Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A record producer who, with his company, had a hit in the top forty every week for four years and propelled stars including Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan.
On the island
Eight records
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:12Do you feel these days as if you've always been wealthy? Have you got entirely used to it?
It's something that I've never really stopped to think about. I've always spent money as if I had it, you know, albeit relative terms. But I mean, even when we didn't have any, if I thought it would help make a record, I would find it from somewhere.
Presenter asks
3:11So you're at ease with your money, you're comfortable with it. Do you feel you've earned it?
Oh yes, I mean nobody could have worked harder than me and taken the chances that I've taken. I don't have any guilt about what I've earned.
Presenter asks
6:11What was the formula you devised? What did you do that others hadn't done before you?
It would be about nineteen eighty one when the punk thing, which I really enjoy punk music. I mean, I really enjoy the energy and the rawness of it. I just spotted that the record industry had moved away from the public … the general public, and they'd left this huge hole with teenagers. To me music has always been a major part of their life and I could see there was nothing for them to hold on to.
The keepsakes
The book
Great Western Locomotives from 1847 to 1947
Every engine I could read, you know, that would take me probably five years to remember every slide valve and every pressure, but it would be absolute heaven for me though
The luxury
Presenter asks
10:12You set it up in the first place by mortgaging your own home to do it because, as I understand it, an astrologer told you to.
Yes. That's right. I'd been very successful before … I decided to stand on my own two feet. I came back. mortgaged my house … slept in a vocal booth. And I physically moved me, my dog and my bed into a vocal booth in the studio, and that's how we did it.
Presenter asks
15:51What do you remember about your childhood? 'Cause it sounds to me it was a council house in Coventry, wasn't it? And family pretty hard up, pretty poor.
Very lonely, yes. Um My mother was an incredible inspiration to me, and if you'd have met my mother, you wouldn't have thought how. Hard life was. I mean, she put out this incredible personality of everything that was wonderful, but once you opened the curtains, there was nothing inside the house. And My father absolutely adored his job and I don't think he ever realised he never brought enough money home to make ends meet. And by Tuesday night we were cooking his meals on the coal fire because my mum had a bob left for the meter but she daredn't put it in till she heard my dad's footsteps up the garden path so that he never knew we'd run out of money by Tuesday. Very strict upbringing … But a loving, a very loving upbringing. But I felt very much that I had to be on my own and do things.
“The first record is a piece of music I discovered purely by mistake in about nineteen fifty eight when I saw this record sleeve in a record shop and thought this title Tannhuizer was very clever … it's a piece of music that changed my life completely … it brings me to tears.”
“somebody like Algar can actually stir this much emotion. You have great respect for somebody with that much talent. It just makes you know you haven't got that much talent.”
“I remember, you know, thinking that the day my mother died, she had a wedding ring, that was it. And I thought this is not going to be for me, you know. She never understood my my affair with the music industry. She sort of got to understand it and she knew that I was happy. And for the last six months of her life, wherever I went, my mother was in the car, you know, I took my my mum everywhere because she'd never seen outside Coventry.”
“Oh, I've still got that hunger. Oh, no, I've still got that hunger. Yeah, this is all I know. This is my life. This is what I have to do. You know, I'm not good at anything else. This is what I'm good at.”