Gloria Hunniford: A very good morning to you from me, Gloria Hunniford, and welcome along to the VIP Suite, which today we’ve moved, lock, stock and barrel, to (town name deleted to protect Michael’s privacy – actually, I’m not sure I even understood her properly, so I probably couldn’t tell you where he lived even if I wanted to). Now, it’s a somewhat beautiful small village which nestles within London itself. And, just for the record, many celebrities live in this area, including Roger McGough the poet, Patricia Hodge the actress, and, of course, my guest today, Michael Ball. Now as you know, Michael has been in many musicals over the years – Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, and Aspects of Love. He’s had many hit records, and, very shortly, he’s going to be in concert at The Point theatre in Dublin. So Michael, what’s the preparation like, at this stage, just prior to the big concert tour?
Michael Ball: This one is kinda different, in that we’ve already done the show throughout April and May, so we sort of know what we’re gonna do, and we know it’s worked quite well before. Making a few changes for the fact that I’m coming to Ireland, and there are a few things that I specifically want to include. So we’re all quite excited because we think we’ve got a good show. It’s a different kind of a show for me, ‘cause I do the whole thing, both halves, so I’m on stage about 2 and a half hours. So I get to explore all the different avenues of music that I like to record and like to sing. And throw in a few sort of odd quirky bits as well, trying new things out.
Gloria: Well you’ve been to Ireland quite a bit before, haven’t you?
Michael: Yeah! I’ve only performed professionally once at The Point, once in Dublin. But Belfast I’ve done several times. And I come over socially far more often than I should be allowed to. It is… the best time I always have. I always have the best time in Ireland. Met a lot of good friends, and, um, … ah, (he fumbles for a bit) …it’s escaping conscious, that’s the, uh, that’s the secret. We always end up in Lillie’s, and I never remember leaving! (he laughs)
Gloria: But someone tells you you get back safely, and that’s it.
Michael: Yeah (etc) well, I wake up in the morning and apparently it’s all been fine, and I haven’t been arrested, so it’ll all be OK.
Gloria: Do you ever go across for the rugby? ‘Cause I know that with the World Rugby you’re actually doing the opening ceremony, aren’t you, in Wales?
Michael: Yeah, that’s right. Well, I’m Welsh, and you know what they say – the Welsh are the Irish who couldn’t swim. Otherwise we’d have been over there. (laughs) Uh, yeah, I’ve never been over to watch a game in Ireland. I’ve watched the Irish play and be beaten whole-heartedly by the Welsh, which was a tragedy for…
Gloria: So you’re doing the Welsh national anthem, then, at the opening of the games…
Michael: At the opening ceremony, yeah. Yeah. And Bryn Terfel and Shirley Bassey are performing as well, there’s literally thousands of voices in a male voice choir, it’s going to be a great big extravaganza.
Gloria: I notice you always have a male voice choir if you can on your own television specials…
Michael: Yeah…
Gloria: …is that simply because of the emotional background of your family?
Michael: Well no, it’s because I’d get shot if I didn’t! I’m a member of, um… my uncle, my favourite singer is my Uncle Tom, who’s retired now. He was, ah, worked on the pits, and he’s the… top tenor in the Mountain Ash Rugby Football Male Voice Choir, and I’m a… honourary member. And every time you miss a rehearsal you have to give 5p into the pot, so I own the fortune. But, but I love singing with them! It’s a really different… art, it’s a really different technique to be part of a sound. You’re not being a lead singer. The worst thing you can do is stand out, you have to blend in, you have to be part of this big choral sound. And… (fumbles again) an extraordinary thing happens, maybe it’s because of the vibration of the music, which, you know, music is sound waves, it does make a vibration, it does have a physical effect on the body. And you get surrounded by these bass voices, and baritones, and tenors, and countertenors, and so on, and it just sets up this vibration, and if it is going well, it’s… wonderful thing to be part of.
Gloria: Well now, we’re not going to start with a Welsh choir, but we do have a similar feeling when we come to One Day More from Les Miz.
Michael: Yeah…
Gloria: …so, set the scene for this. It’s a very emotional piece, I think.
Michael: Well, the version I’ve got here is the Tenth Anniversary Concert, which was done at the Albert Hall. I was lucky enough to be in the original cast. And when you’re in a show, you always… you leave it, you move on to something else, there’s always a part of you thinking, ‘oh, I just wanna do it once more, I know what I should have done with it now, I want to have another chance’, but it never comes along. Well with this, it did. And I got back with my old mate Colm Wilkinson, and this extraordinary evening, and this particular piece of music, it shows every character within Les Miz, singing their own line, having their own thought. How they wrote it, I don’t know, because, they, all the lines come together, blend together, you then get all the student voices, until, eventually, all the voices are singing the same thing. It’s the best piece of musical theatre I think I’ve ever heard.
Gloria: And where does it come in the show?
Michael: It comes right at the end, it’s the finale of Act One.
(They play One Day More from the Les Miz TAC)
Gloria: Well there’s nothing like starting off the programme with a really stirring piece of music and there it was. One Day More, from Les Miserables. My guest on the programme today is Michael Ball, who created the role of Marius in that very show. I always think it must be so hugely exciting to be in at the very, very beginning.
Michael: There’s nothing to compare with it. Especially when it turns out that the show is a phenomenon. None of us, when we were first doing the show, had any concept of what we were making and what kind of impact it was gonna have. In fact, most people thought it would last the run at the Barbican, 10 weeks, and that would be it.
Gloria: ‘Cause critically it wasn’t well received at the beginning at all.
Michael: It was panned. Absolutely panned. From the high-brow critics, saying that it was mediocre music and that such a respected company, the Royal Shakespeare company, shouldn’t be involved with making such pap, to the populist people saying that it was too high-brow, it was too miserable, it was too intense, that it would, didn’t have a chance. But audiences voted with their feet, and with their cheers and their claps. And literally from the first preview, when it was still not anywhere near its final state, and we had a nearly a four-and-a-half hour long show.
Gloria: This is four and a half hours to begin with?
Michael: It was. Yeah. In fact it was over four and a half hours in the first preview. When we finished the run at the Barbican, it… and Cameron MacKintosh had said ‘right, we’re going to take it into the West End’, he took a punt that it was going to work. And, oh, all the signs said ‘don’t do it’. But he sort of bit the bullet and we did it. The show was just under four hours, and they said ‘this can’t work’, they were saying to Trevor Nunn ‘it cannot be a commercial show’. So Trevor Nunn and John Caird had to do some more judicious cutting, which meant people’s, y’know, bits were being taken away. And they got it down to about 3 hours 40 minutes. Um, no, it’s not quite that, 3 hours 20 minutes, something like that. And they were still saying it was too long, and they were trying to decide ‘what else could they cut?’ And they said, ‘well, you realize we could cut Marius’ song "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables", ‘cause it could go straight from the barricade scene to Jean Valjean rescuing him, into Cosette t alking to him’. And it could! Technically. And I was… horrified. I mean, this is my first job! And, I’m sort of, this little 22 year old going (whiny crying voice) ‘well if you do that I’m leaving, because it’s not the show, and I’m, my song, and, just, I’d be upset!’ (laughing) And I don’t think that had any influence on it…
Gloria: Whatsoever?
Michael: …(laughing) yeah, it’d push them towards doing it. They kept the song in, thank God, and it really went against the grain. A long, long show about the French Revolution in the early 19th century. And the most tragic circumstances, tragic story; it just ignited peoples’ imagination, it was a whole new kind of a show.
Gloria: And still does.
Michael: Yeah, absolutely.
Gloria: Did you have to audition for that?
Michael: Yeah. Yeah, and, I was doing a show up in Manchester, Pirates of Penzance, and Cameron came up to see it. And they, the – he was telling me this recently – they’d cast every part, except the part of Marius. And they saw me, asked me to come down and audition. And I, well, green as they come, I don’t know, y’know, what I’m doing, I just know that there’s this show and it’s through-sung, it’s like an opera. And I thought ‘oh, it’ll be a laugh’. So I went for the first audition, got through that, they recalled me 2 days later to come and meet Trevor Nunn, who I have such admiration for. I just think he’s a great man, great bloke. And I do remember that he came up to me after I’d sung Empty Chairs – they taught it to me and I sang it – and he came up and he went, ‘Michael, it’s very very good, um, just one thing though, it’s, if you know it’s an ensemble show…’ and I said ‘yes, absolutely’, and he said ‘also… if we were to give you a non-singing role, a purely acting role…’ no, sorry he didn’t say that, ‘if I give you a, just a non-singing role, would you still be interested in doing it?’ And I said ‘well I don’t do stage management…’ (laugh) He said ‘what?’ And I said ‘well it’s a musical! You don’t do non-singing roles, do you, in it, and I can’t do stage management, ‘cause I’m…’ (couldn’t understand next few words, he’s dissolving into laughter) So, um, then the next day I heard I got it, and it was straight into rehearsals.
Gloria: Are you good at… I guess you don’t have to do auditions nowadays, but …
Michael: Oh, you’ve always got to…
Gloria: …but you would have had to have done auditions, though, for a lot of the Lloyd Webber stuff, wouldn’t you?
Michael: Yeah, yeah. I did for Phantom… Again, it was a call out of the blue. I’d left Les Miz, I was out of work. And they were changing the cast over in Phantom, and I got a call, could I be at the, um, Her Majesty’s Theatre to do an audition for Andrew Lloyd Webber, for Phantom, do I know any of it? And I said ‘well I know the song that Cliff did, with Sara Brightman’, and they said ‘well, that’s the song you’re going to do, so come along and sing it’. So, I tore down to the theatre, I said ‘I’ll have to read it, I don’t know…’ and I don’t read music, so just to get the notes. And I did the soprano line, so, at the end, you go (singing in a really high falsetto) ‘Anywhere you go, let me go…’ (trails off) Full voice! And Andrew came out and went ‘oh yes, I think we’ll keep that in’. (laughs) I got the role for that. And because I was there on site, the whole thing with Aspects of Love happened. He’d written that, it was previewing at Sydmonton, and that’s how I got involved with that, and Love Changes E verything happened.
Gloria: Well, I want to talk about Aspects, of course, later on, ‘cause we’re going to play a song from that. But, you mentioned in passing though, stage management. Now, ironically enough, you went to Guildford School of Drama…
Michael: Yeah…
Gloria: …did you actually do a bit of stage management while you were there?
Michael: No (laughing) they wouldn’t, they did actually try and make me. Funny you should… ‘cause *** makes you try everything. Of course, your young man, your young son was there at the time…
Gloria: …he was, Paul was there…
Michael: …yeah, Paul was there. And, which, really good…
Gloria: …doing stage management…
Michael: …I mean, he was there specifically direct….… I mean, you could te…… I mean, you’re… he did the… he wa…… very good on sound, I remember, which is where this story comes in. We were doing a Greek tragedy, and it really was a tragedy, it was a… Ugh! And I had the part…
Gloria: An unintentional tragedy?
Michael: Yeah, oh yes, it was just the funniest thing ever. And I was the old man, and all I had to do was (in a funny voice) come out as the old man and said ‘my Lord, (laughs) the Queen is without’. (laughs again) And… (keeps laughing) …counter’s minder (???)… (funny voice again) ‘the Queen is without’ well, I didn’t even know she had it in the first place! You know… and you had to do all that… And then I had to run the tape recorder for the sound effects, like symbols crashing… complete knock-up. Symbols going off in the wrong place, and, flights of birds happening at the… made me promise I’d never do it again and I’m happy to say I never have. Just a good… there’s nothing that will ruin a show more than getting something like that at the wrong place, like getting the wrong bit of scenery to come on, because it just breaks the illusion.
Gloria: But when you were at college…
Michael: …yeah?
Gloria: …was your big ambition to do musicals…
Michael:No, I…
Gloria: …or were you not quite clear what you were going to do?
Michael: Not a’tall. It was… there were two choices of course, musical theatre or acting, and I chose acting. And it was only in… I didn’t sing hardly at all in, at college. I used to busk outside Debenham's…
Gloria: Did you?
Michael: Yeah, I did, to make a bit of money. But never really occurred to me that you could do something that you loved and that was a hobby to make money. And it wasn’t until the final show, you have a show that all the students put on in front of casting directors and agents, and people in the business, to sort of show off your talents. And each student is given two 3 minute sections, or you do a speech and a scene with other actors. And I figured that it is impossible, really, to make much of an impact doing that. So I talked them into allowing me to do a number, to do a rock and roll number, which kind of grew and grew into the finale of the show! So I did the old I think it’s the old Guy Mitchell (?) song, I’m So Tired. (sings) I’m so tired of waitin’ for you. And I got the drape coat on in red lamé, I had all the girls from the musical theatre chorus in little ra-ra skirts and everything. And straight from that was seen, and got an agent, and got a job straight away. So, it was, I kind of knew then, that to make an impact quickly, music was the way to go.
Gloria: …you had to have the ra-ra skirts?
Michael: Yeah. (laughs) I must get it back to you, as well. (laughs again)
Gloria: It is interesting, though, how it’s all developed, though, since then, because you’re so young, let’s be honest. And, but you seemed to take off like a rocket then, once you left university, or college.
Michael: Yeah. It was very quick, as I say, it was 2 months before I went into Pirates of Penzance with Paul Nicholas and Bonnie Langford and Victor Spinetti and ***, which was a big break. And then into Les Miz. And I was lucky in that the time that I was around and just breaking onto the scene was when those, the shows that were coming along that required people sort of my age, and the roles weren’t, like, the two-dimensional musical comedy shows, they were proper meaty acting roles, as well as singing roles. Like Les Miz as we’ve said before, and Phantom, playing Raoul, and especially Aspects of Love, because you’re having to age from 17 up to the age of 34, and it’s a very demanding show vocally and as far as acting technique goes. So I was lucky that those kind of showcases came along for me.
Gloria: So therefore, how important would you say Andrew Lloyd Webber has been in your career?
Michael: Oh, probably the most important. It’s hard to say, I couldn’t possibly imagine I’d have had the breaks I’ve had without him. You can be successful in the theatre; only 4% of the population go to the theatre. To have hit records is the way to break out of that, so you appear on television, do your own thing, get recognized in your own right. And it was because of Andrew’s popularity, and writing, with Don Black, such a great song, Love Changes, that that happened to me.
Gloria: And that’s the one we’re going to hear, that’s obviously your choice. But what emotions does it really conjure up every time you hear it?
Michael: D’you know, it’s weird. It’s, actually, it’s 10 years ago exactly it was in the charts, and I was going through the Aspects of Love thing, and I’ve sung it in probably every single concert I’ve done all over the world since then, in those 10 years. And I was guilty of being rather blasé about it, and just taking it for granted. Now, you do that, you just… if there’s a song you sing that much, and you’re that used to, you can just go out there, it almost becomes doing it by rote. When I came to doing these concerts, because it was 10 years, and it meant a lot to me, that, I was… you become reflective… and I thought I’d look at the song again, and I’d try to put myself back into how I felt when I was rehearsing it, and working with Trevor Nunn and with Andrew, and thinking how the character felt, what the song meant, what the song was saying... the lyric that Don wrote is so simple, but it’s so poignant, and people see so many different things in it, they all have a way to relate to it, it’s one of those special songs that you can identify it in so many different ways, and so I kind of re-discovered it.
Gloria: Yeah, what is the interpretation, then, that you would offer to our listeners this morning?
Michael: It’s perfectly simple, in the times that we live in, the way I look at it now, the way to change things, the way to make things better, sometimes the way to make things worse, is caused by love. Love is probably the most powerful force in the world. It can be used for good, for bad, it can make you cry, make you happy, but it makes you alive. Love is life, and it changes everything.
(They play Love Changes Everything)
Gloria: Michael Ball, you hit that high note yet again! What is that, exactly?
Michael: It’s a B flat.
Gloria: A B flat.
Michael: Yeah. It came about quite by chance as well. It, um, Andrew had written the song, but initially, it just went (singing, starting from second-to last phrase of song, both phrases at same pitch) love will never, never let you be the same; love will never, never let you be… the… same down the octave. And I was doing the series of concerts before, actually, I went into, just after I was doing Phantom, with Sarah Brightman, the original music of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s, they were. And as the encores – Aspects hadn’t been done then – he said ‘well we’ll put in these 2 songs from Aspects of Love’, Love Changes and Anything But Lonely, that Sara sang. And I said ‘well, it doesn’t really have an ending, does it, like that? We ought to…’ I said, and I said ‘what if I sort of went up at the end?’ And he said ‘well can you?’ Because I don’t read music, in my ignorance, I said ‘oh I don’t know, let’s have a go,’ and I hit this note, and (sigh) I mean, it hurt, but it just felt absolutely right. And more and more I sang it, more it went into place, and so he goes ‘that’s great’. Comes to do the show, and he said ‘well, we’ll have one at the end of Act I, we’ll have one at the end of Act II’… So I’m singing this three times, I think, during the show. I have to hit this note, and it’s more than opera singers would do, but, and they only do, like 2 or 3 shows a week, and we’re showing on 8 a week.
Gloria: Do you ever have times when you think ‘will I hit it, will I not?’…
Michael …yeah, absolutely…
Gloria: …especially when you have a cold or something…
Michael: …absolutely. The best view is when Mum and Cathy watching a show, in fact, anyone in the family, and they clutch onto each other as it comes, and they’re waiting for the note, and it… yyyesss! And you can see them actually go with me. The best story…
Gloria: And when you say Cathy by the way it’s Cathy McGowan, Michael’s partner.
Michael: Yeah. My other half. The best story of that, though, is Don Black – who I know you know really well, he was on this show – and he’s a member of what’s called the SODs, Songwriters Of Distinction, which is a big charity event. And every year, two songwriters have to get up and perform their own song. So you’ve got people like Barry… Evans, I think is his name, who wrote ‘It’s not Unusual’, or ‘Delilah’, whatever, having to sing that. This year it was… and some of them are really good to do it… and this year it was Don’s turn. So he got up to do Love Changes Everything. And of course everybody is going ‘what is he doin’???’ And so Don, who is the funniest man I think I know, he gets up and he’s doing the song for real, (sings with Cockney [I think] accent) Love, love changes everyfing, ‘ands and faces, earf and sky… ah-love-ah, ah-love changes…’ and he’s doing the song, and it’s brill, but he’s coming to the end, and we’re going ‘what’s he gonna do with the note? It’s gonna be funny!’ And he comes to the end, and he goes ‘ah love will never never let you be… ah-the same-ah. (funky little trill on the "same") Duh da daa da daa da… Love will never never letcha be-ah… ah-the…(big breath, then, spoken) g’night and God bless.’ (laughter) And we all start cheering! It was… brilliant! Absolutely brill. And really straight.
Gloria: My guest is Michael Ball. We have had one of his hist, we still have quite a few of Michael’s songs to come. Actually, this is at my request. ‘Cause Michael was a bit shy about having a lot of his own material. But I just think that when we have the chance, it’s very nice to play the…
Michael: …well, actually, it didn’t take me long to get over it. (laughs)
Gloria: Well that’s true, it took him probably about one second, but anyway. Now we were listening to Aspects of Love…
Michael: …yeah…
Gloria: …and I know that you went to New York, which gave you actually your first and I think to date your only opportunity to be on Broadway.
Michael: Yes. Sadly, yeah.
Gloria: What was that like?
Michael: It was everything I’d hoped and more. It really was. I wish the… the only down side for us was, Broadway was going through a big anti-Andrew Lloyd Webber backlash, because they felt the Brits had come. We’d had Les Miz, Me and My Girl, Cats had happened, Phantom of the Opera, Starlight, and… a lot of it Andrew, and this big anti-Lloyd Webber campaign kind of happened. Mainly run by Frank Rich, who was the then critic of the New York Times. And he was vitriolic in his hatred of the show.
Gloria: Of the first night.
Michael: Yeah. And, luckily, because of Andrew’s fan base, we’d have… normally that would close a show. Overnight. And it ran for the whole time I was there – I was there for a year – and carried on for… about 18 months.
Gloria: Who came backstage to see you after the show?
Michael: Oh, um, who do I like… Cybill Shepherd, she was fantastic. Candice Bergen – God, she’s stunning. Liza Minelli, Howard Keel. Oh, God! Howard Keel, who I really really rate, he was one of those few musical stars, real Hollywood men, you know, and you’d go out and see him in Kiss me Kate, or Annie Get Your Gun, whatever, he’s just… a really huge glamorous star. And he came backstage, and was crying after the show. And I don’t, I’m not sort of saying this to butter meself up, but he was crying. And I couldn’t believe he was there in the first place. And I said ‘oh, are you alright, has something happened?’ And he went ‘no’, and I mean it’s fairly American and cheesy, but he went ‘I just feel like I’m handing the musical theatre mantle over, for there is a guy on that stage who is committed to the acting and to the singing and was delivering and I just loved what he was doing’. And I was just really proud. It meant the world to me.
Gloria: Good moment!
Michel: It was just, like, take a picture and remember this in your head! It meant the world…
Gloria: Actually, the interesting thing is that Howard Keel is singing better than ever now…
Michael: …D’you know, he is…
Gloria: …despite age…
Michael: Yeah. There are a few like… Tony Bennett, I sang with. He’s another one who has… his, the voice has matured somehow. It’s like a fine wine or a single malt whiskey, it’s got better with age. You’re right.
Gloria: Let me ask you about your voice, ‘cause a lot of people would say that yours is a God-given voice, ‘cause you haven’t had any formal training, really.
Michael: No, no.
Gloria: Did you have a go at having a few lessons?
Michael: I haven’t… yeah, I did. I had… when I had, as I said before, the first job I did, Pirates of Penzance, which is light opera, and they suggested, I went with Bonnie Langford to have these singing lessons with her. Very well known teacher called Ian Adden. And, it was just a waste of time ‘cause all we did was laugh. And he knew all the gossip in the theatre and we’d just sit there gossiping. And he said, ‘there’s really nothing that I… I don’t want to sort of muck about with your voice, because you sort of instinctively know how to breathe, and how to make the sound, and you’re not doing it as a part of technique, so it’s coming from your heart’. The way I sing is, is like I’m… it’s from an actor’s point of view. I wanna get the meaning across and I sort of know the sound that gets the emotion most. And he was very nice, he said ‘you don’t really need to touch that. And you should be alright’.
Gloria: So bearing in mind that you were saying that when you were at college you hadn’t dreamt of being a musical star, per se, at what point, then, did you realize that you had a really good voice?
Michael: I still don’t know that. I still don’t like the sound of my voice. And, I know what you’re saying, it’s sort of churlish to say that. It’s always surprising me that people rate it like they do, and it’s hugely flattering. I don’t really know if there was a point at which I thought ‘yeah, I could be a singer.’
Gloria: Did you sing as a child?
Michael: No. I did, but not, sort of like in a choir or anything. I had a very deep voice when I was a kid. My speaking voice was very deep.
Gloria: So really, professionally a bit of a late developer there?
Michael: Oh, totally, yeah! In more ways than one. (laughing) As you well know, darling.
Gloria: (laughing) I will actually not *** that, I shall just ask you the choice of next record!
Michael: Okay, the next one. The next one is a song, it’s actually something that I’m, I’ve always wanted to do. We’re talking about music we love. I adore Joni Mitchell. And I’ve just recorded a song that she wrote called ‘River’. Which… what she is, is the best lyricist in the world. And later on I’m hoping to play a song that I’ve written with a friend of ours, Brian Kennedy. And the way that we got sort of talking and got working together was our mutual love of this lady Joni Mitchell. So I’ve recorded this song.
Gloria: So is this on a new album?
Michael: This is an album that’s coming out at Christmas. And it’s not… it starts off as a kind of a Christmassy, but it’s not just a Christmassy song. I just think it’s a really profound, beautiful song. I’m proud of it.
(They play River)
Michael: That was a song called river, and I say, written by Joni Mitchell, and the way that came about being recorded was one of those special… moments that you don’t know why they happen. In the studio with a wonderful pianist called Pete Adams, and I’d always wanted to do this song. And everyone else went out the room, and it was kind of on a break, and we just sat down, he played the piano, and I sang it, and it was one take, and I said ‘I don’t want to touch it. I don’t want to do anything else to it, that’s exactly how I want the song to stand’ and, um, yeah. I just think she’s the best writer.
Gloria: And are you going to release it as a single, as well as on the album?
Michel: No, I, uh… we haven’t any plans to. I’d be happy to. It’s one of those songs that I think will… will be around.
Gloria: So you’re really proud of it?
Michael: I really am. I really am.
Gloria: And remember, folks, you heard it on RTE1… first.
Michael: You did! You’ve got the only take, in fact! Can I have it back? (laughs)
Gloria: Now just talking about Joni Mitchell and people whom you like and admire…
Michael: …yeah…
Gloria: When you did your television show, and I always think this is a great treat, where you can say ‘here’s my wish list, I want this, this, this, and this person to be a guest’. Who are the ones that really stand out, where you think ‘he is on my show!’
Michael: Well, practically all of them. I’ve got to be hon-… I mean they really were. It was a wish list. What was nice for me is, I love music, and I love it in all shapes and sizes and varieties and flavours. And I like having a go at it all. So it was, with the show is I kind of said ‘right, who’s the best country and western singer? Tammy Wynette’s (he pronounces it "win-ett", not "why-nett") pretty good, isn’t she? Let’s get… Opera singer – Montsarrat Caballe!’ So… and all these things start happening and they say ‘well, they’re coming in on the Thursday’, and I’m actually going to have to sing with these people! The one, James Brown, will always stick in my head as being… the 2 days working with him, one of the most bizarre, exciting, fulfilling moments. I…
Gloria: Was he easy to work with?
Michael: For me, yeah. (chuckles) For the rest, everyone else… oh! And his wife? They’re not together any more. (chuckling again) In fact… d’you remember… I shouldn’t really say this, but I don’t care… (chuckles yet again…) you know, you remember he was put in prison for shooting a wi… one of his wives, the one before, but he shot the wrong one! (laughing) I tell you… she was… (stops laughing) actually, God rest her soul she’s dead. Honestly.
Gloria: I don’t know what to say to that.
Michael: I know. (trying not to laugh…) And d’you know why? She’d had too many… too many surgeon, surgery procedures, plastic surgeries. She died under the anaesthetic…
Gloria: …no!…
Michael: …having about, like, the 57th in two years, and she died under the anaesthetic.
Gloria: Was she just really really difficult to be around?
Michael: She was unbelievable!! I remember coming into the rehearsal room, I was so scared, I was hiding from James Brown, who arrived with about 50 minders, these huge blokes in these stretch limousines. So I’m cowering and I thought ‘well I normally get on with the wives alright’ so I went up and I went (deep breath) ‘hu-hullo Mrs. Brown, um, uh, my name’s Michael Ball, it’s my show’ and she went ‘mm-hm’. I went… I put my hand out and said ‘uh, yes, please call me Michael. And what shall I call you?’ And she went ‘Mrs. Brown.’ I went ‘alright’. (laughs) We’re gonna get on. She was… vile… up until the point that, uh… James Brown walked in, and had, didn’t speak to anyone, and he said (in James Brown imitation voice) ‘Raht! Let’s rehearse, raht now!’ And the bands start playing, and he goes ‘okay, you, out! My guy, in!’ He’s swapping people in my band, as they’re playing, everyone’s terrified, he fines people in the band $50 for every bum note. So he goes to the, rehearses his number, and all the producers are coming around and going ‘well, Mr. Brown, is there anything…’ (back in JB voice) ‘ne’er min’ that! Who’m I singin’ with?’ And there’s me, cowering in the corner, and he goes, I go (rather timid sounding voice) ‘ha-hallo Mr. Brown, i-i-it’s me, uh, my name’s Michael Ball but you can call me by my…’ and I’m not going down this road again. He goes ‘never mind that! Gimme a good strong D!’ So… they play a big D chord in the orchestra, he goes (now singing a JB imitation) ‘huh! I feel good! Do, doo do, doo do… I knew that I would now’. He starts singing, and he goes ‘your turn!’ So we had to trade off lines of this song I’ve never sung, and it’s the Godfather of Soul singing his song, and at the end, the way he does it he improvises all these dead musicians that you’re paying respect to. Which, and it’s actually very clever, the way he did it, with ‘Jim Morrison, he is the man! Janis Joplin, she got a thang!’ and then he’d do one, and then I’d have to come up with one. So I’m on the spot here, having sung this song blue in the face, with nerves, and it’s in the key of Q, trying to think ‘now who’s dead?’ (laughing) It was really… I’m going ‘Mrs. Mills, she is the one! Alma Cogan (???) she may be…’ (laughs) But… I just, I was…a bit cooler than that. And…
Gloria: Who did you come up with?
Michael: And at the end I came up with, um, Karen Carpenter! I thought she was quite cool, actually…
Gloria: …hey!…
Michael: …so I was quite… Elvis. He’d forgotten Elvis. Otis Redding. We were… I was… (fumbles a bit) and I got onto a roll! And something really special happened! This thing, and he started relaxing and having fun, and we did about 20 minutes. At the end of the rehearsal, stopped the band, band perfect, and he goes ‘yo!! Mike!! You wanna check yo’ ancestry! You got soooooouuuuullllll!!!!!’ And, from then on we just had the best time. When we were in the studio, it’s only a half an hour show, he’s going to be on for, to do one song, and we do a duet, we were singing for about an hour and a half. (laughs) Couldn’t get us off.
Gloria: Fantastic. And Montsarrat Caballe?
Michael: Ohhh…..
Gloria: ‘Cause again, when I think you’re dealing with an opera singer, there must be a little bit of fear and trepidation when you’re come in to sing along with.
Michael: Yeah! Yeah. Absolutely. And she arrived in full sail, this stately, most gorgeous lady into rehearsal. We’re literally meeting in the rehearsal for, to go through it once and then recording the show an hour later. Doing All I Ask of You from Phantom of the Opera. So, you don’t even hardly have time to say ‘hello how are you’ and introduce yourselves. Straight into it, and it’s a beautiful love song. And Monsie is… (conspirationally) I can call her that, I’ll tell you why… She’s a big lady! And she has these beautiful eyes! Absolutely beauti… and, obviously, the voice of an angel. And the song is a love song, and, when you sing a love song to somebody, and they’re giving you the eye, you go with it! And we were holding hands, and flirting with each other, singing this song. And it was really tactile, it was gorgeous!! One time through, absolutely spot on, she knew it, we were breathing together and singing together… We came to the end of the rehearsal and I ended it with a big kiss. And I said ‘oh, Miss Caballe!’ And she goes (in a French? Spanish? accent) ‘no, no, no, no, no! You must call me Monsie’. I said, ‘well, Monsie, I hope you don’t mind, but… we’ve never met, I’m here singing with one of the greatest voices, singing this beautiful love song, and it’s a love song, and (fumbles) I hope you don’t mind me being… I’m very tactile, I love touching you, is that okay?’ And she went (in accent again) ‘Ohhhh! But you’ve so many places left for you to touch! (laughs) We do that later, yes?’ It was gorgeous!!
Gloria: (also laughing) Oh, very good memories.
Michael: Nice.
Gloria: But, but I know that you liked teaming up with people these days. In fact you’ve teamed up with, as you’ve mentioned earlier, Brian Kennedy.
Michael: Yeah. I owe him a big debt. We were talking about music, and we’re both from such different backgrounds, such different experiences. But we discovered this love, as I was saying before, of Joni Mitchell. Our paths kind of crossed a few times as I was coming over to Ireland or he was over here. And, I listened to a lot of his stuff, and listened to the stuff that he’d written. And he asked me if I’d ever written any music before, and I said that… which is true, I’ve always wanted to write. I love language, I love the impact you can have with it, but… I was too scared! After having worked with all the people I’ve worked with, and the great lyricists, we were talking about before, you can’t hold a candle to them, so why bother? And, so I’ve never done it, and I didn’t know how to go about it. And God bless him, he got me ‘round to his flat, got a little studio in there, and he said ‘right, I want you to come up with a lyric, I want you to think about a song, something that’s happened, or some thing you’ve seen in someone else, and come up with this something that you wanna say’. And we sat, and I did it, and we worked out this song together. Now, I don’t say it’s the greatest song on earth, it certainly isn’t. But, it broke my duck, if you know what I mean. It… I performed the song in my show, it’s the first thing I’ve… it’s the only thing I’ve written. We’ve since then actually written a Christmas song together. I was so proud, I can’t tell you, of getting up there, having… they’re great as well, having the musicians, we presented them with this bare demo tape, him and I singing and the guitar, and they started making chords onto it and turned into a proper grown-up song, and to perform it on stage, in front of the audience… it was a very, very special…
Gloria: And will you be singing it at The Point?
Michael: You bet!
Gloria: Well here’s a preview.
(They play Dreaming Someone Else’s Dream)
Gloria: Well you’re hearing a lot of tracks for the first time here on RTE this morning. Michael Ball, and the song which he has written along with Brian Kennedy. So again, that’s the first time I think that’s had an air play, isn’t it?
Michael: Yeah, yeah, it is, it is. And, I, as I say…
Gloria: Someone Else’s Dream, we should say it was called.
Michael: Dreaming Someone Else’s Dream, yeah. Yeah. Really, I owe him a great debt for that.
Gloria: Well you never know, you might be writing a lot of your own material from here on in!
Michael: I hope so. I hope so.
Gloria: Now we obviously have one more piece of music to go which I know is very special to you. Now may I just ask you, before we play that, where you see your career going now. Because, you’ve created roles…
Michael: After this, down the toilet! (laughing) I’ll never work again!!
Gloria: (also laughing) But, you know, you’ve created roles in very very famous musicals…
Michael: …yeah…
Gloria: …you’re doing the concert tour, you’ve got umpteen albums coming out. But is it a question, now, you see your career now as a solo career, or do you desperately want a) another musical?
Michael: I’m really lucky, in that, I’ve be… I have been able to diversify. I haven’t allowed myself to be put into pigeon holes. I did the musical… when I came back from Broadway, from doing Aspects, I said ‘that’s it, I won’t do another musical now’, because I don’t want to just do musicals and I had the opportunity of doing the recordings, and doing… which started with the Eurovision Song Contest, I mean, ah… which then got me my own TV series. But I didn’t want to do that, to just, I didn’t want to just get into this sort of light entertainment hosting, because that would be difficult then to go back into the theatre. So, that’s how I want it to go on, I want to be able to diversify, to just find new challenges, and new directions, and new things to stimulate. I love the theatre, I love musical theatre. And I was really, really blessed and fortunate that those shows came along when they did. But they don’t seem to be happening now.
Gloria: Do you still want to be a rock & roll star?
Michael: (teenager-like) Uh, shyeah! Don’t we all?
Gloria: Shhh-sure!
Michael: And I get to play it. I get to… you come to the gigs, as you know. I’m at the end, I always finish, I do…I saw Tom today, actually, Tom Jones today, I do Just Help Yourself. He came to see us at the Albert Hall. And I didn’t know he was in. If I’d known, I don’t think I’d have had the nerve to do it! But I get up and I do all that, and the Blues Brothers stuff and…. Oh! There’s nothing, nothing to be…. I really am lucky!
Gloria: I did mention that there’s a special reason for having this final track.
Michael: Yes, The Rose, initially it was a song that I released to raise awareness and raise funds for Ovarian Cancer, because a member of our family died of it awhile back. Since then a very, very close friend of mine, Mary Miller, who I was in Phantom with, who was in Keeping Up Appearances, played Rose, curiously enough, she died of it as well. Very similar circumstances. We’ve made a huge difference towards keeping the research and making people aware of it. And, it, not just that, it’s also one of the most beautiful love songs, it’s got such a lovely sentiment. And it’s a classic song, it’s a gorgeous song.
Gloria: Michael Ball, thank you very much.
(They play the first 2 verses of The Rose)
This interview was recorded on
12th September 1999 on RTE Radio One and transcribed by Julie Orlando.
