• 00:02:00 Originally wanted to be a comedian. Link between comedy and lyric writing
• 00:03:00 Collecting rhymes. Not great at English at school, but loved songs.
• 00:03:30 On meeting Matt Monro. Managed Matt for 20 years. Was opposite of diva; unimpressed by showbusiness and celebrity.
• 00:07:50 First song was for a Jewish wedding: ‘There’s no smoke without salmon’. Notebooks of rhymes, which seem at first sight unusable.
• 00:09:00 Title songs in movies in the 1960s.
• 00:10:00 Lyrics meant to be sung not read.
• 00:17:00 Is Musical Theatre a different discipline?
• 00:18:00 “Three people changed my life from a career point-of-view: Matt Monro, John Barry and the great Andrew Lloyd Webber [in audience]”
• 00:27:00 Michael Grade: “Not ‘and Don Black’. Black: I was writing with John Barry, but he moved to America for 40 years. “I’ve often envied people like Kander & Ebb who’ve stayed together for many years”. “But it’s been fun going from Quincy Jones to Henry Mancini.”
• 00:33:00 On John Barry: “I was writing with him for over 40 years and yet I remember the lunches more than the songs, because John, he had great taste. He was a bit of a James Bond character himself before James Bond … he drove a white Maserati, he wore the best suits, he was always surrounded by beautiful women, but when it came to eating he ate like a ballerina, he was very skinny. I remember, Michael Caine once presented him with an award and he said ‘This is the first time I’ve presented an award and it’s heavier than the recipient'”.
• 00:39:15 What makes a Bond song: “Provocative, seductive, and have the whiff of the boudoir about it … the law of the forbidden. I also think Shirley Bassey should sing them all.” “Everyone is a Bond fan”. [In response to Grade saying it’s “masculine, muscular music”]: “And yet you do get tender things, you get ‘We Have All The Time In The World’ which Louis Armstrong sang, a very tender love song. Many moods of Bond.”
• 00:59:30 [Grade: Very different writing songs where the characters are given to you …] “In a musical the lyricist’s job is to illuminate the character, further the story. And I got hooked straight away because in a musical you can write about tragedy, disappointment, you can write about any subject … in a pop song you’re looking for a hook, but in a musical you can really have a verbal firework display.” [On collaborative nature of a musical, as opposed to solitary lyric-writing, you’ve got to fit into that] “It’s not a hardship, it’s a joy, you create a whole new family when you start a musical …”
• 01:04:30