Who Sang the Song Alone Again

50 years ago today, Irish vocaliser-songwriter Gilbert O'Sullivan released his iconic single 'Solitary Again (Naturally)' – which went on to spend six non-consecutive weeks at No.ane in the US. To celebrate, we're revisiting his classic interview with Adrienne Spud – originally published in Hot Press in 2007...

Some of you may be too young to remember when Gilbert O'Sullivan shared the limelight with The Beatles. To clarify for the under 30s: Gilbert O'Sullivan is the dude (an Irishman, would y'all believe it) who wrote 'Nothing Rhymed', 'Alone Once more (Naturally)' and 'What's In A Kiss', famous radio songs that you'd want to have been living in a vacuum to have missed.

Now you know who we're talking about, you'll understand my excitement in meeting this musical legend, a man whose singles and albums dominated the Irish gaelic, UK and Us charts throughout the early 1970s, earning their creator huge fame and fortune by his mid-20s – until fate conspired to pull the plug on his success.

This - on the surface quintessentially English - pop singer, whose real proper noun is Raymond, was actually born in Waterford in 1946. His mum ran a sweet shop and his dad worked in a meat factory. Like thousands of Irish families, the O'Sullivans emigrated to England in search of a better life. Hence, vii-year-former Raymond establish himself growing upward in a Swindon quango firm, attending Swindon Fine art College and playing drums, guitar and pianoforte for various bands equally well equally writing his own music.

A motility to London in the late 1960s brought O'Sullivan his major break. Ex-pop vocaliser/songwriter Gordon Mills took the young Irishman nether his influential wing, becoming his manager, song publisher, producer and older brother/begetter figure. Having guided the careers of Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck, the wealthy Mills was an enormously powerful patron, and from O'Sullivan'south abode-base of operations on Mills' huge estate, the two launched a iv-year menstruation of delinquent international success.

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An infamously biting carve up and courtcase between Mills and O'Sullivan turned the artist'south career from the silly heights towards a steep decline from 1977 onwards. While he stuck diligently at his songwriting, O'Sullivan plant much of his fourth dimension over the next decade and a half taken upwardly by gruelling legal proceedings – arguably to the detriment of his work as a recording and touring artist, but precedent-setting for musicians' control over their business.

A Scruff At Eye, Gilbert O'Sullivan's new anthology, covers a characteristically wide range of concerns, from school bullying and marital infidelity to the Center East, and displays O'Sullivan'south extraordinary talents ­– both as a musician and an unusually clever wordsmith – at their best.

Far from being the stick-in-the-mud that the 'where are they now' media suggests, Gilbert O'Sullivan's got some serious wisdom going on. For a start, he looks at least 10 years younger than his three score on this planet. Slim and fit (as befits a man who doesn't drive), O'Sullivan positively radiates health. How does he do it?

"I keep getting asked that," he says. "Look it, I'm threescore years of age and I'm really quite happy to be 60. There'southward nothing I can do almost it then I might too alive with it."

A youthful creative attitude is pretty much the only thing that O'Sullivan has in common with many of his peers and their sex and drugs and rock 'north' gyre lifestyles (what is information technology, v different mothers that Rod Stewart has for his seven children?). He'south a regular mass-goer, and is currently working on a song chosen 'Once A Cosmic, Always A Cosmic', though he says he has a critical mental attitude to the Catholic church. He only ever drinks the odd glass of wine, and he's never had a pint in his life ("practically criminal for an Irishman").

Needless to say, O'Sullivan'southward a fleck of a recluse. Living in Bunclody for a couple of years in the early 1980s (to avail of the revenue enhancement intermission for artists) suited his solitary nature, but made his sociable Norwegian wife experience isolated. Thus the couple's motility with their ii daughters (who are now 23 and 26) to the socially abuzz revenue enhancement-haven isle of Jersey, where they still alive.

Huge success in the 1970s led many stone stars downward the path of dissipation. What was O'Sullivan's experience of the temptations?

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"Well, the backlog was there if you wanted it," he says. "Merely I've ever been a domicile person. I'one thousand very introverted. Obviously I love my family unit, but solitude – it's necessary. That lone nature is there, then when I was hugely successful, I had my house and I had my pianos, and I could have had what I wanted when I went out. I had the odd girlfriend, but then I wouldn't allow that go beyond just a few dates. I got kind of nervous if they were ringing up more than they should exist. I was very into my music, then I was very worried well-nigh being taken over past going to nightclubs and getting caught upwards in all that.

"Then that was a really good thing because information technology meant I stayed dwelling more than I ever went out. I mean, Gordon Mills and his wife wouldn't have had me babysitting for them [O'Sullivan wrote his vocal 'Clair' almost Mills's infant girl] if I was jet-setting effectually the place and going off to nightclubs. I did a bit of that, but not much. The drugs matter, when I was a student, when I was living in London, my flatmates would have cannabis cigarettes and stuff. I tried it like everyone does, but it wasn't something that left a mark on me, and so I dropped it. I've ever had that… normality.

"And the celebrity affair never appealed to me. There'due south a lovely story. Paul McCartney invited me to a party he was throwing in the '70s for his Wildlife album, and I was pleased to be asked to a big celebrity bash being held in The Lyceum in Leicester Square. I took my sister because I didn't have a girlfriend at the time. And when we arrived in the taxi, at that place were crowds of people. Information technology was a red carpeting entrance, and I was absolutely terrified. There were photographers and people filming. So I kept telling the driver to bulldoze around. He said later on nearly the 10th fourth dimension that we can't just keep doing this. Then I got him to pull up just before the place, then I sneaked with my sis up to the top of the queue and barged in with my caput downwardly."

Being Irish-English language is clearly something that O'Sullivan's thought a lot virtually. (One of his albums is called Irlish.)

"I'm very proud of my Irish gaelic roots," he says. "I love coming over. The draw is at that place, it's remained intact. It's office of me, but on the other hand I see myself in terms of lyrics as English, very English. I'g an English lyricist, yet I have that Irish background. So there'due south kind of a contradiction there, which is a bit odd."

O'Sullivan grew upward at a time when it could be pretty heavy duty for Irish people in England…. Did he come across any discrimination?

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"I've seen documentaries where you get no blacks, no Irish and no dogs," he says. "Only I never grew upwards with that.

"I exercise remember in the '70s though, when Mountbatten was killed, thinking 'Jesus, I'chiliad gonna get stones thrown at me on the street.' I likewise call up during my court case there were bombs going off in London. There was a sense that here's an Irishman suing an Englishman. That was the only time I was worried.

"The 1 thing I find strange is that when I was doing a concert in Dublin [his debut in The National Stadium], at that place was chaos here. Bloody Sunday. Maybe considering I was defenseless upwardly then much in huge success at that time I was merely oblivious to a lot of the stuff that was going on in Ireland. I wish I had been more aware around that time, because I might've been writing about it."

O'Sullivan's court case against Gordon Mills was to prove hugely rewarding just also punitive. While the artist won the rights to all his own songs and the recordings of them (a legal precedent subsequently utilised by Elton John and Sting) information technology was also a horrendously painful experience.

The hostilities began when O'Sullivan, seeing his success begin to drain away, expressed dissatisfaction with Mills's work equally his manager/producer.

"I wanted to work with other producers. And he was horrified. He felt information technology was a stab in the back 10 times over. There was a clique of people of people around him, a world of its own, the lawyers, the accountants, they were all in the brace. So he said, 'Well wait, if I tin can't produce your records in 1976, then that's it.' And that potent. His attitude was, you're financially secure, don't worry near it. Go away and have a drink and take your girlfriend out. It'll be all right.

"And I'grand thinking no, it isn't going to be all right. What about my music?

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"It was a desperate decision to have to make after all he'd done for me. To take to intermission up. It was almost like a family suspension-up – that traumatic. He was almost like a father figure. I might've been 21, 22, but I was very young and naïve.

"I wanted to exist successful, despite all the success I'd already had. That'south in me. But he couldn't sympathize that. So naturally when we broke upward I asked would I notwithstanding become an interest in my songs? As he had promised. And he said of course you will, speak to the accountants.

"A week subsequently I did and they all knew nosotros'd broken up, and they said, you know… two fingers! It was devastating. All the lawyers that I'd worked with, all the accountants, everybody that I'd worked with on my finances, they were all in on information technology.

"I walked out of that equally bitter every bit anybody could be. It was a huge betrayal. So I went to court. And I was given a lot more than I was looking for. Because a whole tin can of worms was revealed. Suddenly my lawyers are discovering very bad deals. They're discovering non-payment of royalties.

"They discovered it, and they used that every bit evidence against Mills. My offset two years of success, I was getting £ten or £fifteen a calendar week, which is all I asked for. But the books showed the big amount money you were earning, and you'd see almost 98 per cent of it disappearing in revenue enhancement. And then I'd come back quite depressed. I hateful, after two years of worldwide success…. But I wasn't worried and I wasn't concerned, because all I always cared near was the music side of things.

"So the court case revealed all of this. And when Mills was in court, they destroyed him. It was the saddest affair y'all've ever seen in your life. His family unit… everything about it was terrible. Only it could've been avoided. All he had to do was fulfil his hope. All they had to do was give me my involvement and I would've walked out not worrying about anything else. "

Later the court case, Gordon Mills's company went bankrupt, though he continued to manage Tom Jones until his decease the belatedly '80s. How did O'Sullivan – who eschewed glorying in Mills's downfall – feel when his one-fourth dimension mentor died?

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"It was very sad," he says. "I hadn't met him. But I've always given him credit for what he did for me. He was responsible for my initial success, and I owe him a swell bargain. Peculiarly because he didn't like my wait, and nevertheless he was prepared to go forth with it. He could've been made a laughing stock, people saying how could you mange somebody dressed like that? Particularly because he had these two superstars, Jones and Humperdinck, in tuxedoes."

The 'look' O'Sullivan refers to is clearly a sore point. Comprising a gray-flannel brusk-trousered suit, flat cap, schoolboy tie, football game socks and hobnail boots, the prototype was not considered cool.

Photo: @GilbertOSull_ Twitter

"You lot wouldn't have liked me as a student," admits O'Sullivan. "You would've liked the song, but you lot would've establish it difficult to walk effectually with the album under your arm with me looking similar that.

"I regret the credibility crap that'southward attached to looking like that. It does surprise me that almost 40 years down the line that's however there. I don't get angry any more when it gets thrown in my face. I take it, merely I'm kind of confused as to why information technology's happening. Considering I don't know what relevance information technology has today. Is everyone actually that interested?

"It's a bit similar if McCartney was existence talked well-nigh considering he used to have a Beatle haircut and vesture a jacket with funny collars. It would exist obscene, absurd, to hear people talking to him similar that now."

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Did it hurt yous?

"Oh, it seriously did."

O'Sullivan had another precedent-setting legal victory in 1992, when US rapper Biz Markie sampled him without his permission.

"All it needs if someone wants to sample your work is that you give them permission. After my courtroom case, if they practise it without permission they're in trouble. This Biz Markie guy was a huge star, and he said we don't intendance, we're doing it anyway.

"They sent it over to me and I didn't like it. They'd sampled the intro of 'Alone Again (Naturally)'. I didn't like it because 'Alone Again (Naturally)' is a serious song, and he'due south a funny rapper. My song was huge in America and ways a lot to Americans. No comedic use can ever be made of that song. Y'all'll never see it on washing automobile ads."

When we get on to politics, the reason for O'Sullivan's reclusiveness becomes apparent.

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"Oh, I think nosotros're the scum of the globe," he says calmly. "I remember we're terrible. The way nosotros're destroying the world. That's why I experience the Eye East is so crucial. I really do believe that if yous solved the crisis between State of israel and the Palestinians, that would make a far more peaceful Muslim world."

Ever the rebel – admitting a square one in terms of the stone 'n' roll lifestyle – O'Sullivan'due south parting remark shows how piffling he cares most toeing the party line.

"The Middle Due east is an issue that young people everywhere should be on. That's where the Geldof and the Bonos should be focusing their attention. Merely they're never gonna do it. Because of their paymasters – they'll upset their paymasters. That's my opinion."

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Source: https://www.hotpress.com/music/on-this-day-50-years-ago-gilbert-osullivan-released-alone-again-naturally-22892494

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