It may well be that future years will find "Hymns and Arias" rolling a thunderous chorus across the terraced rugby grounds. [6] In 1999, he was awarded an MBE by Prince Charles and in 2013 he received the Freedom of the Borough of Neath and Port Talbot, following in the footsteps of Sir Richard Burton and Sir Anthony Hopkins. In 2022, there are plans to unveil a bronze lifesize statue of Max in his hometown – a fitting and deserved tribute to a modern-day folk hero whose poems, songs and stories have become part of Welsh legend. Boyce continues to make headlines in the British press. On 29 May 2006, Max Boyce headlined at a concert in Pontypridd to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Welsh national anthem, " Hen Wlad fy Nhadau". [16] In August 2006, he hit out against the stereotypical use of the word " boyo" in the media, following its resurgence in reference to Welsh Big Brother contestant Glyn Wise. [17]

There’s nothing I enjoy more than watching my village side Glynneath play on a Saturday afternoon and soaking up the banter and the ‘craic’ in the bar afterwards when the referee is blamed for everything from petrol shortage to global warming. Max Boyce, singer-songwriter, poet and entertainer, was born in the village of Glynneath, south Wales, where he still lives with his wife, Jean. Despite the fact that his father was killed in a mining explosion a month before Max was born, Max went on to work underground in the local colliery at the age of sixteen – a profession he remained in for over a decade. Some of my songs and stories are designed for ‘performance’ and need an audience to give them their ‘life force’. Comedy is always in need of an echo and is constantly being judged by the barometer of applause, which the written word can’t afford. Laughter can never be forced or cheated. My children love this song and pretending to be monsters coming over the hill. The official video is a tongue-in-cheek adventure that sees the band hunting for various monsters. We always have to rewind the Yeti-style monster wiggling his bum. Max jokes that the poem has "reignited" his career and was the reason he was approached to write his new book, Hymns and Arias, his first collection of poems and stories in over thirty years.

Welsh Songs Old and New

Top Selling Albums For 1975" (PDF). Music Week. 27 December 1975. p.10. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 March 2021 . Retrieved 30 November 2021– via worldradiohistory.com. It was difficult to introduce an element of humour at such a sensitive time and I was acutely aware of people’s feelings when ‘just the tide went out’.

His next album, We All Had Doctors' Papers, was also live, recorded at Pontarddulais Rugby Club. This was released in late 1975 and, unexpectedly, it reached the No. 1 position on the UK Albums Chart for the week ending 15 November. [8] This recording has the distinction of being the only comedy album to ever top the UK Albums Chart. [9] Boyce released several albums over the next few years, receiving further gold discs for The Incredible Plan in 1976, and I Know 'Cos I Was There in 1978. [1]

More clips from Sunday Grandstand

I received a letter from a nurse who asked me to write something to lift the spirits of the frontline workers of the NHS in the most trying of times. Following the programme, which Laurie Lee had listened to, we met up in Cardiff, and I was overwhelmed to share a glass of red wine with him and listen to him tell of his reminiscences of the Aberfan disaster, ‘When a Village Lost Its Children’, and hear him read the first few lines of his beautifully crafted essay ‘The Firstborn’, which every new parent should read. One of the most beautiful songs I know, I sing this traditional Welsh lullaby to my children a lot… and even my English husband says it brings a tear to his eye. Yet never is it more beautiful than when performed by a male voice choir. I love this version in particular, by Only Men Aloud and Only Boys Aloud. Boyce first learned to play theguitaras a young man but it wasn’t untilthe early 1970’s that he started performing in local sports clubs and folk clubs with his original set of humour, interspersed by anecdotes of Welsh community life. His 70th birthday was celebrated with an hour-long programme [18] shown on BBC One Wales on 25 September 2013, recorded in front of a live celebrity audience. [ citation needed]

Welsh historian Martin Johnes describes Live at Treorchy as 'important to an understanding of Welshness as anything Dylan Thomas or Saunders Lewis wrote.' [1] "Hymns and Arias" [ edit ]Live at Treorchy is a live album by Welsh comedian and singer Max Boyce, first issued in 1974. It was his third album and his first for a major label, EMI Records. The album contains a mixture of comedic songs and poems along with Boyce's interactions with the crowd at Treorchy Rugby Club. The album was an unexpected success going gold and was Boyce's break through recording, helping make him a household name in Wales and beyond.

Maxwell Boyce, MBE (born 27 September 1943) is a Welsh comedian, singer and entertainer. He rose to fame in the mid-1970s with an act that combined musical comedy with his passion for rugby union and his origins in a South Wales mining community. Boyce's We All Had Doctors' Papers (1975) remains the only comedy album to have topped the UK Albums Chart and he has sold more than two million albums in a career spanning four decades. I’m sure many people will recognise themselves in the lyrics, for they have walked the same path and travelled the same journey. They have experienced the same joys and endured the same disappointments. Rhondda Grey’ and ‘Duw! It’s Hard’ in particular mean so much to me, for they are songs of personal experience, having worked underground from the age of sixteen for ten years and experienced the love/hate relationship the miners had with their workplace… ‘where they emptied all the hills to warm the world’. Choosing what to include wasn’t easy but I sincerely hope it is a collection that is representative of my writing over the years.Hymns & Arias includes some of my favourite songs, such as ‘Rhondda Grey’ and ‘Duw! It’s Hard’, as well as some unpublished poems, such as ‘Is God in His Paint Shop’, ‘Aberfan’ and ‘With a Whistle in His Hand’.