I Was There – Alan Hawkshaw’s glorious swansong, the British Library, 6/10/18.
This is one Library event you won’t get shushed in
All too often, when reporting on the passing of an eminent member of the music industry, there’s an element of tragedy involved. Either the person in question has died at a painfully early age, or not enjoyed the success their genius deserved, and in some unfortunate cases, both.
So while the passing over the weekend of Alan Hawkshaw – the man who write the distinctive and memorable themes for ‘Grange Hill’, ‘Countdown’ and ‘Channel 4 News’ among many, many others – is undoubtedly very sad news, we can at least take some pleasure in the fact that he lived to the ripe old age of 84 and was generously rewarded both in terms of money and respect. His legacy remains one of the most ubiquitous and far reaching around. His light, playful funk workouts, typified by his own cheekily dispatched Hammond organ parts, was designed for TV and radio, much of it circulated on industry only albums that would prove to be gold dust for crate diggers. But it’s been a staple of hip-hop from the first rap record – The Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’ in 1979 sampled ‘Here Comes That Sound Again’ by Love De-Luxe with Hawkshaw’s Discophonia – right up to Jay-Z and Beyonce.
“I did pretty good out of that,” Hawkshaw tells a capacity audience packing the main entrance hall of the British Library on October 6, 2018, laughing as he admits he had to check who ‘Jay Zed’ was with his daughter, singer Kirsty Hawkshaw. As well as archiving the work of the leading library music company KPM, the British Library staged a huge exhibition of library music artwork, master tapes and assorted other items of interest at the time, and celebrated the fact by inviting a handful of leading composers from the KPM team – Alan Hawkshaw, Keith Mansfield and Alan Parker – to play their best known pieces with a sizeable orchestra. Library music in the British Library, what could be more suitable? And quite the hot ticket it is, with people clambering onto every vantage point to witness the legends in rare action.
Interviewing him around the event, it became clear Hawkshaw was not one to hide his light under a bushel. But nor was he arrogant – an element of self-deprecating humour was always present alongside the evident pride he felt at his hugely significant catalogue. He was also someone who made sure others got the credit they were due. “He’s the second oldest hip-hop writer around,” he says of his long standing friend, regular musical collaborator and drummer with the Shadows, Brian Bennett at the time, “but then he’s only 79 – I’m 81.”
The undoubted star of the British show, holding court behind his Hammond organ at the left of the stage, he’s similarly jovial and teasing. Having played ‘The Champ’, the heavily sampled funk anthem by the more or less invented group The Mohawks – in realty, Hawkshaw and session musicians – he beams as he tells the crowd it’s said to be the most sampled song of all time before adding “that’s the rumour – and I’m going to keep peddling it.”
Similarly, he repeats the circulated story that he wrote the theme to ‘Countdown’ while on the loo – “it’s true!” With repeat fees mounting up – it is the longest running show on Channel 4 – he tells us it’s been a pretty good earner but counters: “but it did take me nearly an hour to write!”
Despite claiming “the blood doesn’t circulate like it used to”, at the age of 81 his playing is as effortlessly effervescent as it ever was. He negotiates the shifting time signatures of ‘Blue Rondo A La Turk’ without a snag, quipping that just one wrong note is enough to bring disaster but that he thrives off the danger. His music for another long running show – ‘Chicken Man’, or the theme from ‘Grange Hill’ as it’s better known – naturally brings the house down. But it’s the theme from the long forgotten ‘Dave Allen At Large’ that Hawkshaw says in our interview that ranks as his favourite, a luxurious, celebratory collision of big band brass and twelve bar funking out, and it gets not one but two outings here, being wheeled out for its second airing as a final encore.
As the applause dies out, the MC for the night promises he’ll see us all back at the next one, not knowing what was not exactly around the corner but certainly not that far away. And so, in effect, this remains Hawkshaw’s hilarious and triumphant swansong, a suitably glory-soaked night for one of the most influential, the most accomplished – and the most fun – musicians ever to grace s recording studio. He will be missed, of course. But you’ll be hearing him for years to come.
Ben Willmott