Alfie Page 7

  I was seeing a singing teacher in Chorley at the time, Laurence Newnes – had a few lessons over a few weeks to get a bit of help with my voice. I mentioned it to him and he’d seen the D’Oyly Carte ad too and said I should go for it, so it was like I was being pushed towards this thing from all angles. I mentioned it to my parents and they encouraged me. Dad said I had nothing to lose, the factory would still be there when I got back from London. So I went to the library to investigate the company. Richard D’Oyly Carte, a theatrical agent, started it in the late 19th century, producing Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas. They all had some sort of falling out, over cash and contracts, which led to Gilbert and Sullivan splitting up at one point, but the company carried on producing their operas along with other productions, Strauss, Lehár, operetta really, and still do. What a world to get into! So I took the day off work to go down and give it a shot. It was my first time in London, other than a school trip for a couple of hours once, and walking out of Euston Station was overwhelming enough, let alone going through the door of this theatre as a 19-year-old kid. I walked through the foyer, peeked into the auditorium and heard all these singers warming up. I was wearing a lumberjack shirt, T-shirt, jeans, boots, and I looked around at all these suits and ball gowns, pristine singers, Crystal Kens and opera Barbies, and I thought, ‘I don’t fit in here. This is completely wrong.’

  They called my name and I walked into this abyss, total darkness, other than the stage, which was lit up with one guy sitting at the piano looking utterly bored. I walked up onto the stage and they said, ‘OK, what have you brought to sing?’

  I said, ‘“You Are My Heart’s Delight” by Franz Lehár.’

  And they said, ‘OK, that’s great, please carry on,’ and I tentatively handed my music to the pianist. I’d chosen that because I thought I’d better sing something other than West Side Story, what with it being a fancy opera company, and that was the only classical song I’d really worked on. It was one of Dad’s favourites. I listened to it so many times growing up, and my brother Michael had the music so I’d learnt the words.

  I was so nervous. But the pianist started playing, and the minute I started singing that song a fire started inside of me. I felt like my whole body had lit up. I thought, ‘This is it. I’ve got this.’ Confidence filled me, and I blasted it out just the way I always had in our living room in Fleetwood. When I finished there were a couple of seconds of awful silence, and then they clapped. They came down to me for a chat, asked me how old I was. I met John Owen Edwards, who was the Musical Director for the company and a great guy. Years later he introduced me to Neil, my manager, and conducted my first EMI album. And they said, ‘We’ll be in touch, see you very soon.’ I danced out of that theatre, I was so happy. I knew I’d done a really good job. I felt great. I ran down the road, jumped on the train back, and it all went quiet for a bit after that. I went back to my job at the garage, and waited. And I had a phone call asking me to come back for a second audition, and I did the song again, along with some West Side Story. It was much less formal, but it was in a church and they were all sat in pews so I could actually see them this time, which made it a little more nerve-racking. They played through scales to see how high I could sing, I went up to a top C. They asked me if I was a member of Equity. I said, ‘No I’m a mechanic, I work in a car factory.’ They asked if I was willing to give up my job to go with them on tour. I said I’d love to and they said they could wangle an Equity membership for me, and two days later they called: ‘We’d like to offer you a position in the chorus for the D’Oyly Carte’s next UK tour.’ I nearly fainted. It was the most wonderful feeling. I’d be on £300 a week, which tripled my car factory wages, and the chance to be on the road for a year, performing every night on stage . . . I couldn’t believe it. I came off the phone, walked into the living room, and Mum and Dad said, ‘Well? What was it?’ And I said, ‘They’ve, um . . . I’m in! I’m in! They’ve offered me a job!’ Mum was thrilled, and Dad’s face . . . well I’d never seen him so happy – he was so elated. Best I ever saw him. He just cried and cried and they gave me a big old hug.

  The excitement of going in to work the following day was electric. ‘Mike – there’s my week’s notice. I’m leaving. I’m going off to be an opera singer.’

  He said, ‘An opera singer! You’re crazy. What do you wanna do that for, you fookin’ idiot. You’re on a good wage, you could go far here.’

  I said, ‘I don’t wanna do it Mike, I wanna be a singer.’

  And he said, ‘I think you’re daft. But good luck anyway, all the best.’

  I went back there for an album promotion a few years ago, and he said, ‘Still as ugly as ever, you fooker!’

  I went, ‘Cheers man, you haven’t changed have you, ya bastard!’

  When I finished my job I had a little time to kill, and I went back to do some stage crew work at the Grand Theatre in Blackpool, a few shows, and really enjoyed it because I was buzzing so much, knowing that I was going to be joining this opera company in September to hit the road, to perform in Die Fledermaus and HMS Pinafore. I spent the whole summer doing the pantomimes, working on the shows that were coming in and out of the theatre, rigging up the sets, taking them down, bringing on the scenery, taking it off. I worked with Steve Williams, lovely fella – he’s the house manager there now. We had to carry this revolving carousel onto the stage during the pantomime and had to dress accordingly, red and yellow dungarees. We had to walk on, put it down and walk off, in a particularly sprightly manner. But the part got bigger and bigger and bigger, and before we knew it we were waltzing on and off with this thing, grabbing props – it was wicked, we became part of the show. I was having a laugh and I was so happy about D’Oyly Carte, but sweating it over what I had to do. I was nervous about this adventure I was going on, and whenever I had a night off I’d play the music I was supposed to be learning for the shows, study, learn, rehearse. Just like Frank Carson said. I was getting each show in my head as much as I could, picking out the tenor line, which I couldn’t find very well because I couldn’t read music. A lot of the tenor stuff is predominantly around the melody anyway. You end up singing a lot of that, I figured it out.

  Mum and Dad drove me down to Birmingham, where we’d be doing five weeks rehearsal before going on tour. My B&B was run by an old and very theatrical lady called Marlene Mountain, who ploughed on the make-up like crazy, bright blue mascara, ginger-blonde hair she dyed herself, all of that. She had this photo of herself dressed as a 1950s dancer with a leotard on, feathers, the works, although she was never actually a performer; she’d just wanted to be one. She was a lovely lady, very sweet, but so nosy. She’d walk into your room when you were getting changed, coming out of the shower, didn’t give you any privacy at all – she’d just appear. Incredibly intrusive. There were half a dozen of us staying at that place, all D’Oyly Carte people; we’d pretty much booked up the whole house, and she appointed herself as a mother to us all. She wanted to take care of us just as much as she wanted to make sure we weren’t up to any funny business, you couldn’t bring girls back there; you had to be more creative. I soon had enough of old Marlene’s nosiness, so moved in to a house with a couple of fellas from the chorus.

  Rehearsals were a lot of fun – it was great working with the dance choreographer, Lindsay Dolan, who’d done a lot of big opera work, Royal Opera, ENO. I still couldn’t dance at all, and getting through that was tricky. I had to learn these tap routines because I was doing a sailor’s dance with a mop at the beginning of the show and I had it driven into me, tap tap tap. Every single night I was back at my digs practising these bloody tap steps, frustrating myself, trying my best to do it properly, to get it in me.

  The first show was a bit of a disaster, and it was all my fault. HMS Pinafore at the Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham. We were sailors and all had kitbags over our shoulders and had to throw them into the wings, get our mops, and come back on stage for a tap dance routine. There was a cable on the floor which had a c
ontrol box at the end of it that brought this enormous curtain down. I threw my bag, it caught the cable, the control box fell off the side and hit the floor, triggered the button and the curtain came in. I reached for my mop and it belted me, landed right on top of me, knocked me for six, knocked me over. Another of the sailors got caught on the wrong side of the curtain too, and poor Carl Donohue was left on his own in front of the curtain with his mop, doing a solo tap dance, looking around sheepishly for the rest of us. I was laid flat on my back underneath the curtain. That was the start of my opera career.

  Chapter Ten

  LEARNING THE RULES, BREAKING THE RULES

  We somehow managed to get the show back on track that night and it was a minor triumph. And D’Oyly Carte was really exciting, I loved every minute. Eight shows a week, different towns each week, lots of B&Bs. It was a new world for me, being on the road, meeting lots of girlies, getting to see a lot of the country. It was a lot of fun, I went to Scotland for the first time, played Edinburgh, sung in a proper Irish bar in Belfast, and I had my 21st birthday on the road in Darlington, late night in the pub. Mum and Dad came up to see me, it was the first professional show they’d seen me in – it was fantastic to share that with them.

  I got really close with the French horn player, Bob, who unfortunately had a bit of a drinking problem. Sometimes he’d turn up to the show completely plastered. The great thing about D’Oyly Carte though is they really give people a chance, give them understanding, and they rode that out with him. Me and Bob used to get up to all sorts of nonsense – we swam in the sea in the middle of the night in Llandudno, carried some of the girls in, your bog standard horseplay. I remember one moment in the show where all the sailors had to do press-ups, and I looked up and Bob was doing press-ups in the stalls – had me in stitches. We hung out a lot; he used to come over and stop at my house; we partied out in Blackpool. I lost him late one night; he disappeared with this girl, and when I got back home he was knelt at my front door with his hands through the letterbox, letting the dog lick his hands to keep them warm – he didn’t want to disturb anybody. Mum came down, ‘Come on in, Bob.’ The next Christmas, he got hit by a car in Glasgow, and died. I got a phone call one night from his girlfriend – she told me. Hell of a shock.

  The first time something like that had happened to me was when I was at school. I was seven. Dominic Taft, who was one of my cousins actually, always joking around, got knocked off his bike going home from school. I was sat at the back field with him that day – it was a beautiful hot summer’s day, we were having our lessons outside. And I came to school the following morning and we were all told he’d been knocked off his bike on his way home from school and was killed. Then there was a guy at school called John; it was the first time I’d really heard of cancer. He had to have his legs amputated. He went onto crutches, and he became really angry, and he died not long afterwards. And there was Steve Gillespie. I got really friendly with Steve when I was on that Outward Bound course, lovely Welsh fella, we stayed in touch after. He got involved with the Army, and they sent people on Outward Bound courses, as retreats. He was on his way back to his camp one day and got hit by a car and died. All these kids getting hit by cars. Those experiences hardened me up a bit I think, certainly gave me new perspectives. Things like that prepare you for the rest of your life, in their own way. So later when Dad died, as much as it hurt, I think I was more equipped to deal with it than I might have been.

  And Bob was a great guy – the drinking was such a shame. The thing about the D’Oyly Carte giving him a chance, that was pretty special I think. I was fairly confident on that tour because I’d done a lot of rehearsal, but I did feel a bit like I was kidding myself that I was an opera singer, deluding myself that I could do it, because I hadn’t trained, I didn’t have the qualifications, I didn’t feel legitimate. But if you had the ability to sing, the D’Oyly Carte gave you the opportunity regardless, and that’s priceless. They did a lot for me. My first ever recording was with them, the D’Oyly Carte recording of Die Fledermaus – we did it in Abbey Road. I had one line to sing, but it’s there, on CD. I fell in love with recording there and then. I loved the process of making a record – it made me want to make my own ones, absolutely. And, indirectly, the D’Oyly Carte led me to the Royal College of Music, where I would spend my next three years. For better or worse.

  The lead singer in Die Fledermaus, David Fielding, playing Eisenstein, was a bit of a local celebrity in Norwich, and he put on a master class when we played the Theatre Royal there, got some local singers in and trained them through a song. One of them pulled out and David asked me if I wanted to step in, and again I sang Lehár’s ‘You Are My Heart’s Delight’, still the only song I could properly do as a solo. There were three other singers on stage, and an audience, and each time one of us did our bit David would talk us through the song, give us some tips, coach us through it, and he’d sing it through. It was really my first time standing on a stage on my own with an audience and I’d never really done a master class, so I was pretty nervous. It’s quite a thing to stand on a stage in front of people and get picked apart by someone else on what you’re doing wrong. Not that he was aggressive about it – it was all very constructive. I’ve certainly been involved in some ugly master classes. Royal College of Music and the Royal Opera House, they take no prisoners. I’ve seen young singers ripped into at those places, no mercy. But it’s part of the training, part of the classical training. You’ve got to be told what you’re doing wrong for it to be right.

  Bear with me while I introduce the enormous number of people I was passed along to get a place at the Royal College of Music. Sitting in the audience at the master class that night in Norwich was a fella called Donnie Sanderson. Well his name’s Gordon, but everyone called him Donnie. Great baritone, worked at the Royal Opera House a lot. He came up to me afterwards, said he saw potential in my voice and offered to help out, and we met up one afternoon and he gave me some coaching. He suggested I go to sing for a friend of his in London, Paul Griffiths, who was one of the head coaches at the Royal Opera House, and Gordon took me through ‘Che Gelida Manina’ from La Bohème – it was the first aria I ever really studied. I went down to London to meet Paul Griffiths, and I couldn’t believe I was in the Royal Opera House, absolutely stunning building. I’d been spraying cars in Bispham a few months earlier. Paul Griffiths took me over the road to the rehearsal studios, the coaching rooms, and I sang the aria for him. He told me to wait a minute and he went and brought over a chap called Richard Van Allan, who ran the National Opera Studio, and after Richard heard me sing he said I should study, to go through the training I didn’t have, and asked me to come back a week later to sing for James Lockhart, who was running the opera school at the Royal College of Music. I sang for him, and he said, ‘I think there’s a place for you here at the Royal College of Music, and I think you should consider it. But you’ll have to have a singing teacher.’ To study on the vocal course, you needed to have a personal teacher. And James introduced me to Neil Mackie, who was Head of Vocals, Head of Vocal Studies as well – James said he would be the best person for me.

  I then had an official audition in front of Neil Mackie and all the heads of music, the director, the head of the opera department. I sang my socks off, and then one of them said, ‘Could you show me your musicality? Could you clap this rhythm?’ and he handed me a piece of paper with notes on, obviously in a rhythmical pattern, and he said, ‘Try and clap that.’

  I said, ‘I’m sorry mate, I really don’t know where to begin, I can’t.’

  He said, ‘Well just have a look at it and try.’

  And I just clapped anything. It was completely wrong. I didn’t know what I was doing. I couldn’t read rhythms, I couldn’t read music, couldn’t do any of that. I can now! But I didn’t then, and I felt like a right idiot, because there I was standing in the Royal College of Music with all these teachers, not being able to read music. But they obviously liked my singing enough to
get through the rest of it, because I was offered a place. Later, studying there, I learnt how to read scores, I learnt how to read music, to know the note values, the rhythms, to clap rhythms, play the melody on the piano, all of that. That’s what you go to college for in a sense, but a lot of people turn up knowing that already, and I just hadn’t had that education. And that frustrated me, because I would have loved the opportunity to have learnt music earlier. I wish I’d had it.

  At that point I learnt everything by ear. I still do that now, I really do, despite knowing how to do the rest. Classical music is a bit trickier, because you can easily mishear something and make a mistake musically. You can slightly misread a rhythm or a note value, or . . . not so much the pitch of a note because you should be able to hear that already, but you can be mistaken on rhythm if you’re just learning it by ear. Whereas if you learn pop music by ear you learn the basic tune and then you can play around with it and make it your own. I was surprised when I went to the first rehearsals of Les Misérables for my run last year, I couldn’t believe the amount of people that were actually having to have their music notebashed for them. They were there with tape recorders to record what lines they had to sing, but it’s such a different world. In opera, when you turn up for the first day of rehearsals, you’re supposed to know all your notes, all your music. You don’t have to be off-score particularly, but it does help if you can be.

  Still, there’s a lot to be said for learning something by ear and making it your own. A year or so ago I met Fran Healy from Travis at a concert we were both singing at, and I was chatting to him about songwriting, which I’d really started getting a buzz for. I said, ‘You know what, mate, I would love to be able to learn the guitar so I could just sit down and play.’