Pinball And Other Stories

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Babey, Ged. "Brian Protheroe: A Salisbury Boy – album review". Louder Than War . Retrieved 27 September 2023.

His final Chrysalis album I/You, with it’s distinctive cover art, featured session musicians like Alan Parker, Simon Phillips and Michael Giles on drums, whilst label mates Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson and Barriemore Barlow added flute and percussion to the adaptation of Shakespeare’s Under the Greenwood Tree.Over the years, Brian has largely resisted live performances. “It’s not really something I do,” he says. “I did a one-off gig at the Mermaid Theatre in London in about 74-75, which was okay. In 1983, I did one at the Theatre Royal Stratford East where I was working at the time. I’ve done a couple since. All through those years, acting was my main occupation. That’s why it didn’t work out with the record company, I was much more comfortable in the acting environment than in the record environment. I loved being in the studio, working with session musicians and the producer and engineer that we had. I didn’t get on so much with plugging the music and all the extraneous stuff which wasn’t about simply creating”. a b c Bell, Max (4 January 1975). "Brian Protheroe: Pinball". New Musical Express . Retrieved 4 August 2019. Brian Protheroe (born 16 June 1944) [1] is an English singer, songwriter, narrator and actor. He is best known for his first single, " Pinball", which was released in August 1974, and entered the UK Singles Chart at number 40 and reached a peak of number 22. He has narrated the Channel 4 dating show First Dates since 2015. [2] Career [ edit ] Music [ edit ]

Working with song writing partner Martin Duncan, the album opens in style with Enjoy It, with it’s complex tongue twisting lyrics that work within the musical arrangements as well. I was playing a character in a play called Death On Demand in about 1971/2. We were touring around the country and the character that I was playing, called Johnny Tomorrow, sang this song. So the author had this lyric and he asked me to, or maybe I offered to write music to it. I did a little demo recording of it. He loved it and he took this demo recording around, to various people and record companies. Two companies were interested – Chrysalis was one of them. They heard some other songs I’d written and Pinball was one of them. Pinball was a slow burner, really. It only got to number 22 in the chart, but it almost instantly made an impression. Kenny Everett played it a lot on Capital Radio. When I was on Top of the Pops, Carl Douglas was number 1 with Kung Fu Fighting. There was a lot of crap on it – god, Peter Shelley with Love Me Love My Dog. Pinball was very different. The joke was that I went on Top of the Pops when it was at 22, and the week after it went down! I didn’t know what I did wrong.”

Since 2013, Brian’s authoritative voice has been heard by millions as narrator of the Channel 4 reality show First Dates. How does he find being the voice of one of the most successful British television shows of recent years? “What a fantastic job, it’s like having another pension!” he enthuses. “It’s a proper dating service, they do genuinely try to match people up. It works really well. I’ve done a couple of other First Dates– Australia, Canada, Ireland – but I think the British one works particularly well because of the variety. There are gay and lesbian couples, there’s old and young and they really try and match them properly.” I tell Brian I couldn’t believe it was him when I found out. “Isn’t it a bizarre combination, that I should be doing that as well as making those records? It’s extraordinary. But I love that.” Eclecticism is still what drives Brian Protheroe. I always thought Enjoy It should have been a big hit in the 70s. It should have been my second single but Chrysalis were afraid because it was so utterly different to Pinball. I was determined to have another look at it, and it worked. It turned out really well. I was really pleased with what we did with it and it was relatively successful. I think I actually made money on it – almost no one makes much money from streaming!” The Sad Song lyric is about my first serious girlfriend dumping me and marrying her ex-partner. But it’s also about how songwriters plunder painful relationship traumas in search of a good song.” In 1997, there started to be signs of a resurgence of interest in his '70s music, as the Basta label put out a set called Brian's Big Box. In 2005, Protheroe assembled unheard material, including new songs, for the CitySong collection. The next year saw the release of Pinball and Other Stories, a compilation of his '70s material that also had a handful of unheard '80s originals to round out the disc. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine HOMETOWN Salisbury, England

Butterfield, Pete (28 December 1974). "Pinball. Brian Protheroe (Chrysalis CHR 1065)". Reading Evening Post . Retrieved 4 August 2019.One of Brian’s few concerts was at London’s Troubadour in 2012, with a band featuring Steeleye Span’s Julian Littman and Manfred Mann legend Paul Jones amongst others. “I wanted to do a small gig somewhere, and I knew Julian would support me” he explains. “I’d played at the Troubadour with my folk group in 1965, and I went to have a look at it and it was virtually exactly the same as it was then! I just loved the feel of the place, it held just over 100 and it seemed like the right thing to do” There’s some beguiling footage from this rare event on YouTube with pitch perfect renditions. Brian sounds like a seasoned touring musician, his voice unchanged by 40 years distance. Brian’s new album Desert Road is something of a pot pourri. “It’s a collection of songs I’ve been working on with Julian Littman over the last 10 years or so” he explains. “There’s also a live version of a song called Monkey from the first album and some old demos – the original demo of Pinball I mentioned earlier and one from even earlier than that, a song called Sail. I’m really pleased with the collection. A feeling of sweet melancholy goes through the whole album. Julian and I are working on another single for the new year with a similar lyric to Scobo Queen, funnily enough. It’s based around sort of ’30s/’40s jazz shorthand. I’m working more than ever!”

Brian Protheroe – Music Biography, Credits and Discography". AllMusic. 16 June 1944 . Retrieved 23 December 2012. Listening to Brian’s debut album Pinball now, it’s difficult to pin down the commercial ambitions Chrysalis had for him. Another Leo Sayer? A Gilbert O’Sullivan even? “Probably nearer to Gilbert.” says Brian. “I think they wanted a solo artist who would tour with a band. I wasn’t really a multi-instrumentalist, but I did play guitar, piano and percussion on all the records. They wanted to expand that and they suggested I do a college tour in the States in 1976. It didn’t happen, we couldn’t agree on the terms and conditions.” Pinball, the song that began Brian’s pop career and remains his best known, was written at a low ebb; “When I wrote it, I was basically depressed. I’d just split up with a girlfriend, I’d moved to Convent Garden and I occupied the first floor one-bedroom flat of a friend of mine. I had no job and no prospective work. I used to go along to the Cross Keys Pub and play the pinball. It was like a diary entry from that particular time, with this sort of surreal touch to it as well.”Oh, thank you. I think the ‘Guilty Pleasures’ was one of the first compilations that I was on. But there have been several over the years, it’s been lovely. No. Songs generally emerge from creative doodling – musically and lyrically on guitar or piano. A particular chord sequence or musical feel, a word or phrase that might suggest or evoke a gradual stream of connected ideas. I suppose the source of many of my songs is, of course, personal relationships as with many songwriters down the ages. However, with many that’s not the case, especially songs written with lyricist Martin Duncan many of which have a theatrical/surreal feel.” Friendship and the fact that he’s a brilliant musician, multi-instrumentalist and producer. He’s also patient and meticulous in the recording process. Something I’m not.” Chrysalis and Protheroe parted ways after 1976, and he returned to acting full-time. He had an appearance in Richard Donner's 1978 Superman film but, for the most part, Protheroe was a mainstay of BBC productions and British stage. From this point on, he acted steadily, doing anything from Shakespeare to spy thrillers. I was living behind the Cambridge Theatre in Covent Garden having recently broken up with a girlfriend. The lyric is an extended diary entry of my experiences at the time. Loneliness and feelings of not being in control like a silver ball being flipped around in a pinball machine. It didn’t remotely cross my mind that the song would still be around 46 years later.”