David Munrow - The tragic story of the man who inspired millions to love music

by Phil Hebblethwaite

Monday 28th November 2016

As Radio 3 re-run episodes of their landmark 1970s music series for children, Pied Piper, we remember its presenter - early music specialist David Munrow.

What's the best way to inspire children to take an interest in music, and is there any value in doing so? If there is, what kind of music is best?

Those kinds of questions have dogged parents and scientists for decades, each new study providing different answers. Does listening to Mozart really increase your brainpower? asked BBC Future in 2013 in response to a widely misunderstood report from 1993, which didn't actually declare that there was a "Mozart effect" - the idea that infants will become cleverer if they're exposed to classical music. In fact, just about any kind of music is good for children of all ages to listen to, and a much broader 2006 study suggested pop (Blur!) was just as effective as Mozart.

If you liked music when you were a kid, you already know that it benefitted you. The conundrum is how to interest children in music, and for that there are a multitude of initiatives around for parents to investigate, including the BBC's Ten Pieces.

Back in the 1970s, before mass media, life was simpler. One man was given a show on Radio 3 called Pied Piper: Tales and Music for Younger Listeners and a whole generation was tuned into a wild variety of sounds - classical, pop, world music, baroque, ancient, electronic. Easy, right? Give the right person the airwaves and the rest falls into place. Sure, but you'll need to find a broadcaster as erudite, brilliant and energetic as David Munrow, and that's no easy task.

Jolly good! Jolly good!

BBC Radio 3 - Pied Piper: David surveys the life of Sir Thomas Beecham

Pied Piper was broadcast on Radio 3 between 1971 and 1976 - a staggering 655 episodes in total, all presented by Munrow - and as part of their 70th anniversary celebrations they're re-running five episodes this week during the interval of Radio 3 in Concert (they're online too). For the uninitiated, it offers to chance to hear a master broadcaster at work, covering subjects as broad as Bach, English conductor and impresario Sir Thomas Beecham, brass and military bands, string quartets and music inspired by the stars. You'll learn a lot, whatever your age, because although Pied Piper was angled towards children it had a trick up its sleeve - the series was so well put together, it appealed as much to adults and had an average listening age of 29.

Munrow's love of music was life-long. He taught himself the bassoon in two weeks while still at school, before travelling to Peru, where he learned other instruments, and then studied at Cambridge in the 1960s. The breadth of his knowledge ensured he could present with devastating clarity, never cramming too much into an episode and always letting pieces of music play to a decent length, so they were enjoyable as well as illustrative. His touch was light-but-learned, fun and informative and he knew the power of stories to engage young minds. Here's how the episode (above) on Sir Thomas Beecham, grandson of the founder of the pharmaceutical company Beechams, begins: "Do you know which famous English conductor was born in St Helens, Lancashire, belonged to a family who made a fortune in pills, enjoyed cricket, chess and billiards, used to sing bass in a madrigal group and once practised the trombone in a rowing boat right out in the middle of a Swiss lake?"

In the first of the five episodes to be broadcast (below), Munrow picks out a phrase in Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, composed in the early 18th century, which he tells listeners sounds like someone saying, "Jolly good! Jolly good! Jolly good! Jolly good!" Then, to prove that "most people today would agree that Bach is one of the greatest composers there's ever been - even today's pop musicians listen to and study Bach because they find it full of excitement; they find it an inspiration", he plays the section of prog rock band The Nice’s Ars Longa Vita Brevis from 1968 that includes a version of "Bach's jolly good tune".

Renaissance man

One incarnation of the Early Music Consort of London.
L-R: Christopher Hogwood, David Munrow, James Tyler, Oliver Brookes, James Bowman

Pied Piper came to an end in 1976 because Munrow took his own life, aged just 33. He suffered from depression, which was possibly exacerbated by the recent deaths of his father and father-in-law, to whom he dedicated his only book, Instruments of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He also presented the TV programmes Ancestral Voices on BBC Two and Early Musical Instruments on ITV, but it was Pied Piper that left the most dramatic mark on a generation. 

Among its fans are Sir Nicholas Kenyon, managing director of the Barbican Centre and former controller of the BBC Proms, current Radio 3 controller Alan Davey, and Tom Service, whose excellent, cross-genre Listening Services series on Radio 3 conjures up the cavalier spirit of Pied Piper for a 21st century audience. Writing about Munrow in BBC Music magazine, Service says: "Munrow's scarcely credible output of 655 - six hundred and fifty-five! - editions in around five years is one of the most preternaturally brilliant and prolific of any broadcaster in recorded history."

And yet there are huge swathes of music fans who best remember Munrow not for his broadcasting career, but as a musician and recording artist. It seems almost impossible to believe, but in his 33 years he also released over 50 albums that it's not an exaggeration to say they changed our understanding of music history by spectacularly throwing a light on, most notably, the medieval and renaissance periods.

Munrow's interest in what is loosely termed 'early music' began at Cambridge when he discovered a crumhorn (an early wind instrument) hanging on the wall in a friend's room. He learned to play it and later, according to his collaborator Christopher Hogwood, mastered some 42 other instruments from different times in history and different places in the world. A group he formed, Early Music Consort of London, became highly influential, their many albums managing to combine the strictures of ancient music with the free-flowing experimentation of the 1970s. Just as Canadian pianist Glenn Gould had managed with Bach in the 50s and 60s, Munrow made old music sound bracingly modern and he won an audience not just with classical buffs, but rock fans, too.

The Early Music Consort's The Art of Courtly Love won a Grammy in 1977 for best Chamber Music Performance, and Munrow also scored for TV and film - including, with Peter Maxwell Davis, Ken Russell's The Devils (1971), starring Oliver Reed.

The Munrow legacy

Released 1976: EMI SLS 988

The final episode of Pied Piper to be broadcast this week (above) examines music inspired by the solar system and includes Munrow discussing astronomy with Sir Patrick Moore. We can guess that Munrow would have been thrilled to know that a piece of music performed by the Early Music Consort - The Faerie Round from Anthony Holborne’s Pavans, Galliards, Almains and Other Short Aeirs - was included on the Voyager Golden Records, which were sent into space in 1977. That's quite some achievement, and just one example of Munrow's extraordinary legacy.

Have we become genre-blind in the way we listen to music now? Radio 3 controller Alan Davey thinks so, telling the Sunday Times in 2015: ”Young people are ­growing up with an open mind about various kinds of quite ­complex music." Munrow foresaw that, instilling a sense of sonic adventure in the minds of people who heard the Pied Piper series in the 70s and now have considerable influence on the way music is presented, curated and broadcast to us now. 

"Today," Tom Service writes in BBC Music magazine, "Munrow would have taken advantage of the technological possibilities of our musical world in ways that we can only imagine." He was a futurist as well as an archivist, who left the universe of music vastly expanded in all directions for the benefit of those who came next.

First published at BBC November 28, 2016

Leon Russell, Hit Maker and Musicians’ Musician, Dies at 74

Leon Russell performing in the early 1970s.Credit...Robert Knight Archive/Redferns, via Getty Images

By John Pareles

Leon Russell, the longhaired, scratchy-voiced pianist, guitarist, songwriter and bandleader who moved from playing countless recording sessions to making hits on his own, died on Sunday in Nashville. He was 74.

His website said he had died in his sleep but gave no specific cause.

Mr. Russell’s health had incurred significant setbacks in recent years. In 2010, he underwent surgery for a brain fluid leak and was treated for heart failure. In July he had a heart attack and was scheduled for further surgery, according to a news release from the historical society of Oklahoma, his home state.

With his trademark top hat, hair well past his shoulders, a long, lush beard, an Oklahoma drawl and his fingers splashing two-fisted barrelhouse piano chords, Mr. Russell cut a flamboyant figure in the early 1970s. He led Joe Cocker’s band Mad Dogs and Englishmen, appeared at George Harrison’s 1971 Concert for Bangladesh in New York City and had numerous hits of his own, including “Tight Rope.” 

Many of his songs became hits for others, among them “Superstar” (written with Bonnie Bramlett) for the Carpenters, “Delta Lady” for Mr. Cocker and “This Masquerade” for George Benson. More than 100 acts have recorded “A Song for You,” which Mr. Russell said he wrote in 10 minutes.

By the time he released his first solo album, in 1970, he had already played on hundreds of songs as one of the top studio musicians in Los Angeles. He was in Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound Orchestra, and he played sessions for Frank Sinatra, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, the Ventures and the Monkees, among many others. His piano playing is heard on “Mr. Tambourine Man” by the Byrds, “A Taste of Honey” by Herb Alpert, “Live With Me” by the Rolling Stones and all of the Beach Boys’ early albums, including “Pet Sounds.”

The music Mr. Russell made on his own put a scruffy, casual surface on rich musical hybrids, interweaving soul, country, blues, jazz, gospel, pop and classical music. Like Willie Nelson, who collaborated with him, and Ray Charles, whose 1993 recording of “A Song for You” won a Grammy Award, Mr. Russell made a broad, sophisticated palette of American music sound down-home and natural.

After his popularity had peaked in the 1970s, he shied away from self-promotion and largely set aside rock, though he kept performing. But he was prized as a musicians’ musician, collaborating with Elvis Costello and Elton John, among others. In 2011, after making a duet album with Mr. John, “The Union,” he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. At the ceremony, Mr John called him “the master of space and time” and added, “He sang, he wrote and he played just how I wanted to do it.”

Leon Russell was born Claude Russell Bridges in Lawton, Okla., on April 2, 1942. An injury to his upper vertebrae at birth caused a slight paralysis on his right side that would shape his music: A resulting delayed reaction time in his right hand forced him to think ahead about what it would play. “It gave me a very strong sense of duality,” he said last year in a Public Radio International interview. 

He started classical piano lessons when he was 4, played baritone horn in his high school marching band and also learned trumpet. At 14 he started gigging in Oklahoma; since it was a dry state at the time, he could play clubs without being old enough to drink. Soon after he graduated from high school, Jerry Lee Lewis hired him and his band to back him on tour for two months.

He moved to Los Angeles in the late 1950s and found club work and then studio work; he learned to play guitar, and he began calling himself Leon Russell, taking the name Leon from a friend who had lent him an ID so he could play California club dates while underage.

His music-making drew on both his classical training and his Southern roots, and he played everything from standards to surf-rock, from million-sellers to pop throwaways. He was glimpsed on television as a member of the Shindogs, the house band for the prime-time rock show “Shindig!” in the mid-1960s, and was in the house band for the 1964 concert film, “The T.A.M.I. Show.”

In 1967, he built a home studio and began working with the guitarist Marc Benno as the Asylum Choir, which released its debut album in 1968. He also started a record label, Shelter, in 1969 with the producer Denny Cordell. Mr. Russell drew more recognition as a co-producer, arranger and musician on Mr. Cocker’s second album, “Joe Cocker!,” which included Mr. Russell’s song “Delta Lady.”

When Mr. Cocker’s Grease Band fell apart days before an American tour, Mr. Russell assembled Mad Dogs and Englishmen, a big, boisterous band that included three drummers and a 10-member choir. Its 1970 double live album and a tour film became a showcase for Mr. Russell as well as for Mr. Cocker; the album reached No. 2 on the Billboard album chart.

Inductee Leon Russell performs during the Songwriters Hall of Fame awards in New York in 2011. Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

Mr. Russell also released his first solo album in 1970; it included “A Song for You” and had studio appearances from Mr. Cocker, Eric Clapton, two members of the Beatles and three from the Rolling Stones. But Mr. Russell’s second album, “Leon Russell and the Shelter People,” fared better commercially: It reached No. 17 on the Billboard chart.

Mr. Russell had his widest visibility as the 1970s began. He played them Concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden with Mr. Harrison, Bob Dylan and Mr. Clapton; he produced and played on Mr. Dylan’s songs “When I Paint My Masterpiece” and “Watching the River Flow.” He toured with the Rolling Stones and with his own band.

His third album, “Carney,” went to No. 2 with the hit “Tight Rope”; it also featured his own version of “This Masquerade.” In 1973, his “Leon Live” album reached the Top 10, and he recorded his first album of country songs under the pseudonym Hank Wilson. The fledgling Gap Band, also from Oklahoma, backed Mr. Russell in 1974 on his album “Stop All That Jazz.” His 1975 album “Will o’ the Wisp” included what would be his last Top 20 pop hit, “Lady Blue.”

But he continued to work. He made duet albums with his wife at the time, Mary Russell (formerly Mary McCreary). And he collaborated with Mr. Nelson in 1979 on “One for the Road,” a double LP of pop and country standards. It sold half a million copies.

That same year he married Janet Lee Constantine, who survives him, as do six children: Blue, Teddy Jack, Tina Rose, Sugaree, Honey and Coco.

Mr. Russell delved into various idioms over the next decades, mostly recording for independent labels. He toured and recorded with the New Grass Revival, adding his piano and voice to their string-band lineup. He made more country albums as Hank Wilson. He recorded blues, Christmas songs, gospel songs and instrumentals.

In 1992, the songwriter and pianist Bruce Hornsby, who had long cited Mr. Russell’s influence, sought to rejuvenate Mr. Russell’s rock career by producing the album “Anything Can Happen,” but it drew little notice. Mr. Russell continued to tour for die-hard fans, who called themselves Leon Lifers.

A call in 2009 from Mr. John, whom Mr. Russell had supported in the early 1970s, led to the making of  “The Union”— which also had guest appearances by Neil Young and Brian Wilson — and a 10-date tour together in 2010. Mr. Russell also sat in on Mr. Costello’s 2010 album, “National Ransom.” Then he bought a new bus and returned to the road, on his own.

A correction was made on Nov. 13, 2016: Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this obituary misstated the day Mr. Russell died. It was Sunday, not Saturday. It also misstated the year of his birth. It is 1942, not 1941.

First published at The New York Times, November 13, 2016

The night Leonard Cohen let the light get in

A file picture dated 25 July 2008 shows Canadian singer Leonard Cohen performing on stage
in Loerrach, Germany.ROLF HAID / EPA

Leonard Cohen's lyrics were a reminder of the importance of good art.

“There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.”

Song lyrics are powerful pieces of art. Across every style of music, there are countless brilliant lines to suit every imaginable emotion. If you're feeling something, someone else has felt it too. And they've probably written a song about it.

So, it's impossible to play favourites.

But the above line from ‘Anthem', which is not even remotely close to Leonard Cohen's best song, could be my favourite lyric of all time.

I've never told anyone that. And I've never heard anyone else say that before.

But, in the wake of Leonard Cohen's not completely unexpected but still sorrowful passing, I've seen the line pop up in far more tweets and Facebook posts than I ever would have expected.

It's hopeful, a little cynical, and realistic. It's a lyric people can relate to and, like so much of Cohen's work, draw their own meaning from.

It never really had much meaning to me, until 2010, when I first saw Leonard Cohen live.

“Ring the bells that still can ring,” he said midway through the set. “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.”

His band, who were beyond flawless, launched into ‘Anthem'. Cohen sang the first two verses. Then the arrangement swelled and that chorus just exploded.

‘Ring the bells that still can ring,' he sang. ‘Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.'

The death of a close family member, the brutal and abrupt ending of a long relationship and a wave of uncertainty in my personal and professional life had made much of the year fairly miserable. It wasn't depression, but it was depressing. To put it bluntly, life sucked.

While I'd always believed that you can't appreciate good times without experiencing bad times, Cohen's ‘Anthem' - and that line in the chorus in particular - framed it in an altogether more powerful way that night.

I felt overwhelmed as they played the song. As it finished, I felt liberated. Sure, it didn't last forever, but I still cherish the rush of relief I felt as I realised that Leonard Cohen not only understood what was happening, but assured me that things would get better. And they did.

There were dozens of incredible moments from that show. I seem to recall their version ‘Waiting For The Miracle' was my surprise favourite. But the first thing I think of when I reminisce is how I felt when he sang that line.

I now return to it when I need it. There are tons of Cohen songs I like better. I wish I could write about the genius of ‘Famous Blue Raincoat', ‘Chelsea Hotel #2', ‘Who By Fire', ‘The Partisan' and ‘Everybody Knows', to name a few.

But there's a special place in my heart for ‘Anthem'. I use it as a tool. A way to realise that everything is going to be okay. A reminder to be thankful for the hard times.

Leonard Cohen was not a doctor. He wasn't a psychiatrist or psychologist. And music won't cure mental illness.  But it can make us feel better, it can give us a new perspective on what we're going through, and can make us see light in the darkness.

So, this note is partly a way of saying thank you to a writer I consider to be the finest in history.

But it's mainly a note of encouragement to anyone who aspires to write beautiful things.

Please, keep doing it.

Your work is more valuable than you know it. You might help someone through a hard time. You might even change their life. The ability to do that is inestimable.

Powerful (and not so powerful) people will try and undervalue art forever, but they are wrong. I needed Leonard Cohen in 2010 and the world needs you now that he's gone.

First published at Double J, November 11, 2016

Entertainer Maria Venuti regains consciousness after stroke at Sydney home

Maria Venuti. Photo courtesy The Sydney Morning Herald

Police also arrest a man allegedly stalking Venuti, but examination of singer’s home finds no forced entry or physical contact between her and arrested man

Australian entertainer Maria Venuti has regained consciousness two days after suffering a stroke in her Sydney home.

The 75-year-old singer and regular on the Sydney social scene regained consciousness on Monday but was still unable to talk and remained in a critical condition.

The exuberant cabaret performer and actress has been in hospital since having the stroke at her Gladesville home on Saturday morning.

Police have arrested a 38-year-old man allegedly stalking Venuti, who they found carrying flowers on her property.

Officers found Venuti semi-conscious on her bathroom floor after a knock on the front door went unanswered.

Friend Susie Smither, who took over as president of the Australian Ladies Variety Association from Venuti 10 years ago, wrote in a Facebook post at the weekend that Venuti’s daughter Bianca was by her mother’s side at hospital.

“She’s a strong girl, she’s very mature,” Smither said. “But her mother’s her world, so she is as well as can be expected.”

Smither said family and friends were “just praying for some kind of good outcome” for the entertainer.

A forensic examination of Venuti’s home concluded there was no forced entry to the home or any physical contact between her and the arrested man.

Police said they were called to her home in September when the same man had visited with flowers.

He was detained on Saturday for a mental health assessment, but has not been charged.

First published at The Guardian, November 7, 2016