Please Please Me by Gordon Thompson;

Author:Gordon Thompson;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP Premium
Published: 2008-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

GEOFF STEPHENS

The epitome of the Denmark Street professional, Geoff Stephens (b. 1934) provides an example of the artistically promiscuous craftsman on that short block. In the sixties, he co-wrote with John Carter, Roger Greenaway, Les Reed, Peter Callander, Barry Mason, Ken Howard, Alan Blaikley, Don Black, Mitch Murray, and Tony Macaulay and penned some of his most successful songs independently. Never a public performer, Stephens helped to manage, promote, and produce both Donovan (e.g., “Catch the Wind”), in the early stages of the Scottish singer’s professional career, and one of the more unusual performance eccentricities of the sixties: the New Vaudeville Band. Although few outside the industry know his name, the sixties would not have been the same without him.

As a child and adolescent, Stephens had dabbled at an aunt’s piano and “loved the sound that came from it,” but received no formal musical training. When the war ended, his family moved to the mouth of the Thames: in Westcliff-on-Sea (near Southend-on-Sea), they opened a guesthouse. Perhaps most important, in addition to the BBC, their location on Britain’s east coast enabled them to pick up American Forces Network broadcasts from Germany and Radio Luxembourg. This environment—music programs of jazz, American pop, and classical music on the family radio and in the resort town’s cafes—left Stephens in love with music.

The catalyst for Stephens came in the form of an inspiring high school teacher: “From that point on, I decided I wanted to be a writer; [but] I didn’t know what kind.” After a two-year Middle East stint in the national service, Stephens steered his interest toward music and poetry, and began to seek ways to support himself and his young wife. He remembers that he “loved pop music: loved it to death,” and set himself a goal of “three years to be a songwriter.” First, however, he needed an income and found various occupations that allowed him “enough time to write the songs” and “to go to London and get them published, not to mention establishing contacts.”

In an age when sheet music sales still constituted a significant part of a songwriter’s income, and when publishers thought of music primarily in terms of the printed page, Stephens entered the fray at a distinct disadvantage: he had never learned how to read music. In the mid-1950s, the most common way for a young songwriter to bring material to a publisher’s attention involved notation; consequently, Stephens engaged the assistance of musical professionals: “I used to take these musical journals and put an advert in saying, ‘Songwriter wishes services of a trade musician.’ I got guys to do that for me and I paid them, albeit what I could afford.” His method consisted of singing to the musician, who would transcribe the music he heard. What Stephens could not sing was the harmonic structure of the song; that he left to a discovery process with the musician:

There was a guy in the pit orchestra in the Palladium who used to take down my songs. I’d sing [and] he said, “What’s the chord?” I said, “I don’t know anything about chords.

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