User:Micina/Alan Blaikley
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Alan Blaikley (born 23 March 1940) is an English songwriter/composer.
Early life and career
[edit]Born in London, where he survived the Blitz, Alan Blaikley was educated at University College School (UCS), Hampstead, and Wadham College, Oxford, where he read Classical Moderations (Latin and Greek), and English.
After coming down from university, he joined forces with two old UCS friends Ken Howard and Paul Overy with whom, between 1962 and 1963, he ran and edited four issues of a ‘little’ magazine, AXLE Quarterly, publishing early work by Melvyn Bragg, Ray Gosling and Alexis Lykiard among others. A spin-off from this was a series of five – for the time – provocative booklets, AXLE Spokes: "The Abortive Renaissance" (a critical examination of New Wave British cinema)/Peter Graham; "Sex - Is It Easy?"/John Gale; "Pop!"/Gavin Millar; "Hooked" (an enquiry into the extent and nature of drug addiction, a taboo subject just surfacing in 1963); and "Another Kind of Loving" (about homosexuality, still an imprisonable offence in the UK)/Anthony Rowley.
At the same time, as a freelance, Alan Blaikley wrote and narrated several BBC radio programmes including Writing for Children in which he interviewed C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and Enid Blyton. From 1963 to 1964 he was a trainee producer with BBC TV Talks Department and worked on the daily current affairs programme Tonight.
It had been earlier, during his years as a choir-boy at St-Mary-at-Finchley, that he began to realise that, while his voice was less than brilliant, he did possess a gift for inventing ear-catching melodies. This period as a chorister he regards as his essential musical education.
Songwriting and composing
[edit]International hits in the 1960s and 1970s
[edit]In the 1960s and 1970s, in collaboration with Ken Howard, Alan Blaikley composed the music and words for many international top 10 hits,[1][2][3] including two UK number ones, "Have I the Right?" (The Honeycombs) and "The Legend of Xanadu" (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich).[4][5]
Among other performers for whom they have written are Petula Clark, Phil Collins, Sacha Distel, Rolf Harris, Frankie Howerd (the theme song for his film Up Pompeii), Engelbert Humperdinck, Horst Jankowski, Eartha Kitt, Little Eva, Lulu and Matthews Southern Comfort.
Alan Blaikley and Ken Howard were the first British composers to write for Elvis Presley, including the hit "I’ve Lost You" (1970) which he later performed in the film That’s The Way It Is.[6]
Ark 2
[edit]Blaikley and Howard’s ‘space cantata’, Ark 2 (1969), performed by Flaming Youth, drew the comment that Blaikley and Howard "have a wit, gaiety, dignity and melodic flair reminiscent of Leonard Bernstein...which suggest that pop is becoming the serious music – in the proper sense – of the age".[7] The BBC producers at that time did not know what to make of an extended rock work, so it received scant airplay. It remains a rare but sought after album, especially in its original ‘stained glass’ gatefold sleeve.
Musicals
[edit]Blaikley and Howard have written two West End musicals, Mardi Gras (Prince of Wales Theatre, 1976) and The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (Wyndham's Theatre, 1984 – 1986), and two BBC TV musicals Orion (1977) and Ain’t Many Angels (1978).
TV themes
[edit]Blaikley and Howard have also been responsible for theme and incidental music for several television drama series including The Flame Trees of Thika (1981) and By the Sword Divided (1983 - 1985), both subsequently aired in the US on Alistair Cooke’s Masterpiece Theatre, and the BBC's long-running series of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple (1984 - 1992), said to have been the Queen’s favourite TV programme.
Interest in psychotherapy
[edit]Alan Blaikley had long been interested in analytical psychology and, at the instigation of his analyst, mentor and friend, Dr William Kraemer, he trained as a psychotherapist at the Westminster Pastoral Foundation (The Foundation for Psychotherapy and Counselling).
On graduating he ran a private practice from his home between 1981 and 2003. This led to a collaboration between Blaikley and Howard and the maverick psychiatrist R. D. Laing on the cult album Life before Death.
Memoirs
[edit]At present Alan Blaikley is working on a memoir Have I the Right? – Memories, Reflections, Notes as well as maintaining his musical partnership with Ken Howard.
References
[edit]- ^ Entry under Howard & Blaikley in The Penguin Encyclopaedia of Popular Music (1989)
- ^ Chapter on Howard and Blaikley in The Young Meteors, Jonathan Aitken, Secker & Warburg (1967)
- ^ Chapter on Howard and Blaikley in Starmakers and Svengalis, Johnny Rogan, Queen Anne Press (1988)
- ^ Obituaries of Dave Dee in The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Independent (January 2009) referring to Blaikley and Howard's composition of a succession of hits for the Dave Dee band
- ^ Alan Blaikley's tribute to Dave Dee, "Lives Remembered", The Times (14 January 2009)
- ^ Interview with Alan Blaikley and Ken Howard, The Elvis Mag, Issue 68 (Jan/Feb/March 2010)
- ^ Derek Jewell, The Sunday Times (1969)
External links
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