completely and play

Presenter16:26

Pop music.

Presenter16:28

But that there was an available compromise, and that was to play rhythm and blues. A lot of jazz musicians in the early sixties were playing rhythm and blues because it ma gave them a living.

Presenter16:39

And so Manfred and Mike decided to do the same. Now, what do they do for a singer? They go to the Marquis.

Presenter16:46

And they

Presenter16:47

Ask, do you know of any singers?

Presenter16:50

And they were told, Well, there's this guy with bad skin that gets up and sings with Alexis Corner.

Presenter16:56

You might try him.

Presenter16:58

and they very grandly sent for me and said the auditions are at the Roaring Twenties Club in Carnaby Street.

Presenter17:06

Will you come at ten thirty on Tuesday morning? So I arrived, and I was the only person there. That was the audition.

Presenter17:13

And so I got the job. And then things started happening. Well, we quickly.

Presenter17:19

organized a circuit of our own.

Presenter17:22

For months we used to play only between Windsor and Bournemouth. And then we managed to get ourselves a a manager and we um

Presenter17:31

auditioned for some record companies, which turned us down.

Presenter17:35

In retrospect that wasn't so serious, because they were the same ones that turned down the Beatles.

Presenter17:39

Uh and eventually we got a deal with

Paul Jones17:40

Yeah.

Presenter17:43

E M I

Presenter17:44

and we put out two records, neither of which was successful.

Presenter17:49

But they brought us to the notice of a man called John Blyton, who was head of light entertainment at Rediffusion Television, as it then was.

Presenter17:57

And he said, We're going to make a new teenage culture programme, a pop music and fashion and all that sort of thing programme on Friday evening, early.

Presenter18:09

And we need a signature tune. Will you write one for us?

Presenter18:14

I've liked what you've written for your first two records. So we wrote them a signature tune.

Presenter18:20

The song was 54321, which got to number, I don't know, three or so in the charts. The programme was Ready, Steady, Go.

Presenter18:27

It made us.

Presenter18:28

Let's break at this point for record number four.

Presenter18:31

I first heard Placido Domingo sing because my son, who must have been, oh, I don't know, ten or something at the time, was at a school where they suddenly said We need a whole bunch of school kids to be the village kids in Cavallaria Rusticana, which uh Domingo was singing at um Covent Garden.

Presenter18:50

And in consequence I went to

Presenter18:53

Not the first opera I'd ever been to, but certainly the first opera I'd been to in twenty years.

Presenter18:59

And uh I h I heard this voice which simply took my breath away. And uh I've listened to quite a lot more opera ever since. And now Domingo has done this uh movie of Traviata and uh so I want him singing the old drinking song.

Speaker 319:22

Pli Biabo, Plibiavo, Merieti Korici Kravala, Laura, and the Lord.

Paul Jones19:27

Love a little

Paul Jones19:34

I have a

Paul Jones19:37

Be a

Speaker 319:44

Mushi Balares, we gave way, honi pork and teva.

Speaker 320:12

Holy Travis of God, Holy Spirit.

Presenter20:19

An excerpt from the soundtrack of Zeffarelli's film of Verdi's La Traviata with Blacido Domingo and Teresa Stratus.

Presenter20:29

Now, you are making a great success, and presumably making a lot of money. How long did you stay with Manfred Mann? Three and a half years. Why did you quit?

Presenter20:37

It's a difficult question to answer. I mean, there were elements in it. Certainly uh ego is one of the elements. I very much wanted to be my own man.

Presenter20:46

and perhaps not even to share that adulation.

Paul Jones20:48

Yeah.

Presenter20:49

As lead singer, you were really the star as far as the kids were concerned. I would get bored with pointing out that Manfred was in fact the organist and that my name was Paul. And they would say, Oh, well, what's it like working for Manfred then?

Paul Jones20:58

I would do it.

Presenter21:07

And of course I didn't work for Manfred any more than Manfred worked for me. It was a a band that was uh formed together. It it was in fact somebody at EMI that decided that his name would be a good one.

Presenter21:17

To use

Presenter21:19

But uh y y you see the music had kind of gone very secondary to the screaming, in fact.

Speaker 321:25

Yes.

Presenter21:26

We played a gig somewhere, I forget where it was now, and we had a tennis saxophone player in the band called Lynn Dobson, who was a wonderful musician.

Presenter21:35

And after we came off stage, Lynn Dobson said, I'm leaving the band.

Presenter21:40

And we said, Why? and he said, Because when I got here to play this evening from London I opened up my case with my saxophone inside it, and I r found that I hadn't brought any reeds with me.

Presenter21:52

In consequence of which, I've been out on stage with you and I didn't play a note. I'm mime.

Presenter21:57

the whole time, and none of you noticed.

Presenter22:00

Good dear. And he was right. We couldn't hear over the screaming. And Lynn said, That's not what I learned my instrument in order to do. That's a splendid story. And uh well, you see I wasn't the only one that left the band. There were eight of us in the band in 1966 and four of us left. So Manfred had to reorganise quite severely. Oh, quite quickly you had an invitation to play in a movie.

Presenter22:27

That was a complete coincidence people believed that I must have left the group in order to do the movie.

Presenter22:31

But in fact, I'd been trying to get out of the group for several months. I'd agreed only to stay.

Presenter22:36

until they found a replacement that they liked and had time to rehearse with him, and were absolutely happy that they were ready to go.

Presenter22:43

So, in fact, we were keeping secret the fact that I was leaving. Ha ha. Everybody knew. And then just a week or so before I left, Peter Watkins.

Presenter22:51

telephoned me or rather someone on his behalf and said, Would I like to be in this film called Privilege? and I said, Well, I didn't know.

Presenter22:59

It was not something that I'd ever thought about, and uh I met with him. And of course I was predisposed to like him and want to work with him because of his reputation as the maker of

Presenter23:11

the two television films he had already done, The Battle of Culladen and The War Game. Culludden had been shown, of course, and The War Game hadn't. So you had done the film and you were recording singles, and there was a producer with fairly uncommercial ideas who had faith in your acting and helped you a lot, Charles Meribitz.

Presenter23:30

Well, I don't know, you know, whether he really did have that much faith in me as an actor. I think he had been let down by somebody. He was doing an American play, and he'd managed to cast it almost completely with Americans Al Mancini, Connie Booth.

Presenter23:45

and Chris Malcolm, who's Canadian, and Bernard Speer, who, although English, had seemed to spend most of his life playing Americans. And he had an American to play, as it were, the juvenile lead.

Presenter23:58

Who Suddenly Got a Movie?

Presenter24:01

And said, Charles, I'm sorry, but I cannot work for you at the open space, I've got a movie.

Presenter24:07

And off he went. And Marowitz was stuck for somebody and I think it was quite inspired of him to think that since he couldn't find an American actor at such short notice, he couldn't find an English one who could be relied on to do the accent, he must have the accent more than anything else, he suddenly thought, why not

Presenter24:24

A pop singer

Presenter24:25

They always sing with American accents. Especially me, because I copied American singers all my life.

Presenter24:32

So he auditioned my American accent.

Presenter24:36

Which was okay. And he passed my American accent and I got the job. And suddenly, to me it was an exciting new world.

Presenter24:45

And I got myself a drama agent and I said, get me work. I'm so excited. It's the most exciting thing I've done for years.

Presenter24:53

He m sent me to audition for Val May, who was casting Conduct Emmy Cumming for Bristol.

Presenter25:00

I don't know how, but I got it.

Presenter25:02

And you played it in the West End with great success for a long time. For a whole year, yes. Let's have another record.

Presenter25:08

A band which I um encountered in nineteen seventy three and bought every

Presenter25:14

piece of record they ever made, right up until they became

Presenter25:18

famous and successful, and I've now lost interest in them. They're

Presenter25:22

The Jay Giles Band.

Presenter25:24

Now this is an interesting one. It's uh actually uh mostly a harmonica solo by their harmonica player who rejoices in the name of Magic Dick.

Presenter25:34

I do not know what his real name is, but he is a magic musician.

Presenter25:39

And this is actually a a Louis Armstrong solo. Armstrong recorded this in about, I don't know, twenty the late twenties anyway, with uh the Louis Armstrong Hot Five.

Presenter25:49

And it was a wonderful record, but then all the hot five records were. And I kind of nearly chose the Louis Armstrong version. But this is a bit like Don Sibeski's reworking of The Right of Spring, you see. I get by memory The Right of Spring, and in the same way when I listen to this one, I get also by memory the Louis Armstrong version. It's called I'm Not Rough.

Presenter26:43

The Jay Giles band, I'm Not Rough, following in the footsteps of Louis Armstrong.

Presenter26:49

Paul, you began to do a lot of classical theatre. Where did that start? What was your first Shakespearean role?

Presenter26:57

I suppose, yes, I think so. Nineteen seventy four, a director called Ed Thompson called me from uh

Presenter27:03

Coventry, where he was in charge of the rep at the Belgrade Theatre.

Presenter27:08

And I had seen a very good production that he did of Twelfth Night when he was at the Crucible in Sheffield.

Presenter27:15

I used to be on tour a lot playing in clubs or with a band.

Presenter27:20

And I would rush to see whatever was on in the local theatre. I had become obsessed actually. I used to see the first act of a great many things, but I saw this thing. I I loved it very much. And uh I thought, well, that is a good director. And then purely by coincidence, he called me.

Presenter27:37

And said, Would I go up and do a play called Widowers' Houses? which was by Shaw. And I didn't know the play, I read it and I said, Yes.

Presenter27:45

And it was in the studio theatre at Belgrade, and um I s must have made a decent job of it because he said, Will you stay on and play Edmund in King Lear?

Presenter27:55

My first Shakespearean roll

Presenter27:58

And uh I said, Great Michael Gough played King Lear, and uh various excellent people were in the company, and I enjoyed that very much, and immediately wanted to do more Shakespeare, and more Shaw, actually. You played Cassio to Dan Massey's Othello. Where was that? That was at Nottingham.

Presenter28:14

I'd met Richard Eyre when I was on a tour of a a musical called Pilgrim, which was sort of on its way to the Edinburgh Festival.

Presenter28:22

I'd heard his reputation. I hadn't at that point seen any of his work. To meet him, I just thought, oh, he's such a lovely man. I'd really like to.

Presenter28:29

work with him so I kind of

Presenter28:31

very boldly said, Look, if there's anything you can find here for me to do, I just would love to come here and do it.

Presenter28:37

And a few months later he called me and said, Will you come and play Casio? And I just had such a wonderful time up there.

Paul Jones28:42

Yeah.

Presenter28:44

With that season. And of course you were to work a great deal later on with her.

Presenter28:50

But sticking to that classical period, you played Hamlet.

Presenter28:53

Yes, I did at the Ludlow Festival. But the only thing is Did it rain? It was No, absolutely not. I wish it had. It was sort of, you know, a hundred degrees on that stage. You play in the open air, of course, and they had built a severely raked stage.

Presenter29:08

uh with the battlements as the uh backdrop. And uh it was okay, but we should really have started our performances at five o'clock in the morning. Because Hamlet, if you recall, begins uh I I forget when exactly, but at the sort of dark watch and then it uh becomes daylight in the second scene and

Speaker 229:23

Getting on towards dawn.

Presenter29:28

It would have been wonderful if we'd done that, but we would go on the stage at sort of half past two in the afternoon for a a matinee with a clear blue sky and the sun pelting down and eighty something in the shade on this stage angled so that it faced the sun perfectly. It must have been over a hundred degrees. And there I was with the inky cloak wrapped tidily around me and people were saying uh things like'tis bitter cold and I am sore at heart and everyone in the audience was bursting out laughing. But it was a fantastic thing for me to play that part when I really hadn't that much experience and to play it in such a company. Gwen Watford played Gertrude and she was just so wonderful to work with, not just to work with on stage, but to rehearse with and to

Paul Jones30:08

And

Presenter30:14

talk about the play with and everything. And you played with Helen Mirren and Measure for Measure? That was in nineteen seventy nine at Riverside in Hammersmith in a production by Peter Gill. Mhm. So during all this time

Paul Jones30:27

So

Presenter30:29

Music had taken a back seat for the time being. Very much a backseat. I mean, I wasn't doing much in the way of live performances at all.

Presenter30:37

A decent record I made was to sing on the original recording of Andrew Lloyd Webber and uh Tim Rice's Evita. Oh, yes, of course.

Presenter30:45

But most of my musical side at the time was simply taken up with playing the mouth organ anonymously on a great many records.

Presenter30:55

Record number six now.

Presenter30:57

Record number six is arguably the best rock record made in nineteen eighty two. It is by Donald Fagan, who was uh one of the two most important people in Steely Dan.

Presenter31:11

Steely Dan is now sort of no more and this was, I think, Fagan's first solo album. I love everything about it and think that uh if you gotta have rock music it's gotta sound like this. It's called The Goodbye Look.

Speaker 231:30

I believe I just got the fall of love, I believe I just got the

Speaker 231:34

I believe I just got the good bar I believe I just got the good bible

Speaker 231:42

Nituponia Cuban Reescret

Presenter31:58

Donald Fagan, the goodbye look. No, certainly not our island. It has a casino on it.

Presenter32:04

And of course, it must be very nice for an actor to be invited to join the National Theatre, which happened to you.

Presenter32:10

Yes, but even more of a surprise, and even more nice, for somebody who's running a blues band.

Presenter32:17

to be asked, uh when he hasn't actually done anything in the theatre for

Presenter32:22

I suppose I hadn't done anything for three years. Well, this was Richard Eyre's idea, for whom you had played Shakespeare. I was amazed, thrilled, and delighted when he asked me if I'd uh do the beggar's opera.

Paul Jones32:26

You had

Presenter32:32

A rather a Brechtian type of beggars' opera, no scarlet coats, no carefully orchestrated music.

Presenter32:40

No, uh as one critic said, a way of proving that Brecht never needed to write the threepenny opera.

Presenter32:48

Because actually it was all there in the in the Beggars Opera if you did this kind of production. Yes, a production which deprittifies the whole thing. I mean it had got prettier and prettier really. Well mixed views about that. Uh uh some people would have liked a scarlet coat or two.

Paul Jones32:57

I mean it ha

Paul Jones33:00

Well mixed views about

Presenter33:05

Oh yes, yes, I know that there are people like that, but then there are some people who don't like

Presenter33:10

and the National's production of Midsummer Night's Dream because they only like pretty fairies.

Presenter33:15

Let's get on to Guys and Dolls that you're also in and playing Sky Masterson. A very exciting production. Very exciting, but for me also fraught with uh

Presenter33:25

angst because I had to take over. Yes, indeed. Now taking over from somebody in a play is not very easy. And taking over from somebody that's good and very popular, like Ian Charlson in the part of Skymasters in is even more difficult.

Presenter33:42

I honestly think that if it hadn't been Richard Eyre

Presenter33:46

I would have thought.

Presenter33:48

several times about it, because taking over is a thankless task for an actor very often. But I thought, well, look, it's Richard.

Presenter33:55

And it's the chance, possibly even of a lifetime, so I went for it. And an excellent thing about it was even doing The Beggars' Opera and Guys and Dolls, you still had a night or two off to run your blues band. Yes, for a while, but uh after a few months it became obvious that I just hadn't got the energy to do all three things. Something had to go. And uh it seemed obvious that as I'd been doing the blues band for at that point three and a half years, it seemed exactly the right moment to leave the blues band. And you are running a solo blues career as well as your national theatre part? Well, yes, but it's rather occasional at the moment. I pop off to Italy sometimes and play with an Italian band or I if invited I um go and play with an English band in a club or something here in London.

Presenter34:44

But most of my time is now spent in the National Theatre, but also I still do.

Presenter34:49

Mouth organ for people's gramophone records whenever they ask. Now, you'll finish at the National Theatre in October. Do you know which way you're going to swing then? I haven't a clue. And that is how I like it. Right.

Presenter35:00

Record number 7.

Presenter35:03

Well, I've loved this record ever since I first heard it, I don't know how many years ago. And also I wanted to take something with me that would stretch me as a listener a little more than my jazz records or my rock records and even my opera records. And we were saying how difficult it was to choose these things. I almost chose one of Itzak Perlman's records that he made with Andrei Previn because he plays jazz wonderfully and I loved all that stuff. But I decided to have him playing the Brahms violin concerto instead.

Presenter36:29

An excerpt from the Brahms violin concerto in the Itzhak Perlman with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Carlo Maria Gielini.

Presenter36:39

Now you're on this desert island, Paul.

Presenter36:41

How do you think you'd cope? Could you look after yourself? I'm one of the people who wouldn't cope very well, I think. I do like comfort. Could you build a shelter? Oh, yes. I mean, obviously, you know, I can do what I have to do, and if I have to build a shelter, I'll build it.

Paul Jones36:43

Yeah.

Presenter36:55

Could you build some kind of a craft?

Presenter36:57

Yes, I I'm sure that I could do that too.

Presenter37:00

Would you try to escape?

Presenter37:03

That's a difficult question to answer. What do you know about navigation? Do you know which one?

Paul Jones37:07

Nothing.

Presenter37:11

And I think it would probably suit my temperament to wait.

Presenter37:16

And uh if nobody came, well, then nobody would come.

Presenter37:19

Well you've got one more record to play while you're waiting.

Presenter37:23

Thankfully, it's something which I can get pleasure from listening to immediately and I can get pleasure from listening to for the hundredth time. It's the Oscar Peterson Six recorded live at Montreux.

Presenter37:35

One of the best tunes ever composed in the history of the world, Here's That Rainy Day, and it features Tuts Tielemans on it. He's a Belgian harmonica player and possibly the greatest jazz harmonica player ever, Here's That Rainy Day.

Presenter38:49

The Oscar Peterson Big Six.

Presenter38:51

Here's that rainy day.

Presenter38:53

Paul, if you could take only one disc out of the eight you've chosen, which would it be? It's absolutely impossible.

Presenter39:00

Every one of these records makes me tingle, but I suppose the one that would make me tingle for longest.

Presenter39:07

I think would probably be that incredible voice, Domingo.

Presenter39:11

And Traviata. Right.

Presenter39:13

And one luxury to take to the island, any one object of no practical use that would give you great pleasure to have? No question. This was the only easy thing to choose, a harmonica. And one book. You have the Bible and Shakespeare and one other book. Every time I listen to this programme and I hear you say one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, I think of something that Shaw said, which I'll probably quote wrongly, but the gist of it is right. He said, With the single exception of Homer.

Presenter39:44

I can think of no

Presenter39:46

civilized writer or great writer or something like that.

Presenter39:49

Not even Sir Walter Scott.

Presenter39:52

Whose mind I can despise so completely as I despise Shakespeare when I compare his mind with mine. For that reason I would like to take Shaw. I would like I'm the only person I know who's ever read Everybody's Political What's Watt.

Presenter40:07

And actors argue about Shaw almost more than they argue about any subject. So I thought if I took Shaw's complete works and I could reread absolutely the lot, I would finally answer the question about whether he was

Presenter40:22

A truly great mind or an utter twerp. I'm not sure about the complete works. We can give you the plays and prefaces bound together.

Presenter40:30

You see, I'd want the political stuff.

Presenter40:32

We'll write the political stuff and the plays, but we can't really do the complete works. I'm sorry. What about the music criticism? That's another thing, too. Oh, dear. And the theatre criticism.

Paul Jones40:36

What about the music?

Presenter40:42

Two volumes of Shaw wit.

Presenter40:44

The music criticism and the political stuff. All right, you shall have it. And thank you, Paul Jones, very much for letting us hear you. Thank you. It's been painful and very pleasurable. Goodbye, everyone.

Paul Jones40:51

Thank you.

Paul Jones41:20

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