Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Actor and singer/entertainer, distinguished in both fields.
On the island
Eight records
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.
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... Walter Horton.
Billie Holiday really began life as a a blues singer, but she developed into again one of the... Greatest voices in history, I think.
Brindisi (Libiamo ne' lieti calici)Favourite
Plácido Domingo & Teresa Stratas
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.
It's uh actually uh mostly a harmonica solo by their harmonica player who rejoices in the name of Magic Dick... 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.
Record number six is arguably the best rock record made in nineteen eighty two... I love everything about it and think that uh if you gotta have rock music it's gotta sound like this.
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77
Itzhak Perlman & Chicago Symphony Orchestra
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.
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... and it features Tuts Tielemans on it.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:38Did 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.
Presenter asks
3:28Whereabouts do you come from [and what was your childhood like]?
Portsmouth. Your father was in the Royal Navy. He was indeed, yes... I moved around a conventional variety of naval establishments as a as a child... mostly I was at boarding school.
Presenter asks
7:34What were your activities [at Oxford] apart from reading?
That really was when I discovered the blues in my first vacation... I went back to Oxford... managed to assemble four other like minded souls... And we played together... in the... University Union Cellars, occasionally.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
The Plays, Prefaces, Music Criticism and Political Writings
George Bernard Shaw
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. ... if I took Shaw's complete works and I could reread absolutely the lot, I would finally answer the question about whether he was a truly great mind or an utter twerp.
Why did you quit [Manfred Mann]?
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... the music had kind of gone very secondary to the screaming, in fact.
Presenter asks
36:39How do you think you'd cope [on a desert island]? Could you look after yourself?
I'm one of the people who wouldn't cope very well, I think. I do like comfort... if I have to build a shelter, I'll build it.
“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.”
“I went in there one day and he said, 'You like the blues. What do you think of this?' And he played me this record by T Bone Walker... and I said, That's what I'm going to do with my life.”
“I would like to take Shaw... if I took Shaw's complete works and I could reread absolutely the lot, I would finally answer the question about whether he was... A truly great mind or an utter twerp.”