Alfie Read online

  And he said, ‘If I can give you any advice about songwriting – the less you can learn the instrument, the better for the songwriting it is. If you start learning hundreds and thousands of chords it can get confusing. The best songs are simple, two or three chords. And if you make a mistake, that takes you down another little avenue. It’s like map reading. Sometimes you don’t want to memorise your journey on a map because you’re ignoring all the little side streets. If you struggle to find your way to where you wanna be a bit randomly, that’s the most interesting way forward. And it’s exactly the same when writing a song.’ Which is a great point. Having to learn everything by ear in my early years was of great benefit, I think. And to be honest that way of learning is more emotional than learning technically, because you depend on your natural instinct with the music, rather than your technical skills. If you know the rules, you stick by them. If you don’t know the rules, you’re breaking them all the time.

  Often when I’m singing I’m focusing much more on the acting side and the words and the text, rather than the actual notation. Even when I was doing Les Misérables I would think of what I was saying, the character and the mood and the emotion, rather than the notation, and that’s exactly what Claude-Michel Schönberg, the composer, taught me to do. He said, ‘Imagine this being like really good jazz, play around with the rhythms, play around with the notes, make it your own.’ And I believe that’s what many of the big classical composers, if they were around today, would say to you about their scores. Make it your own. The score’s a guideline. Claude-Michel played piano on ‘Bring Him Home’ for a couple of concerts on my last tour and he played it very differently, and beautifully.

  I sang on a floating stage at the Henley Festival in 2008. That was a great day. First of all because the rain was battering down and Natasha Marsh, who was also singing, had to wear these bright pink wellies with her evening dress. But also because I got to sing with Courtney Pine, which was incredible. He accompanied me on a Neapolitan song. The opportunity to play with him was a real step towards what I’d been trying to achieve, to work with musicians who play instinctively without having to have it spelt out for them. People who make you work with them rather than against them. When you’re in a classical situation you have a structure, and that keeps you all together. But when you’re with somebody who improvises around the song and what you’re doing, it gives you so much more freedom to embellish and to extend, to try new and different things. It’s a wonderful gift, and working with Courtney gave me that experience. We were still kind of constrained by the orchestra, but Courtney managed to open it up and set it free. Blew everybody’s minds. What a player, and what a gent.

  So I had all that to master, years of studying and learning, getting it all down, learning all the rules so I’d know how to break them. And getting a place at the Royal College was thrilling, but because my D’Oyly Carte tour was coming to an end, I’d also auditioned for Phantom in the West End, to play Raoul, and they’d liked me and sent me a script, they wanted to see me again. That was a fantastic opportunity, and I thought that could be it, I’d be working, I’d be a singer. But then I was offered my place at college, and I had to weigh it up. And ultimately I really did want to study. I wanted to be confident, I wanted to have the skills, I wanted to be legitimate. Then I could explore. So I decided on college, and I’m really glad I did.

  However. Neil Mackie said he wanted to give me options, and sent me to see another teacher, Edward Brooks, before I decided on him. And I liked Edward Brooks. He seemed more personal, and made me feel more confident about my singing. A very different teaching approach. Edward made me open up my voice, he made me feel like I could sing better. So I chose him as my teacher. And I’m not sure exactly what behind the scenes shenanigans were going on, but there was some sort of hostility between him and James Lockhart, and James apparently put his foot down and said I had to go with Neil Mackie. And Neil asked me to do so, even though he’d sent me to try with someone else. So I went with Neil, because I wanted to get the place. It was very, very strange. My very first taste of opera politics. Ha. That was nothing.

  Chapter Eleven

  THE WEST LONDON KARAOKE MAFIA

  It’s amazing how empowered people feel when they’re handing out money for tuition. I won a few scholarships for the Royal College, from some really sweet, supportive folk, but not everyone who gives scholarships is a kindly benefactor, as charitable as they may be. Early on I went to sing for Peter Moores, who was chairman of Littlewoods Pools and has given a lot of people opportunities in the opera world. He was real cocky, thought his money spoke. When I auditioned for him, he said, ‘What’s wrong with your fingers?’

  I said, ‘It’s this thing called clubbing.’ Just slightly thicker fingers.

  He said, ‘Well it’s horrible, I’ll pay for an operation for you.’

  I said, ‘I don’t want you to.’

  Then he said, ‘Your name, Boe, it doesn’t work, you’re gonna have to change it. It sounds weird.’

  Mum and Dad were there waiting for me, and at one point Mum just flew at him, because he said, ‘We all know Alf’s a bit silly, a bit simple.’ She went crazy, nearly hit him. She floored him with that crazy Irish temper she’s got, he was practically on his knees apologising.

  He offered me a scholarship but said, ‘I’ll only give you the money if you go to the Royal Northern College of Music.’

  I said, ‘I don’t wanna go to the Royal Northern. I’ve got a place at the Royal College. Why would I want to change already?’ He said, ‘Well that’s the only way you’re gonna get the money.’

  I said, ‘I don’t want your money then.’

  I won’t humour people just because they’ve got money. As I said though, there were some very supportive people who helped me out, no strings. Doreen Lofthouse married into the Fleetwood family who’d founded Fisherman’s Friend in the 19th century. She turned it into a global business. She’s done a lot for Fleetwood: she donated a statue of Eros to one of the roundabouts – it was up for nearly a week before someone nicked the arrow. She helped me out. And there was a wonderful fella called Martin Harris. I think he was a patron of the college. He saw me in a concert and paid for all of my education there, all my tuition fees. I didn’t even know about it till later. I met him a couple of times. He was an absolutely lovely man, and I wondered who he was until my singing teacher said, ‘That’s the guy who’s paying your tuition.’ So humble, and so generous. He died while I was at college, bless him.

  I had time to kill that summer between D’Oyly Carte and Royal College, so I got some work at Fleetwood Freeport, an open-air shopping centre on the waterfront, running kids’ rides, go-karts and all that. I got really fit because some of the go-karts wouldn’t work, so I’d have to put the kids in them and run around the track pushing them, yelling at the kids to steer left and right. I had to dress up as a pirate once, big foam head thing, greeting the kids at the door. Most of them were pretty scared unfortunately. And then off I went, rented a car and drove down to my halls of residence in Shepherd’s Bush. It was a really exciting time, a new beginning, going to college in London, moving into these halls with lots of pretty musician girls. It was awesome.

  The Royal College of Music looks like Dracula’s castle. On our first day all the freshers were brought into the main hall, and Janet Ritterman, the director of the college, sat us down and said: ‘You are all in an establishment of fine art. It is an honour to hold the title of Royal College of Music student. You should all be proud of where you are and of what you are going to achieve here.’ I quickly found home at the college bar. Big long-haired hippie barman, Kerry, real salt of the earth. You could go in and tell him all your troubles. I loved hanging out in that bar. We’d drink a lot, play pool, 40p a game. We’d collect 20 pences all week long so we could play pool, and I was getting pretty good at it. That first year was really solid, there were real characters. People said later on, rose-tinted or otherwise, that that was the l
ast year the Royal College of Music had such an eclectic crowd, that it got all a bit public school after that. But when I was there, there were certainly people from all different walks of life – it was a really crazy mix. I made some real strong friendships pretty quickly – I’m still friends with some of them. Tim Gunnell’s a percussionist in my touring orchestra now, he was there with me. I had a lot of girlfriends too, or one night stands at least. I was part of a group of postgraduate boys who decided to get through as many freshers as we could in that first week. I think I clocked up six or seven. Shocking behaviour. Poor girls. I went to the summer ball with five dates, which I wouldn’t advise anybody to do – it wasn’t particularly smart. I told three of them I’d meet them there because I thought there was a chance only one would come through. I wasn’t fussy. And they all came. They were all in different parts of the place so I just worked my way around these five girls – one was in one room, one in another, a couple in the ballroom. I was playing them off each other all night. ‘Let me go and get us some drinks,’ and I’d go off and see another one. ‘Let me go and get some drinks . . .’

  The Royal College world that Janet Ritterman tried to drum into us on the first day didn’t come naturally to me. I never felt like I could fit into that. I didn’t fit into it. But I didn’t let it intimidate me. I just tried to be myself, which I’ve tried to do throughout my career. I worked incredibly hard there, always did well at my exams – distinctions and firsts. I chose to focus on opera, so from my postgraduate course, which would take me through my first two years, I’d move on to an opera course for another two. They actually devised a vocal course for me, a lot of which was learning languages, learning to sing in the languages, learning different styles of music, oratorio, the lead songs, opera, early music. I had tons of coaching, movement classes, whatever was needed to turn you into a good stage performer. I had to learn music overnight because I was so behind everyone else. I studied languages like mad: Italian, French, German, Russian. Although it was more about learning how they were structured as opposed to having to speak them fluently, I had to understand how they worked. I had to learn repertoire. My locker was piled high with music books. I’ve got a bad back now because my bag was full of music books all the time. Had to learn Strauss, Schubert, Handel. Coaching lessons, acting lessons, technical lessons. Learning about music, about performance, composition, how composers wrote, why they wrote what they wrote, what influenced them. I found it fascinating. I loved the fact that I was acquiring all this knowledge. But the big thing for me was learning how to read music and rhythm, really understanding it, learning how to conduct time signatures, which you have to have an understanding of in order to understand rhythm, and where the notes slot in in that time signature. I’d mark down all the beats on my paper with a line where all the beats were, and I’d memorise what came in-between those beats. Then I’d play around with the rhythms, which used to really annoy some of my teachers, because it’s not to the book, you’re improvising, and with classical music you’re supposed to be precise.

  It was tough work. A lot of people at college had breakdowns, fell apart because of the amount of pressure. I walked into the canteen one day and they were filming a South Bank Show documentary, cameras everywhere, and Melvyn Bragg was there interviewing this really wired guy who was running around the place. And this guy came up to me and said, ‘Wow, canteen food, ooh look at that, it’s a mystery, man, it’s crazy!’ He threw his arms around me. ‘Music’s amazing, it’s a wonderful thing!’ And it was David Helfgott, the Australian pianist. He won a scholarship to the Royal College in the late 1960s and had a nervous breakdown of sorts, partly because of the pressure he was under, although he was already unstable, I think, and had issues with his family. They made that great film Shine about it, with Geoffrey Rush. He was studying Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto, and collapsed on stage while he was playing it, during his final. When I met him there he did a recital, and while he was playing, all of a sudden, sat there in the concert hall, sat in the exact same position that he was in when he had his nervous breakdown, he stopped, and stood up, and he just looked at the piano. He said: ‘I like that! I like that a lot!’ And he sat down and carried on playing. I thought, that guy is so focused on his music, his art, he wanted to recognise and acknowledge something that made him feel that he was in a different world. He acknowledged the piece of music. And I thought, that’s it, that’s what live music is about. There’s no regime or routine to your performance, you can do whatever you want, make it your own. He made that night his own. That really inspired and influenced me. If I start a song and I’m not ready to sing it . . . it happened a few times on my last tour, I’d be enjoying the orchestra’s intro so much I’d get them to play it again. It creates something new, brings something pre-determined to life.

  Socially, I wasn’t one of the singers at college. I’ve never been like that. There was always a specific table at college that was just for the singers, and I never sat with them. There were singers I got on with, but I never went out of my way to be with them. I hung out with the brass players and violinists. There was, however, karaoke. When I came back from Fleetwood one Sunday evening, everybody was standing outside halls of residence, ‘Alfie, Alfie, come round to The Eagle, they’ve got karaoke on, come along and sing.’ I was a bit depressed coming back to London, I was missing home a bit, so I thought it would get my mind off it. And we went to The Eagle round the corner and I did ‘New York, New York’ and ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’. I didn’t even realise it was a competition, but it turned out they were trying to find the pub representative for the West London Karaoke Championship, and I won. £500, which we all quickly blew on beer. So before I knew it I was representing Shepherd’s Bush’s Eagle pub in the West London Karaoke Championship. Then we did the semi-final and I won that, through to the final, which was in the Goldhawk pub on Goldhawk Road.

  Me and a couple of lads from college got there early, walked in and there was a fella in there, bit of a gangster – it was a real old London pub. He came up to me and said, ‘Our representative is in the final. Representing this pub. Our pub. You better be careful, because if you win, lad, you won’t be able to use your legs to walk out of here.’ For crying out loud. I just wanted to sing a song. Nobody had told me about the karaoke mafia. So I was hoping somebody else from college might turn up, but they didn’t. The competition started and a few other people got up and sang, and then it was, ‘Right ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for our finalists to come on board, here we go, the West London Karaoke Championships nineteen ninety-five.’ Some guy got up and did his turn, and then this Goldhawk girl got up to sing. And just as she did, 50 or 60 people from the Royal College of Music walked in wearing Royal College T-shirts, all beered up, all wired, holding banners saying ‘Go Alfie!’ And this guy looked over and his eyes just said, ‘Bloody hell,’ he just sank. And I got up and I sang ‘Suspicious Minds’, and ‘He Ain’t Heavy’, and ‘New York, New York’. And I won, and everybody went absolutely mental. What a night.

  I had a lot of good times at college, and a lot of really shitty ones. My second year was tough. I’d moved out of college halls and into a flat in Gloucester Road with three other students. These guys were real druggies, massive pot smokers, acid, everything, and I was never really into it. I’d had the odd spliff but because I was a singer I couldn’t afford to do anything heavy, even if I’d wanted to. Two of them had been left a lot of money by their grandparents, and they basically threw it away on that stuff. One spent £150,000 in a year on drugs – he was just off his head. He missed his final recital three times because he was stoned. I went out on the town with him one night and we drank from 11am till 2am. In one bar two guys offered us into the toilets for a fight because we were eyeing up their girlfriends. They were two massive big bruisers, so we legged it. I couldn’t find him at one point; he’d ended up getting into a fight with a busker in Leicester Square who gave him a black eye, cut all his face. So much for bei
ng part of a fine art establishment.

  I was running out of money, I didn’t have any work, my rent scholarships had run out, travel and food were becoming a problem. I was living on overdrafts because I refused to get student loans, I never went in for that – something Mum had always drilled into us: never get yourself in debt. I didn’t want to leave college with £100,000 in student loans to pay off. So I never did it, I tried to make my own way and deal with the overdraft situation.

  I couldn’t handle living in that flat, in that spliff fug, although I did have one somewhat bizarre experience myself. Some time around then I did a gig in Amsterdam. I had sung for an agency called Askonas Holt, who later represented me, but at this time they were following my progress through college, sort of looking out for me in an unofficial capacity. And they got me this gig in Amsterdam, my first time there, working with a German guy called Thomas Quasthoff, who’s a lovely man and an amazing baritone, in the Concertgebouw, stunning old concert hall. I had the day free so I went into a coffee shop, went down to the cellar to play some pool, I was really into pool. People were smoking away and I was playing with them, hanging out, and I had some coffee and some cake and cookies. I didn’t know they were hash cakes and hash cookies, I’d never been to Amsterdam before. I soon knew. As soon as I walked outside it hit me. It felt like it took two days to walk over a bridge. I got back to my hotel and got changed for my performance; getting dressed felt like hours. I somehow snapped out of it enough to do the gig, inevitably ultra-relaxed, but I’d been nervous anyway, and was now extra paranoid that the crowd didn’t like my singing. I was thinking, ‘They hate me, they hate me, they hate me.’ I don’t know how I pulled it off, but I did, it went well. We went straight to dinner afterwards and I was still buzzing, still stoned, still paranoid, and Thomas came up to me to say goodbye and give me a hug just at the moment I got up to go to the bathroom. Thomas is a thalidomide sufferer, he’s 4ft 4in. So as he threw his arms around me, I stood up and inadvertently lifted him off the floor. I was stood there with him hanging around my neck and I was thinking, ‘What’s happening?! What’s going on?!’