King of Song
For someone whose back catalogue includes some of the most iconic songs of the past six decades and more, a man whose closest friends are enduring household names, Leslie Bricusse is the very model of modesty.
A charming and civilised man, he’s enjoying something of a high noon with Pure Imagination! A Sorta-Biography, while a show of the same name featuring songs from his prolific songbook has just completed a successful run at the St James Theatre in London. ‘I was involved in the choice of songs,’ he says, ‘but it wasn’t the story of my life because there were no words. What it did was trace the progression of my life – or the Department of Fate, as I call it.’
It would be hard to overestimate Leslie’s contribution to the popular musical canon. As Elton John, a longtime friend since being introduced by the late Bryan Forbes and his actress wife, Nanette Newman, says at the beginning of the book: ‘Anyone who has written What Kind Of Fool Am I? and My Old Man’s A Dustman should be revered for ever.’ The latter song took a day to write before being recorded by Lonnie Donegan and shooting to Number One in 1960.
Gene Wilder, star of Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, the film for which Bricusse wrote Pure Imagination.
Aged just five, Leslie’s ear was caught by the work of George and Ira Gershwin. ‘I was attracted,’ he recalls, ‘to the wit and sophistication of lyrics like: “In time, the Rockies may crumble/ Gibraltar may tumble/They’re only made of clay/But our love is here to stay”. It wasn’t until years later I found out those words had been written by Ira for his brother who had just died.’ Leslie began writing songs while he was doing his National Service in the early 1950s and continued when he went up to Cambridge to read modern and medieval languages and got involved in the Footlights Revue. But it wasn’t until he met Anthony Newley that his fate was sealed. In time, they collaborated on shows including Stop The World – I Want To Get Off and The Roar Of The Greasepaint – The Smell Of The Crowd and the film of Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, for which the song Pure Imagination was written.
‘At the end of his life, Tony said to me that his one regret was that we hadn’t written more together. But he was so busy and when his manager persuaded him to do cabaret in Las Vegas, it became impossible. He was wonderfully talented and we stayed friends until his death in 1999.’
Why does Leslie think their partnership worked so well? ‘His son, Sacha, said to me that his father had a very unfortunate childhood. I think I represented security and, although we were the same age, I became something of a father figure to him. We had the best friendship, like brothers.’
In 1958, Leslie married actress Yvonne Romain (known by everyone as Evie) and, five years later, Newley married Joan Collins. The two couples became inseparable throughout the 1960s. In 1964, the Bricusses’ only child, Adam, was born; a full-time artist, he is father to their two grandsons, 14-year-old Roman and Luca, 11.
The 1960s proved a purple patch for Leslie and a decade when he met and cemented what turned out to be lifelong friendships. He first came across Michael Caine in 1963 at a London restaurant Leslie had opened with Wolf Mankowitz who wrote the book for the musical Pickwick, for which Cyril Ornadel composed the music and Leslie provided the lyrics.
‘Talk about the audacity of youth! It was called the Pickwick Club, it was for members only and Robert Carrier dreamt up a Dickensian menu. Every Friday I’d host a lunch there for Tony, John Barry, the composer, Terence Stamp and his unemployed flatmate, Michael Caine, just before he landed a role in the film Zulu.’
Pickwick, the musical, was a big hit in London after one or two teething troubles on the road. ‘We were in Manchester and we didn’t yet have a big song for Harry [Secombe]. There’s a scene at a local election and the director said he’d love something along the lines of what Pickwick would do if he were their parliamentary candidate. I said, somewhat sarcastically: “Well, that sounds like a big hit, doesn’t it?” Then, in the middle of the night, it came to me, words and music both. I got up and wrote it down quickly.’ The song was called If I Ruled The World.
Anthony Newley, Henry Mancini, Sammy Davis Jr and Leslie Bricusse
Pickwick followed hot on the heels of the Bricusse/Newley success with their first collaboration, Stop The World – I Want To Get Off. ‘Tony and I had three weeks to write the entire thing, sitting together in Bea Lillie’s New York apartment. We wrote the score, 14 songs, in eight days. A songwriting duo called Leiber and Stoller, who wrote many of Elvis Presley’s songs, wanted Tony to record an arrangement of My Clair de Lune with their modern lyrics.
‘He agreed but only on the condition that the ‘B’ side could be a song from Stop The World. They had studio time of three hours, which included just 15 minutes at the end for What Kind Of Fool Am I? Little did they know they were recording the song that was to win the Grammy Award the following year and which has now been recorded upwards of a thousand times.’
Leslie also first met Julie Andrews in the 1960s when he interviewed her for a radio series called Roundabout. Years later, the two collaborated on the film Victor Victoria for which he won his second Academy Award for Best Adaptation and Original Song Score. ‘And Julie also pre-recorded the voice of the parrot, Polynesia, for me in the stage version of Doctor Dolittle.’
That film had given Leslie his first Oscar. ‘It was my first Hollywood movie and I wrote the screenplay, music and lyrics. Before I read the 12 Dolittle books, I asked myself to define the recurring theme. Then I sat down and wrote Talk To The Animals, which won an Oscar for Best Song in 1968. That meant I’d won an Academy Award for my work on my first day in Hollywood,’ he says with a shy smile.
No whistle-stop tour of Leslie’s output could fail to mention the three songs he helped to write for Bond movies. Everyone knows Goldfinger, immortalised by Shirley Bassey, and You Only Live Twice, sung by Nancy Sinatra. But his favourite is Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, James Bond’s name in Japan. ‘It was recorded by Shirley and Dionne Warwick although, at the last minute, the producers opted for the song Thunderball, composed by John Barry and Don Black, and sung by Tom Jones, to tie in with the film’s title.’
He’s 84 now but Leslie is as busy as ever. He’s currently working on two animated movies in LA, one of which contains his lyrics for the music of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. The other is a remake of Scrooge using John Cleese’s voice and animated likeness. He’s also determined to bring his musical of Cyrano de Bergerac to the London stage. And then there’s his life of Sammy Davis Jr.
‘Retirement isn’t a word in my vocabulary,’ he says firmly. ‘Evie and I share everything. This is what keeps us young. She’s my greatest collaborator because she’s involved in everything I do and I’m doing what I love. Why would I stop? The Department of Fate has taken good care of me.’
Pure Imagination! A Sorta- Biography, by Leslie Bricusse, is published by Faber Music, priced £25.
A charming and civilised man, he’s enjoying something of a high noon with Pure Imagination! A Sorta-Biography, while a show of the same name featuring songs from his prolific songbook has just completed a successful run at the St James Theatre in London. ‘I was involved in the choice of songs,’ he says, ‘but it wasn’t the story of my life because there were no words. What it did was trace the progression of my life – or the Department of Fate, as I call it.’
It would be hard to overestimate Leslie’s contribution to the popular musical canon. As Elton John, a longtime friend since being introduced by the late Bryan Forbes and his actress wife, Nanette Newman, says at the beginning of the book: ‘Anyone who has written What Kind Of Fool Am I? and My Old Man’s A Dustman should be revered for ever.’ The latter song took a day to write before being recorded by Lonnie Donegan and shooting to Number One in 1960.
Gene Wilder, star of Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, the film for which Bricusse wrote Pure Imagination.Aged just five, Leslie’s ear was caught by the work of George and Ira Gershwin. ‘I was attracted,’ he recalls, ‘to the wit and sophistication of lyrics like: “In time, the Rockies may crumble/ Gibraltar may tumble/They’re only made of clay/But our love is here to stay”. It wasn’t until years later I found out those words had been written by Ira for his brother who had just died.’ Leslie began writing songs while he was doing his National Service in the early 1950s and continued when he went up to Cambridge to read modern and medieval languages and got involved in the Footlights Revue. But it wasn’t until he met Anthony Newley that his fate was sealed. In time, they collaborated on shows including Stop The World – I Want To Get Off and The Roar Of The Greasepaint – The Smell Of The Crowd and the film of Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, for which the song Pure Imagination was written.
‘At the end of his life, Tony said to me that his one regret was that we hadn’t written more together. But he was so busy and when his manager persuaded him to do cabaret in Las Vegas, it became impossible. He was wonderfully talented and we stayed friends until his death in 1999.’
Why does Leslie think their partnership worked so well? ‘His son, Sacha, said to me that his father had a very unfortunate childhood. I think I represented security and, although we were the same age, I became something of a father figure to him. We had the best friendship, like brothers.’
In 1958, Leslie married actress Yvonne Romain (known by everyone as Evie) and, five years later, Newley married Joan Collins. The two couples became inseparable throughout the 1960s. In 1964, the Bricusses’ only child, Adam, was born; a full-time artist, he is father to their two grandsons, 14-year-old Roman and Luca, 11.
The 1960s proved a purple patch for Leslie and a decade when he met and cemented what turned out to be lifelong friendships. He first came across Michael Caine in 1963 at a London restaurant Leslie had opened with Wolf Mankowitz who wrote the book for the musical Pickwick, for which Cyril Ornadel composed the music and Leslie provided the lyrics.
‘Talk about the audacity of youth! It was called the Pickwick Club, it was for members only and Robert Carrier dreamt up a Dickensian menu. Every Friday I’d host a lunch there for Tony, John Barry, the composer, Terence Stamp and his unemployed flatmate, Michael Caine, just before he landed a role in the film Zulu.’
Pickwick, the musical, was a big hit in London after one or two teething troubles on the road. ‘We were in Manchester and we didn’t yet have a big song for Harry [Secombe]. There’s a scene at a local election and the director said he’d love something along the lines of what Pickwick would do if he were their parliamentary candidate. I said, somewhat sarcastically: “Well, that sounds like a big hit, doesn’t it?” Then, in the middle of the night, it came to me, words and music both. I got up and wrote it down quickly.’ The song was called If I Ruled The World.
Anthony Newley, Henry Mancini, Sammy Davis Jr and Leslie BricussePickwick followed hot on the heels of the Bricusse/Newley success with their first collaboration, Stop The World – I Want To Get Off. ‘Tony and I had three weeks to write the entire thing, sitting together in Bea Lillie’s New York apartment. We wrote the score, 14 songs, in eight days. A songwriting duo called Leiber and Stoller, who wrote many of Elvis Presley’s songs, wanted Tony to record an arrangement of My Clair de Lune with their modern lyrics.
‘He agreed but only on the condition that the ‘B’ side could be a song from Stop The World. They had studio time of three hours, which included just 15 minutes at the end for What Kind Of Fool Am I? Little did they know they were recording the song that was to win the Grammy Award the following year and which has now been recorded upwards of a thousand times.’
Leslie also first met Julie Andrews in the 1960s when he interviewed her for a radio series called Roundabout. Years later, the two collaborated on the film Victor Victoria for which he won his second Academy Award for Best Adaptation and Original Song Score. ‘And Julie also pre-recorded the voice of the parrot, Polynesia, for me in the stage version of Doctor Dolittle.’
That film had given Leslie his first Oscar. ‘It was my first Hollywood movie and I wrote the screenplay, music and lyrics. Before I read the 12 Dolittle books, I asked myself to define the recurring theme. Then I sat down and wrote Talk To The Animals, which won an Oscar for Best Song in 1968. That meant I’d won an Academy Award for my work on my first day in Hollywood,’ he says with a shy smile.
No whistle-stop tour of Leslie’s output could fail to mention the three songs he helped to write for Bond movies. Everyone knows Goldfinger, immortalised by Shirley Bassey, and You Only Live Twice, sung by Nancy Sinatra. But his favourite is Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, James Bond’s name in Japan. ‘It was recorded by Shirley and Dionne Warwick although, at the last minute, the producers opted for the song Thunderball, composed by John Barry and Don Black, and sung by Tom Jones, to tie in with the film’s title.’
He’s 84 now but Leslie is as busy as ever. He’s currently working on two animated movies in LA, one of which contains his lyrics for the music of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. The other is a remake of Scrooge using John Cleese’s voice and animated likeness. He’s also determined to bring his musical of Cyrano de Bergerac to the London stage. And then there’s his life of Sammy Davis Jr.
‘Retirement isn’t a word in my vocabulary,’ he says firmly. ‘Evie and I share everything. This is what keeps us young. She’s my greatest collaborator because she’s involved in everything I do and I’m doing what I love. Why would I stop? The Department of Fate has taken good care of me.’
Pure Imagination! A Sorta- Biography, by Leslie Bricusse, is published by Faber Music, priced £25.