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[0:00] Tim Rice: Hello, this is Tim Rice, and this is episode 69 of my podcast Get On to My Cloud.

[0:16] Tim Rice: If you are listening to this podcast at the beginning of 2023, I wish to inform you that I've just reached the milestone of 78 years old, that is. A lot of birthday numbers, the actual numbers themselves, have significance to me, and I'm sure to you, beyond their mere numerical value. Recently, for me, 76 trombones, 77 Sunset Strip, 78 RPM, Revolutions per Minute. Unless you're more or less that sort of age yourself, a reference to Revs per minute may not immediately strike a chord. But the most senior among you will have thought immediately, yes, 78 RPM. That's the speed at which gramophone records revolved for the first half of the 20th century. And indeed they did. Finally, grinding to a halt in the marketplace, they dominated since around 1910, which was when Cylinders finally threw in the towel and gave into flat discs.

But by the late 1940s, 78's days were numbered by the introduction of the 33 Revs per minute long-playing record, or LP, and more fatally and speedily by the 45 Revs per minute 7-inch single, which was the dominant cultural force within the younger generation, teens and 20s, for the best part of three decades. Both these usurpers of the 78's crown were lighter, had much better quality sound reproduction, allegedly, had room for much longer pieces of music. No longer would a symphony or musical theatre cast recording had to be broken down into five-minute chunks, and of course, they were virtually unbreakable. At least British 45s were pretty sturdy. The first American ones I came across in the mid-60s were not so robust.

Despite these advantages, it took a while for the 78s to die, mainly because you needed a brand new machine to play anything at any other speed. Until 1956, the Rice family's only record player was an ancient wind-up phonograph or gramophone that had belonged to Great Aunt Gertie, which meant that my first forays into the record buying world were at that old-fashioned speed, even though many of that year's hits were available at a more gentle rotation and in a less fragile format. Inevitably, one or two of my cherished purchases perished prematurely. I still shudder, remembering that cracking sound when my friend Ian's younger sister sat on Diana. Paul Anka's number one hit, Diana, that is. Great Aunt Gertie also bequeathed us her collection of 78s, which had been built up during the 1930s and 1940s. One or two classical recordings, to which I'm afraid my brothers and I never gave the time of day, and quite a good selection of pre-World War II novelty songs, such as Barnacle Bill the Sailor, unfortunately the version with clean lyrics, and my personal favorite, WH Berry singing Not Old Enough to Be Old, which was one of the eight records I chose when I did Desert Island Discs for the BBC with Sue Lawley in 2004. Still available via BBC Sounds, I understand. But even Barnacle Bill had to take second place to the pop charts of 1957, as far as our wind-up gramophone was concerned.

[3:45] Tim Rice: Right here, right now, in the hands of Hoagy Carmichael and his orchestra, he doesn't have it. Who's that knocking at my door? Who's that knocking at my door? Who's that knocking at my door? Cried the fair young maiden. It's only me from over the sea. I'm all lit up like a Christmas tree. Barnacle Bill the sailor. I'll sail the seas until I croak. I'll fight and swear and drink and smoke, but I can't swim a bloody stroke. I'll come down and let you in. I'll come down and let you in. Cried the fair young maiden. Well, hurry before I bust in the door. I'll rare and tear and rant and roar. I'll spin your yarns and tell your lies. I'll drink your wine and eat your pies. I'll kiss your cheeks and black your eyes.

[3:45] Tim Rice: Hoagy Carmichael and his orchestra with one of literally dozens of recordings of Barnacle Bill the Sailor. Some like that one fairly clean, one of my great aunt Gertie's Desert Island discs. The first seventy-eight I ever bought was by Britain's first rock and roller Tommy Steele, his cover of Guy Mitchell's American Number One, Seeing the Blues. Both versions made number one in the UK, but to this day I prefer Tommy's genuine rock and roll feel to Guy's fine but more conventional treatment.

[7:00] Tim Rice: Frankie Vaughan's Garden of Eden. When you walk in the garden in the Garden of Eden with a beautiful woman and you know how you care and a voice in the garden in the garden of Eden tells you she is forbidden. Can you leave her there when you're yearning for loving and she touches your hand and your heart starts a pounding and you're feeling so grand? Can you leave her to heaven and obey the command? Can you walk from the garden? Does your heart understand? When you walk in the garden in the Garden of Eden with a beautiful woman and you know how you care and a voice in the garden in the garden of Eden tells you she is forbidden. Can you leave her there when you're yearning for loving and she touches your hand and your heart starts a pounding and you're feeling so grand?

Can you leave her to heaven and obey the command? Can you walk from the garden? Does your heart understand? When you walk in the garden, in the Garden of Eden, with a beautiful woman, and you know how you can.

[9:32] Tim Rice: Frankie Vaughan singing The Garden of Eden, which was one of my most prized 78 RPM records. The song was originally recorded by Joe Vellino in the United States and was a number 12 hit there. Joe's only successful recording. The song written by Denise Norwood, who also wrote Skinny Mini for Teresa Brewer, and not much else, as far as I can tell. Frankie was, of course, one of the UK's most successful male vocalists and recording stars of the 50s and 60s. He enjoyed a second number one with the Burt Bacharach Bob Hilliard's song Tower of Strength in 1961. He was also an actor, whose film career included a role opposite Marilyn Monroe in Let's Make Love. I also had another of his big UK hits, Gotta Have Something in the Bank, Frank by Frankie Vaughan and the K Sisters on 78.

The Phillips label, Frankie's label, were the last of the major labels to commit to 45 RPM. But in the end, despite Tony Watkins and friends on the school bus home telling me that 45s would never catch on because the triangle in the middle would break loose, my brothers and I deserted the Noble 78s. Our parents' record player was simply too good to ignore. And by the end of 1957, 45s ruled the roost. One of the first 45s I recall adding to our modest collection was one of the true classics of the early rock era.

[11:09] Tim Rice: I'm gonna tell you how it's gonna be. Are you gonna give your love to me? I wanna love you night and day. You know my love and not fade away. Oh well, you know my love and not fade away. My love are bigger than a kettlebell. After I show it, you drive me back. Your love of me gotta be real. I fought you to know just how I feel. I love for real, not fade away.

[12:41] ♪ Musical number ♪

[13:13] Tim Rice: Brilliant. Buddy Holly and the Crickets. And that was just the B side. B sides or flip sides were a crucial factor to consider when one was about to spend three weeks' pocket money on just one single. An investment of six shillings and eightpence meant each great track only cost three shillings and fourpence if the flip side was good too. Of course, we young pop fans only had limited access to the home gramophone as my parents began their own record collection, largely consisting of movie soundtracks and original cast albums of stage musicals, both West End and Broadway. And they liked playing them selfishly. Also, albums by singers we regarded as rather square, such as Frank Sinatra. However, as it would have only taken about 25 minutes to have got through our entire record library, we would often investigate the older generation's clearly antiquated tastes.

And almost as often, I liked what I heard. Notably, the great musical scores of the 1940s and 1950s, Rodgers and Hammerstein above all, Oklahoma, The King and I, South Pacific, Carousel, The Sound of Music, perhaps their greatest, arrived a little later. Lerner and Loewe, creators of perhaps my favorite musical of all time, My Fair Lady, and Cole Porter, High Society, and quite a few more. I guess it's fairly obvious that these great scores and songs influenced me, or anyway, made as great an impact upon me as the pop and rock songs in the charts did. I just didn't notice that at the time, as my obsession with Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, and a little later, British rockers such as Cliff Richard and the Shadows, Marty Wilde, and Billy Fury dominated my teenage leisure hours with brothers and friends. But I find that hearing today any of those great numbers from my parents' 33 RPM LPs, or albums, as we soon began to call them, takes me back to my teenage years as surely as Elvis and company do.

[15:19] Tim Rice: The strange thing was that I had very little desire to see the actual shows or films that featured these marvelous scores. I never saw any of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classics until the 70s or 80s, and to this day have never seen a professional production of Bernstein and Sondheim's West Side Story, though I saw the original movie in 1963. I was first and foremost a vinyl junkie, and looking at the labels and sleeves was satisfaction enough. The record numbers, bewildering credits in brackets under the song title, the artwork, the music publishers, all as fascinating as the actual sounds. I guess if we lived in London, I would have seen one or two of the stage shows. We did have a family excursion to My Fair Lady at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in 1958, with the magical original cast of Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison.

And I'd seen Julian Slade's British hit Salad Days a year or two before, but that was about it. It was the funny songs that grabbed me most of all. Even if I didn't get every aspect of the humor and messages of the song, such as "I'm Getting Married in the Morning," or "Gee, Officer Krupke." I certainly didn't appreciate every aspect of every message that W.S. Gilbert was attempting to impart at the end of the 19th century. But if the words flowed and the rhymes were perfect, I was hooked. And the same applied to the rock and roll lyrics I love best: Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry, Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. The images conjured up by "Bird Dog," "Maybellene," "Summertime Blues," or "Not Fade Away," were sometimes obscure, but always irresistible.

[17:01] ♪ Musical number ♪

[19:04] Tim Rice: Ah, Don and Phil at American High School in early 1958. I wasn't too sure what was going on, but it sounded exhilarating. But when he sings to my girl, what a howl. To me, he's just a wolf dog on the prowl. I don't recall anyone kissing the teacher in St. Albans. And in 1957, I never understood all the references in this marvelous number. From the West Side Story, Broadway cast album. Didn't stop me loving it.

[19:38] ♪ Musical number ♪

[23:30] Tim Rice: Leonard Bernstein's music and Stephen Sondheim's lyrics combining with lethally brilliant effect, as they did throughout the sensational West Side Story score. Just one of the recordings I was inspired to dig out again after reaching the dread milestone of 78, as in Revs per Minute. In different ways, many of these wonderful pieces of music, and plenty of others in our household in the late 50s, whatever speed they're evolved at, were responsible for my eventual good fortune in the music, film, and theater business. Without them, I would never have got an Argentine dictator's wife, nor a warthog with wind problems into the best sellers. Hakuna Matata.

[24:30] Tim Rice: Rice and produced with youthful enthusiasm by Peter Hobbs.