Transcript of an interview with Pete Atkin & Clive James, after their concert at Middlesbrough Town Hall on November 2nd 1975. Broadcast the following day on BBC Radio Cleveland by Graeme Aldous.

GA:   Last night, a small (but enthusiastic) audience sat in the Middlesbrough Town Hall to hear a concert by Pete Atkin (singer and musician), and Clive James (songwriter, poet, and TV critic of The Observer) 'Together, At Last'...

Extract: The Master Of The Revels

GA:   'The Master Of The Revels' - a Pete Atkin song - some would say the Pete Atkin song - with his music, and the words by Clive James. I think that last night's audience was rather indicative of Atkin & James fans; not thousands of them, but those that there are, are enthusiastic, and we hope that the number's growing all the time. What happened last night was that Clive read some of his poetry, and told us why he wrote some of the songs, which Pete played and sang. Some of the songs were straight, and some were what they call their 'Live Libel' characters - sometimes pretty savage lampoons of (usually recognisable) greats in the music world - we'll be coming back to that in a minute. Clive, of course, isn't usually an on-stage performer - he spends much of his working life sitting in front of the television! This is the first time he and Pete have toured together, in a journey that's taken them through most of the university centres of the country, plus Middlesbrough. So, the question to Clive James - 'How's it going?'

CJ:   Staggering. I always knew that Pete would go well - I rather doubted that I could fit into it, so...

PA:   He's being overly modest, really, because....

CJ:   It turned out fairly quickly that people liked the combination...

PA:   One of the attractive reasons from our agent's point of view about the tour was that we'd got some different kind of people to the concerts - people who wouldn't come to music concerts necessarily, were coming because they know Clive's name, and they're just curious - which is just exactly what we want, because it gets the music through to some very different people...

CJ:   ...and so, you know, I think I'm turning on some of Pete's audience to the poetry, and Pete's turning on some of my audience to the lyrics, which is just exactly what we were after, so it's great.

GA:   How do you feel, Clive, that your lyrics, sung by Pete - other people think of these as being 'Pete Atkin Songs'.

CJ:   Well, they are Pete Atkin songs. I mean, once Pete's done the music, they become his automatically...

PA:   That's something that I'm aiming for. Setting Clive's lyrics to music is to make the songs sound as if the words and music came out of my head at the moment that I'm singing it. That's almost the definition of a successful song, that you can't see the join, as it were...

CJ:   It just takes on independent life, as it were. And ideally one day other people will sing them too, and they'll just become 'songs' - it doesn't matter who writes them, as long as they're good.

GA:   In this tour, Clive, you're sitting there on stage, and you're seeing Pete perform your songs - I know you've seen him doing this plenty of times before, but what's it like to actually be there, and feel the audience reaction coming back?

CJ:   Great, great - at its best, it's probably the most moving experience of my life. I found his early in the tour, just to sneak a look out into the audience, and watch... first of all, watch kids who actually knew the songs already, mouthing the words as the songs went - that's a great experience. And then see the impact on kids that didn't know them before - that's a great experience, too. But, you know, I'd always dreamed of writing popular poetry; without talking down, to write a poetry that would go straight through to the people, and here it is happening, and.... I mean, life isn't the Nursery, and you can't have what you want, and to actually see your dream fulfilled on that scale is just a vast privilege. I won't say that I'm at a loss for words about it, cos I'm obviously jabbering on enough about it now, but I don't under-rate it. I doubt if I'll have a more intense aesthetic experience as I'm having now. This tour's very important to me, certainly.

GA:   And what about your side of it, Pete? You wouldn't normally do a big hall like this, would you?

PA:   Some places, it depends... There are places around the country where, for one reason or another (it's very hard to fathom), we've built up a big following for the songs. Some of the universities seem to be particularly strong - for example, York and Bristol are a couple that are particularly good, and have got better all the time. Errm - we had a thousand people at Bristol, and a thousand at Sheffield, and turned people away from the Oxford Union...

CJ:   Turned them away from Bristol, for that matter...

PA:   ...yes, that's true...

CJ:   ...a thousand-plus.

GA:   It sounds then as though Atkin and James are student...

CJ:   No, I don't think it's necessarily so. Certainly, I mean, we can tell from the letters we get that we don't just appeal to students - we don't just appeal to people of that age group. We appeal to whole families, of all different educational backgrounds...

PA:   And they come, at the non-university gigs we do, the audiences are incredibly wide-ranging. Much younger than we expect, a lot of them, and much older at the other end.

CJ:   And they're certainly not frightened off by our reputation for (shall we say) 'articulateness' - in fact, I think that's what they rather like. I think there might be a big revival of 'articulateness' on the way, which would be very nice.

GA:   Could I also suggest, too, a big revival of singers who can sing a lyric, so we can hear it?

CJ:   Well, that would be nice. I think that's bound to happen because...

PA:   That works against me a lot of the time, actually!

CJ:   As far as the critics are concerned, it works against him, because the critics...

PA:   'There's not enough expression if you can hear the words'!

CJ:   The critics want British singers to sound American, first of all, and be incomprehensible. But that'll change - time'll change that.

GA:   In the show, Clive, you make quite a bit about the fact that you only can sing one note...

CJ:   I've got to sell this idea fairly carefully, or I'll never get away with the closing number!

GA:   ...but at the same time, you obviously must have been quite an observer (and I use that word advisedly!) of the music scene.

CJ:   I've always been interested in it - you can't help it, it just simply comes to you. And as I'm professionally interested as a lyricist, at least I know a little bit about it (although not a great deal) - I listen to a lot of rock music, and love it, and quite a lot of jazz too - and I listen to classical music much more... I listen to that all the time. I'm one of those people who receives music, but just hasn't been blessed with the capacity to give it back. And writing lyrics is my way in - it's my toe-hold, my tiny fleeting purchase on the musical world, and I value it a great deal.

GA:   Yeah, but what about 'Live Libel' though, where you're kicking back...?

CJ:   It's just so many pinpricks, rather than kicks. I mean, how can you kick a blancmange? It just moves away! And there's no stopping the music business... I don't say we're digging affectionately - some of the digs are extremely un-affectionate - there are things about the music business that we don't much like - but (you know) we just speak our mind. It's nothing remarkably savage - it's just that the music business is such a mutual-admiration-society that if you just say what you mean, people look at you as though you're acting incomprehensibly - it's like saying 'why are these people criticising me?'. It's very revealing that the word 'criticise' in rock & roll always means 'attack'. If so-and-so criticises somebody, it means he attacks them. Simply stating you professional opinion is enough to get you landed in the dock as some sort of boat-rocker...

Extract: Doom From A Room

GA:   Those of you who know Leonard Cohen's 'Bird On A Wire' may recognise, I think, the 'Live Libel' character, Leonard Conman, and 'Doom From A Room' - one of the few tracks on the 'Live Libel' album which, in fact, I would dare to broadcast! Let's go back to 'Master Of The Revels' - although fans associate it very much with Pete, it is apparently really Clive's song...

CJ:   Yes, it's very much a personal song, I think. I always fancied the job of 'Master Of The Revels' in the old Elizabethan court, or somewhere like that. Not the playwright, or anything, but just the guy who actually organised the festivities...

PA:   There's a character in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' who was Master Of The Revels - I think it was Philostrate...

CJ:   ...and he has to organise Bottom and all the boys, about the play. It was a very nice job, and when I wrote the song, I was directing Cambridge Footlights, and doing the same job - I was organising the festivities. And I always liked that idea. It always struck me that the Master Of The Revels must be the most worried man in England, because (you know) he had to get it right every night. He had to provide an entertainment that would actually make the Queen or the King laugh, and if he didn't, he was in serious trouble! He was only as good as his last production. I like the idea of a desperate man having to be funny,!

PA:   It's like being Manager of the England Football Team...

CJ:   That's right, exactly - in fact, there would have been a close resemblance between the Master Of The Revels, and Alf Ramsey!

Extract: The Master Of The Revels (to end)

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