Are you here? Okay! Everyone’s here. It’s The Paul Leslie Hour and you’re welcome here.
This is an interview from the archives with songwriter David Martin, known for being a part of the songwriting group of Arnold, Martin & Morrow.
Now… David Martin lives and breathes the songs. Chances are, you’ve heard something David Martin wrote. His songs have sold over 26 million records around the world, but all stories have a beginning. For the British singer-songwriter, he began his career as a member of the group Butterscotch on RCA Records.
Soon after, he formed a songwriting partnership with Chris Arnold and Geoff Morrow. The partnership resulted in many the composition of many songs recorded by the true legends of recorded music, including Cliff Richard, Wayne Newton, Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, and Mama Cass. The legendary Elvis Presley recorded four of their songs: “Let’s Be Friends,” “A Little Bit of Green,” “Sweet Angeline” and “This is the Story.”
Quick side note, how many of you are planning on seeing the new movie simply entitled “ELVIS” releasing on June 24th? We can’t wait…
Now, one of the songs David Martin wrote has brought many smiles to the world. David Martin’s song “Can’t Smile Without You” would become a pop standard and worldwide hit after being recorded by Barry Manilow. Manilow was not the first, nor the last artist to record the song. The Carpenters, Engelbert Humperdinck, Vic Damone, Andy Williams, Gino Cunico and others would perform and record their own versions. The song has been performed countless times in concert, been featured in motion pictures. The song earned Martin three BMI awards for over 3 million airplays.
Although HE continues to write songs, he is still very much a singer. He has a great admiration for the great songwriters of the American Songbook, those lyricists and composers who wrote the standards: Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer and Sammy Cahn. It is his love for these American classics that resulted in his album “Silky Smooth Moments.” Accompanied by the Terry Coffey Trio, David Martin sings standards like “I’ll Be Seeing You” and “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning,” and one written by David Martin himself.
It’s a beautiful gesture from David Martin. Although he has accomplished so much with his own songs, he pays tribute to the great songwriters who came before him. We invite you into the world and passion of David Martin, where songs with great messages never die. They endure.
If you get a moment, perhaps you’ll help us out. Just go here. And we thank you!
Now we present our interview with a lovely man, music’s own David Martin.
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The Official Transcript
Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to welcome this man, he’s a singer, song writer, his name is David Martin and he has a brand new album ‘Silky Smooth Moments,’ welcome.
Thank you Paul and thank you for inviting me to be part of your show, I’m really looking forward to speaking with you.
The pleasure is all ours, I think most stories are best from the beginning, what was life like growing up?
Well, you know, it was pretty tough, happy, very happy, I had a… thank God a very happy home life with my parents, we had… the best years I can remember were in West London, where… in a little place called Hammersmith, which is a pretty throbbing place these days, and it was a happy time really, I was an only child, strange as it may seem and a lot of time in those days just spent playing on the street, which is kind of different to how it is now, because now a days people don’t let their children go out on the street understandably, but it was happy and we had fun and you know, I was kind of a young sporty, I did a lot of sport as a young kid and my school days were great, so, I’d have to say, didn’t have lots of money, but in those days, you know, it didn’t matter, in fact in these days it doesn’t matter really, cause money is just a thing isn’t it really, yeah, I’d have to say that I had a fundamental, happy home life and it was a good start for me to enter into the big, wide world.
Was it a very musical household?
My Father was very, very musical, well, I think it’s a 50-50 situation, my Father had an amazing operatic voice, although by trade, funnily enough a bit like Perry Como, he was a hairdresser by trade and he never ever took his singing seriously, but he had a great, powerful, strong voice and on my Father’s side, he had a Great Aunt who had two children and one of them was a lady called May and he remembers vividly when he was a child, that they would spend weekends, evenings, weekends with May sitting at the piano, thumping out tunes and everybody would be singing away, so, I think it’s my Father’s side where that musical strain came from.
And when did you realise that you had a musical talent?
I realised that Paul as long ago as when I was seven years of age, I remember being in a playground with a friend at school, and we were walking, just walking across the playground and I was singing away, singing away something or another and he said to me “oh that’s really nice, what song is that you’re singing?”, and I said “I don’t know I must have heard it on the radio,” so I kind of listened out for a few days and didn’t hear this song and realised that at the age of seven I had actually made a song up. That’s when I realised I had that gift really and to be honest I’ve been making songs up ever since. (David and Paul laugh)
So you think the ability to write songs was something you were pretty much born with?
Oh there’s no question about it, there is no question, it has always come very naturally to me it’s always been something that…. you know, you could say to me now, I mean if you could come up with a song called Paul Leslie Show, I can probably do it on the spot. It’s one of those things which, it’s always been there, I kind of have a… I can wake up in the middle of the night with a whole melody going through my head, or I can be in the car or whatever, and it’s just always been there, it took some years for me to develop it and own it and in actual fact, I mean jumping forward a bit, when I was first signed as a singer, ’cause I started out as a singer, but I was signed to a record label called Pie Records, and it was then that it really started properly, because the record producer said to me, you know, “we’re going to go out and look for some material today” and I went all around the publishers with him and they played these songs, most of which I thought were pretty boring and he just happened to say “do you write yourself?” And I said “ohyeah, sure”, you know, kind of bluffing it really, and I went home and wrote a couple of songs and we put them on a recording session, and that’s really how it started out, then I realised that I had something which was approaching something professional, it’s always been there.
What about the group ‘Butterscotch’ how did you come to be in that group?
By that time, I had two writing partners, Geoff Morrow and Chris Arnold. Chris Arnold, Geoff Morrow and we were known in the industry as Arnold, Martin and Morrow and we were kind of jumping, working songwriters, writing away trying to get artists to record our songs, in the middle of this wave of euphoric activity, a record came out which was number one in the USA, I’m sure your listeners will know it called ‘Love Goes Where My Rosemary Goes’ and a pal of mine called Tony Burrows was the lead singer on that record. It shot to number one in the UK, shot to number one in the USA and the bizarre thing was that I started getting telephone calls from friends saying “oh, we’ve heard this fantastic single that you’re singing on David and how fantastic for you” and I said “well it is a great single, but it’s not me singing.” (David and Paul laugh) it’s actually Tony Burrows, ’cause we both have kind of a similar kind of sounding voice I guess, but what that did was, made me think we’ll maybe we should do something like that, so Geoff, Chris and I put our heads together and we came up with this song, ‘Don’t you know, She Said Hello’ and I did the vocal and we decided to call it… call the band ‘Butterscotch,’ and it was a bit hit in the UK, so that’s how that happened, it was kind of triggered from one thing that led to something else and that’s how that happened.
Going back then, before that, you mentioned Chris Arnold and Geoff Morrow, the songwriters that you wrote so many songs with, what circumstance led you to meet them.
You know, it’s the old story, isn’t it Paul, we all lived in… at that time I’d grown up and I was engaged, or about to be married, I can’t remember at what stage, but we all… I’d moved well away from West London and I was now living in North London, and they were living in North London as well, so we knew each other socially and they were song writers, Geoff and Chris and I was a vocalist, ’cause I’d signed my deals I said just now with Pie, so although we were great friends, it was one of those situations where they wrote songs and didn’t really tell me much about what they were doing and I was kind of trying to make my way as an artist, and so we were friends but weren’t really involved together, until one day Jeff called me up and said “look, we’ve got this song that we’ve written for Billy Fury, do you remember Billy Fury, Paul?
I have to be honest, I don’t know that name.
Well, Billy Fury was a massive artist in the UK and I’m going about the late, late sixties, into the seventies, he was a really big, big artist over here and he had a lot of big hits, ‘Half Way To Paradise’ and all sorts of things, they had this song that they’d written and Geoff said to me, you know, “would you be interested in demoing the song for us, doing a demo of the song?” I said “yeah, I’d love to,” I went over to their place one evening where they used to work, and they played me this song, which was called ‘In Thoughts Of You’ and half way through the song or when the song ended, I said “yeah, I love the song, I’m happy to do it” I said, “but, I hope you don’t my saying so, I think the middle section’s a bit weak and Geoff said “what do you mean, what’s wrong with it?” and Chris wasn’t very happy with me making that comment (Paul laughs), I said “well, I just think.. I don’t think it’s really going anywhere, I think it needs to…”well, what would you do with it?” Said Geoff, I said “well, okay, play it again,” so they played it again and I said “well I think I would do this, and suggested a couple of changes, which in fact they made, I did the demo, Billy Fury recorded it, it went top five in the UK and then Geoff approached me and said “look, why don’t we work together as a team?” So I said “okay, fine” and that’s how it started.
Of the songs that the three of you wrote, could you pick a best interpretation of a song that you wrote?
Do you know, it’s a really good question, it’s a really good question because the thing about writing songs… I mean at the beginning you’re only too happy for anybody to take the trouble to record something you write, I mean, you’re desperately trying to get your songs covered by anybody, you get over that stage after a while, because sometimes what happens is, you write a song, and people record it and when you hear it, sometimes you get quite disappointed because you don’t feel they’ve treated it in the way that you would like them to have done, I think there are two answers to that question, if I may, one of them has to be the Presley version, Elvis Presley version of our song called ‘This Is The Story,’ the reason why I say that is because we did a demo of the song, obviously aimed for him, I tried to do, dare I say, my best Elvis Presley impression I could, although I didn’t sound anything like him, but I did a really… tried to get the essence of it if you like and when we heard the recording, it was absolutely fantastic because it was exactly the way we demoed it and the phrasing and everything, I think that was one of the best. The other one was a song that Cliff Richard recorded of ours, called “So Long,” which is a really beautiful recording and one of the best lyrics I think that Chris wrote, ’cause Chris in those days wrote most of the lyric and Jeff and I did most of the melodies in those days. Cliff did the song ‘So Long’, which sadly ended up on the ‘B’ side of a single, but I think we all felt should have been an ‘A’ side and would have been a very big hit in this country, so I would say those two songs stand out for me.
The number of artists have recorded all the songs that you guys wrote, you mentioned Elvis Presley recorded a few of those songs, but then you mentioned Cliff Richard, has there been an artist that you had an emotional attachment to that you were just had a over the moon that they recorded one of your songs?
Well, I mean, you know, you’d have to say, again, there’s a wonderful answer, we had a song called ‘Who In The World’ that was recorded by Mama Cass which was fabulous and always comes back every time I suppose, to ‘Can’t Smile Without You’ Barry Manilow, which is impossible not to be emotional about it, I mean, it was a most fabulous recording and I think even though, funnily enough a number of recordings before he did it, when he did it, I think he made it into the essential recording of that song, you see, it’s a very good question Paul, because you get very mixed emotions when artists record your songs and I think the Mama Cass version of ‘Where In The World’ was just gorgeous really, beautiful, beautiful recording.
A second ago you mentioned the song ‘Can’t Smile Without You’ and I suppose as a great testament to what a great song it is, it’s been recorded by Barry Manilow, The Carpenters, Engelbert Humperdinck, Vic Damone even recorded it, the late Andy Williams, why do you think it is, because people universally seem to love that song. Why do you think it’s so beloved?
It’s a very good.. these questions are very good questions, because if we only knew, if one even had a clue, it’s so difficult to understand what makes this one song stand head and shoulders above another one, I mean, again, the story behind that song was a fascinating one because it was during the time of my marriage to a lady called Debbie and she had a greeting card shop in Hampstead, North London, I went and picked her up to take her home one night in Hampstead… we lived in a place called Harrow and when I arrived, she gave me an envelope and in the envelope was a plain blue card, with a small badge on it with a tear, and I opened the card and it just said ‘can’t smile without you’ and I thought ‘well, a brilliant song title’, so by the time we got to Harrow, which is about thirty minutes from Hampstead, to be honest the song was written and I actually recorded it, the first recording of the song and from that recording, all these other recordings were emanated, and our publisher at the time was an American guy in America, we were with Dick James Music, with a guy called Arthur Braun in America and he had great beliefs in the song and he went running around with this song and first, when he went to see Clive Davis, Clive played it for Barry Manilow, who kind of, actually passed on the song and they recorded it on Arista with a new up and coming guy called Gino Cunico.
Oh yes.
Do you remember that?
I have that vinyl album.
You do.. fantastic, and then, as you say Engelbert Humperdinck did it and this one did it, a UK guy called Des O’Connor did it, and also, The Carpenters recorded it and it was one of these songs that kept on being picked up, until of course, Barry picked it up, eventually Clive persuaded him to do it and the rest I guess is history, but, you know, to answer the question, it’s really difficult, because when a song is written, as the writer of it, you have a ‘thing’ about it, you kind of like it, or love it, or whatever, but you have no way of knowing whether that song is going to end up being a world monster or not, it’s very difficult to understand, I think what it is, is that the message and the style and everything about it resonates so strongly with people and perhaps they recognise their own situation in the song, which is what makes them make it their own. I remember going to the O2 a couple of years ago, ’cause Barry was over here at the O2 Arena, 25,000 people and when he just played the introduction, and he whistled (David whistles the intro) just whistles the introduction, the whole place, 25,000 people stood on their feet and sang the song from beginning to end with him all the way through, now that was emotional experience, I can assure you.
On that note, there’s a picture on your web site, everyone can go to the web site, it’s davidmartinsingersongwriter.com, there’s a picture of you and Mr. Manilow together.
There is indeed, yeah.
Well, there is an article recently where Barry Manilow was talking about that song, all these years later, since it was originally recorded, he was talking about his fondness for that song. I am wondering what your personal experiences have been like with Mr. Manilow.
He really is an absolute lovely, lovely sweet man, very… you know… what you see is what you get, and I’ve on and off been speaking to him for all these years, I mean we’re talking about twenty five years, well, where were we when he first recorded it? Seventy… wait a minute… he recorded it in… it was a hit in America in 1976 I think, so we’re talking twenty four… we’re coming up to thirty, thirty nine years ago that he did the song, the last time I saw him was at the O2 as I think I mentioned, I said “Barry,” I said “you know, we’ve been involved with this song for so long,” he said, he said “David”, he said “it’s kind of like ‘Yesterday,’” he said and “may it carry on for another thirty odd years”, you know, he said, he’s a really lovely person and very articulate, very much involved in his career and how he comes across for the public in terms of his vocal and everything else and he’s very professional, and a great guy, with a beautiful voice, which seems to do the trick wherever he goes.
Our special guest is David Martin. I wanted to bring everybody up to the present, you have this brand new album out, it’s entitled ‘Silky Smooth Moments.’
Right.
Just to tell everybody a little bit about it, most of the tracks… you have a song you wrote on there, but most of the tracks are the classics from The American Songbook.
Yes.
What is it about the American Songbook that made you want to record an album of standards?
Well, obviously like everything in my life, there’s always a story behind it, it’s just simply this, as I mentioned to you Paul when we started talking, I began.. I started out as a singer, I was never intending to become a songwriter to be honest, I started out as a singer and in the UK I was travelling around doing little clubs in army bases ’cause in those days you had a lot of army bases over here, entertaining US troops and stuff like that, and most of the songs that I did in those days were these kind of standard songs, and then lo and behold, about, I suppose about two years ago now, eighteen months, two years ago, I got a call from a friend of mine, a promoter friend of mine who puts on concerts and shows and he said “David,” he said, “I don’t know if you’d be interested,” he said “but I’m putting on an American Songbook show, would you be interested in taking part, you know, as one of the artists in the show?” So I said “Well, why not, I’d love to, be lovely to go back to all those beautiful songs again.”
So I did this show for him, which was called ‘The Seasonal Great American Songbook,’ ’cause it was heading into the Christmas period, and the show ran for about five weeks in a small theatre called ‘The New End Theatre’ in North London, and we got pretty good people turning out and during the course of the show, which was really enjoyable, I got a lot of reviews from people and also a lot of… a lot of comments from all sorts of people, and in the reviews that I got, they were referring to me as the ‘honey voiced David Martin,’ ‘listening to David Martin is like listening to confectionary,’ ‘silky tones’ etcetera, and I thought ‘this is really lovely’ and I pitched the songs pretty low in this show, because I was singing with a girl called Sarah Parry who had a big, strong kind of, very big voice and I thought it might be nice if I pitched all my songs really low, so having got all this reaction, I thought it might be a nice idea to go in the studio and see what the voice sounds like with these kind of songs in this low register, so that’s how it all started Paul, and I went in and recorded two or three songs, everybody got so excited because… a little trio got.. trio together, and we ended up actually recording 16 songs, of which ended up… there’s about 11 on the album, one of which is ‘Silky Smooth Moments’ and that song came about because the engineer on the session kept saying ‘God, this sounds so silky smooth’, so we thought, ‘oh great idea, I just called it ‘Silky Smooth Moments,’ and then me as song writer, couldn’t resist coming up with a song called ‘Silky Smooth Moments.’
The wonderful thing is that a lot of my peers over here in the industry, have heard it and said to me ‘you know, I think this is like a standard song waiting to happen’, so you couldn’t ask for more praise for a song than that, I’m pretty proud of it and actually pretty proud of the album too, I think it’s one of the nicest works I’ve done, so that’s the story behind it, the song called ‘Silky Smooth Moments.’ Obviously I wanted it to be in the same genre as the songs on the album, something in my brain kind of ‘clicks’ and very, very quickly, songs started to form and shape and came out as it was, so I wouldn’t say that I was thinking about any particular song writer, or I was influenced in any way, I think style of the songs written in that period by Irving Berlin, by Cole Porter, etcetera has made an imprint in my mind, so that when I go in to that songwriting mode, it comes out, very much in that style, it’s the best way I can answer it Paul.
You mentioned a second ago Cole Porter and Irving Berlin. What are your favourite composers and lyricists from that Tin Pan Alley era?
I’ve got to say Irving Berlin, I’ve got to say Cole Porter, I’ve got to say Sammy Cahn, Johnny Mercer, fabulous, brilliant writers and if you like, more latterly, Henry Mancini is a great writer, Harold Arlen who wrote ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow,’ I mean these songs frankly, absolutely on a strarter which is top, top, top quality songs, and then if I… I went to a… some years ago now I think, probably going back about 25/30 years, but I went to a celebration dinner in London at a big, one of the swanky hotels on Park Lane in London, and it was in celebration and tribute to the great writer Sammy Cahn who wrote as you know ‘All The Way’ to Sinatra and ‘Second Time Around’ and one of the tracks, I think, ‘Teach Me Tonight’ on the album, he was a giant writer on. I arrived at the… at the hotel and as I walked into the reception area where there must have been about at least 200 people, it was a bit like the parting of the waves, it was coming sort of like a parting of the space and through the middle of this space walking directly towards me was Sammy Cahn himself.
Oh wow.
So I… well, I thought ‘well, I’d better take the opportunity while I’ve got it,’ so as he walked toward… I think he might have been going to the gents, to the gents room, I don’t know, but as he walked towards me, I sort of extended my hand and he took it and I said “I just somehow, just wanted to shake your hand and say ‘thank you for the wonderful, wonderful pleasure that you’ve given me and millions of other people at the same time and may you go on for many, many, many, many, many years,’” he said “well David,” he said “what’s your name?” I said “David Martin” I said “I’m one of the newer breed on the block, one of the new kids on the block” and he said to me “well ummm”, he said “I don’t know you David” he said, “but you must have done something right for you to have been invited to be here”, he said “and if I can give you any words of wisdom it’s this”, he said “stick with what you know best, do what you know best, don’t allow yourself to be influenced by other stars and other people and all the rest of it”, he said “you just stick to what you do best”, he said “and your style will come in to fashion, go out of fashion and come back again,” he said, “but that, I think is the best advice I can give you.” I’ve always kind of remembered those words and there’s a lot to be said for it too.
Thank you very much for sharing that story, that was incredibly interesting. I can’t imagine what it was like to meet him.
It was just… it was one of those enjoyable moments in your life, because he was a very cute, smart, perceptive man and also had a lovely sort of style of fun about him, I think that’s the thing about song writers, you know, we’re all a bit crazy to be honest and we all see life in a funny way, and we all have fun and pull each other’s leg and, but when we get down to it, we do the business, but unless you’ve got a sense of humour, I don’t think you can be a song writer to be honest.
The album, is there a favorite track on the album?
Obviously I ‘m going to push mine to one side, because like I say, I’m very proud of it, but if I had a favorite track of all the other tracks, I’d have to say it was ‘Wee Small Hours Of The Morning,’ I just adore the song, I can’t imagine being able to improve on the vocal that I’ve done, ’cause you know we singers always think we can do better, but I can’t… listened to the album a few time and that track for me, stands out, I’m really, really proud of it. Love the song. I love the track.
That is the one that also caught my ear.
Wow.
That one, you did that one very well.
Ahhhh, thank you Paul. Thank you very much.
On that note, what vocalists have influenced you the most?
Well, I’d have to give you different branches of music for that, first of all, in the genre apropos the album, I ‘d have to say Nat King Cole, probably rates as my favorite singer of all time, I just, when I heard him as a young lad walking through a store in London, I couldn’t be more than 10 or 12, and I was walking, I think, with my Mother through a store and suddenly this voice came out through the store speakers and I remember being routed to the spot, thinking to myself ‘if this is a human being, it’s so utterly beautiful and perfect’, I couldn’t believe it, so Nat King Cole is just, for me, a most wonderful singer. But I love Frank Sinatra, I love Tony Bennett, I love Michael Bublé who I think does a fantastic job these days, great singer, obviously I love Barry Manilow, but Barry’s not in the same… he’s not in that genre, and from the rock side, you know, I was crazy about Elvis. I think Elvis is one of my favorite singers of all time, but funnily enough, going back to, again, into my early days of listening to records and stuff, there was an American singer called Guy Mitchell who I loved to hear, and I used to love Guy Mitchell, so I don’t know if you guys remember him, but I do, he’s really good.
When someone listens to this album.
Yes.
What do you want the listener to get out of the experience?
That’s a really wonderful question Paul, thank you for asking it. I am very impressed when I listen to albums by Ella Fitzgerald, by Sinatra, by Nat King Cole, by various singers of that ilk—Al Jolson going back even further if you like, they all have, even though they may be singing songs that they’ve all recorded, perhaps similar songs or the same song, they all have a uniqueness about them, in their own voice and their own delivery, and something about it, which grips the listener and makes the listener say “well, I love this voice, I want to go out and buy it” and that’s what I’ve tried to accomplish in making this album, to have my own unique sound, which people around me have called ‘silky smooth’, which is very flattering, but nevertheless, my own unique sound, so that anybody listening to anything I sing, makes them want to go out and buy that record, I think hopefully I answered your question.
Indeed. What is the best thing about being David Martin?
The best thing about David Martin is that he’s got five wonderful children, who he loves to pieces, and thank God they love me. I’ve had a wonderful life. I’m still having a very happy life. I have great friends, a great family, and do you know, all of that, is the most important thing, and all the rest is wonderful, and if I can give people pleasure along the way, then that gives me, makes me happy with my life, and that to me is the best thing about being me.
I have a very strong feeling that there will be people listening to this interview, not just here in the States, but from different places in the world, what would you like to say to the people who are listening to this?
That I hope that all of you are in good spirits and in a good place, that you’re happy in your lives with all your friends and family, that you are good to one another, do the very best you can, if you can do a good deed every once in a while that’s fantastic, but, at the end of the day I think the most important thing, is to be happy with yourself and if you can achieve what you set out to achieve, then, congratulations to you, but, the most important thing you have to do in life, is just try your best, and if you try your best, then you can never say that you did anything but the right thing.
Wow, my last question, who is David Martin?
Who is David Martin?
Yes Sir.
David Martin is a young guy in the UK who wanted to achieve certain dreams, he achieved many, many of them, and is a guy who is probably like Mr Joe, Mr and Mrs Brown who live next door, ’cause I’m kind of like the guy next door, but I, you know, happily I’m able to entertain people and that makes me happy, and also David Martin is a guy who continually has ambitions to continue to do things that will become successful and hopefully give people pleasure, and I think that’s a very important thing, to carry on in life, and always want to do something better and achieve something, rather than decide you’ve reached a point in your life where you’ve done as much as you need to do and then kind of switch off and don’t continue, I think that kind of sums me up, I will always have a little project on my time board and I will always want to give people pleasure by achieving it.
Very well put, may I make a confession?
Please.
I very much respect and admire songwriters and it’s always a very big pleasure for me when I speak to people who compose and write the songs. When you whistled the little beginning part of ‘Can’t Smile Without You.’
Yes.
The hair on my arms stuck up.
(David and Paul laugh.)
It really did and I grew up in part in the Philippines and my Mother sang that song.
Ahhhhhh
And played that song, I’m not kidding you, I probably have heard that song a thousand times in my life, and to speak to you is a very big honor. So I congratulate you on your album, and, much like you thank Sammy Cahn, I just thank all the songwriters for writing something positive. It makes people smile, because, I also… if I could say one more thing, I witness people cry, mothers and daughters, mothers and sons when that song is being sung and it’s very special.
That’s so lovely Paul, well, thanks for saying that, I think in one of Barry’s books he mentions in a chapter that there was a lady who was… I’m not sure what the illness is called, I think it’s agoraphobia, but there was a lady who suffered from not being able to leave her home, is that called agoraphobia when somebody leaves their home?
I believe so, agoraphobia.
But she had… she just loved ‘Can’t Smile Without You’, and he was coming close to her town to perform, and she left her home to go to the show so she could hear him sing the song. Now that… when I read that in the chapter, that made me feel quite… quite eerie to be honest. Anyway, why don’t I do this, if we’re at the end of the interview, I should go (David sings to the tune of ‘Can’t Smile Without You’)… ‘Paulie my dear, I’m glad to be here, doing your show, we all think of you as cream of the crop, the man at the top, and we’re glad to know, cause you know we can’t smile without you..’How’s that?
I am smiling as big as I ever smiled. (David and Paul laugh) That was special, thank you very much.
My pleasure.
TRANSCRIBED BY ROSALIND WINTON.
