Photograph, near the wood, over the blue bridge, over the field of dreams in my home town of St Helens
Seeking echoes from the time when the world was young, and so was I, before vanity and profanity took over and stole that world away.
Just a day before he died in 1985, Matt Monro received a telegram in hospital from Sinatra, a get well message signed "From One Boy Singer To Another." It was a telegram that put a beam and a glow on Matt’s face and which his family cherish to this day.
Frank Sinatra said this of Matt Monro: “If I had to choose three of the finest male vocalists in the singing business, Matt would be one of them. His pitch was right on the nose; his word enunciations letter perfect; his understanding of a song thorough.”
If anyone should know, then Sinatra should.
Sinatra’s judgement on Matt is spot on. And I like the way that, in choosing three and only naming one, we are all free to fill in the blanks with our own personal favourites. It’s Matt Monro and any other two according to taste.
In his autobiography, Sinatra also wrote that Matt Monro was the only singer that he'd pay to see. There’s plenty to like about Matt Monro – the perfect pitch, the diction, intonation, the well-crafted songs and wonderful arrangements. The music, the tempo, life at a nice and easy pace, relaxes and puts the mind at ease. Most of all, there is that swept away feeling. Matt knows where to cut, where to stop, how far to go, inciting the inner romantic in us all, and leaving us free to take flight on our own wings. He is perfectly measured. I’ve read criticisms that he lacks the charism and pizzazz of the great American stars. There’s truth in that. He’s the singing bus driver. He’s one of us, an ordinary fellow, down-to-earth, in touch with his roots. None of that Alpha male nonsense. He does some of that big band stuff, of course. I like his determination to take things at a nice, relaxed pace, take life as it comes, as it is. And that’s what makes him timeless and universal, forever to be one of us. He’s no cut-price Sinatra, Bennett, Darin etc. either. His voice, that great enduring quality he possesses, is crystalline in its purity and perfection. Check it out. Buy a high quality sound system and listen closely for the imperfection. You won’t hear it, not when Matt was on and at his best. And he usually was. Blessed with a warm and beautiful voice, no one did the heartbreakers like Matt Monro – the songs have that swept away quality of the authentic romantic ballad. I’ll keep my claims modest – Matt Monro was Britain’s best when it comes to the ballads.
Matt Monro had a crystalline voice, pure, simple and direct, impeccable diction and phrasing, – well-crafted songs, beautifully arranged (Ok, I admit, I love to be bathed in strings).
I’m listening to Matt Monro a lot at the moment. As the years go by, the man’s music grows in stature, as you come to appreciate life in all its fullness, the highs, the lows, the disappointments, the realization of some hopes, the dashing of many others. Some remain, some you learn to let go of, and still some more suggest themselves if you are lucky. You become reflective and elegiac, and mildly introspective, as life disappoints, and people much more so. There is a mellowing through increasing awareness of the difficulty of finding happiness in places inhabited by the ghosts of so many past failures and, even more, by successes. And you begin to hear time’s winged chariot, at long last.
Life as it flows is so much time wasted, and nothing can ever be recovered or truly possessed save under the form of eternity, which is also the form of art.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
I’m remembering something that Kenneth Clarke said in Civilisation, that Michelangelo ‘never changed,’ only that he grew sadder, like the rest of us.’ It’s a long, long while from May to December. As the Autumn weather turns the leaves to flame, I no longer have time for the waiting game. The trick is not to be crushed by life, but to take its true measure, equal it, match it and absorb it into your very being.
With life ever insurgent, ever resurgent, there is necessarily a resonance between the inner landscape and the outer, ensuring a correspondence between the personal and the universal drama. On 14 July 1929, Lewis Mumford wrote to David Liebovitz that he found Patrick Geddes’ "doctrine of Insurgence as a prime quality of all life, life perpetually striving, struggling, overcoming all obstacles,” to be “an excellent medicine in periods of discouragement. ..."
Mumford was concerned with the loss and potential recovery of form in civilisation, explaining that what he sought most of all was "a vision to live by again." We need it. And in practicing what you preach as you go along, you may well find it – touching base with the life insurgent. Mumford’s simple lesson on the Megamachine is that all concentrations of power are baneful. They petrify that insurgence, pervert its energy. As Tolkien told us all along: destroy the damned Ring! Geddes exemplified his own "doctrine of life: its inception, its development, its struggle, its joyful insurgence." I’ll carry on swimming in that ethical stream, until the party is over.
My reflections here were provoked by seeing Henry Priestman’s photo on FB showing his latest haul of records from the local store. Among all the rock and prog and whatever - Quo, Purple, Genesis, stuff I have loved since my well-spent youth – there was … Matt Monro … A ‘proper singer’ of ‘proper songs,’ as family elders have said over the years, and one or two continue to say. He was, too. I’m glad to see no divisions and distinctions being drawn. There are two types of music, good and bad - or the music you like and the music you dislike .. there’s room for some heavy philosophizing here. I like Matt Monro. And he is good, by which I mean he is really good.
In the conversations on FB, I weighed in with high praise of Matt. And Henry Priestman gave us his favourite Matt Monro song, Wednesday’s Child. It’s a choice selection, from The Quiller Memorandum, music composed by John Barry.
Wednesday’s child, born to be alone.
I was born on Tuesday, Tuesday’s child, full of grace.
The conversation had me engaging in a little Matt mining in my collection to uncover some hidden gems in the man’s back catalogue. There are plenty, beyond those classics we (should) know and love (Softly as I Leave You, Walk Away, On Days Like These etc etc). It all depends on your mood.
I’m in elegiac mood, a crisis-ridden present having me looking backwards to a time when the world was young and things were simple (like never, it’s just that your mother did all the work and took all your troubles away), and forwards to the home we are charged to build (which is looking further and further away with every passing day). If you miss the boat, do you still try to catch it? With past, present and future on a continuum as a continually unfolding process, where will my resting place be?
So, in that spirit, my own Matt Monro choices …
I have a You Tube channel with my particular favourites. I have 80 selections, all arranged in sets of ten for a night's perfect easy listening. Pick any one song from any set, you can't go wrong. I listen to them all, whole and wholesome.
But if I had to choose … to fit the mood of the moment.
Here is one that isn’t well known, written and produced by Beatles’ producer George Martin.
words and music by Jerry Lordan / George Martin
Sad am I, I hold a faded dream
I keep it deep inside
But no one will ever know
Who can tell how bluebirds feel
When the summer steals away
Far away
There's a place, a meadow deep and green
A cottage lost from view
That stands on a high blue hill
And no one will ever know
What it means to never go
No one knows
Forget her, they say, forget her
Although I still see her face
And hear her laughter,
after
Might as well forget the summer sun
The sound of falling rain
The lights on a Christmas tree
They don't say where memories go
And no one will ever know
No one knows
No one knows
Or ... as I look back to a time when the world was young.
Wish Now Was Then
Once the world was dressed in green and gold
And life was like a rose that’s about to unfold
I only fought the wind and only answered to the sun
Love came with the dawn to waken everyone
Wish I could live those days again
Wish now was then
Then the world stood still in early May
Unbound and free were we just ourselves to obey
Then time was not a thing we were afraid to lose
And words were only words we never thought to choose
Wish I could live those days again
Wish now was then
Wish I could live those days again
Wish now was then
Music by: John Barry
Lyrics: Don Black
original composition Vivre et Mourir from the motion picture Mary Queen of Scots
But, as we know, if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride …
So this is my choice
Once a wand was waved
And a wish came true
When time was young
That was all we had to do
The world was free
The Earth was always rich
And only wishing made it so
But that was long ago
Now times have changed
And so have we
Now no one knows the way
To get us back where we should be
The world’s begun
To look her age
And we’re the ones
Who have to write tomorrow’s page
It’s up to us
To lift the veil of doubt from
From these days we’re living in
A new beginning must begin
And all the wishing in the world
Won’t put things right
But we just might.
But we just might.
All the Wishing in the World
Words and music: Don Black, Stanley Myers
Producer: John Burgess
Arranger: Stanley Myers
My Matt Monro channel
Don Black had his first chart entry in 1964, when Matt Monro, "the British Sinatra", whom he managed, reached number four in the charts with Walk Away. His words to John Barry's score for Born Free won him an Oscar. As to where the words come from, he explains: "When I was asked to write Ben for Michael Jackson I knew it had to be about a rat, but I didn't want to write about cheese and traps, so I made it about friendship. The same with Born Free: I knew I couldn't write about lions and cages so I made it a social comment. You've got to be open to universal themes."
And when those words are given expression by a voice like Matt Monro's, they touch the roots of human experience, that place where the soul of man never dies, and sometimes soars.
"Songs should be about primal emotions," he says. " The world might change, but what's important, what you want from life, that stays the same."
What has stayed with Black has been a determination to fill a page with the right words and hit the mother lode. "A good song leaves you changed in some way," says Black. Don Black writes "good songs." And Matt Monro has the perfect voice for such songs. He equals, absorbs and expresses that wholeness and wholesomeness ... even as he breaks your heart, he promises a time to come when it will be put back together again.
Whilst Matt Monro signed for Capital and moved to Los Angeles after the death of Nat Cole and the departure of Frank Sinatra from the label, he never acquired the tag of ‘superstar.’ But what he may lack in the 'glamour' stakes in this regard, he more than makes up for by sheer, unadulterated quality. He gained and has maintained the reputation of being "the singers’ singer." The great voices in the world bore testimony to the quality of Matt's voice. Bing Crosby declared Matt to be Britain’s best vocalist. "Sounds like me on a good day," quipped Frank Sinatra, "or after an early night." His “Heartbreakers” compilation from 1980 was one that my mother bought, introducing me to Matt's music at length for the first time. I'd heard him earlier, of course, and knew he was good. In time, I came to appreciate how good. Britain's Frank Sinatra? He was Matt Monro. He needs no comparison, he's on his own, a perfect case.