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.” Martin would write a lyric in different sections and I somehow had to find a way to bind them together, while giving each individual section the kind of musical choices the words suggested. There was a lot of criticism about Martin from the record company. They tried to take his name off the first album, so it would look like I was the only contributor. I threatened to stop working on the album if they did that so they relented. The producer Del Newman wasn’t sure about the songs Martin participated in either. He preferred the songs I wrote alone. My songs were varied, but they weren’t as mad as Martin’s! We used some songs Martin and I wrote for a musical called Lotte’s Electric Opera. They were totally out of context, so they were even weirder! But I like that. Martin’s a great friend so I always wanted him to be involved.” 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.”

That I can create something resonant/interesting/moving/funny/mysterious and makes people want to listen to it again and again.” Roberts, David (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19thed.). London: Guinness World Records Limited. p.441. ISBN 1-904994-10-5. 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.” 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. 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.Brian has continued making music over the years, notably as part of the Albion Band when they became the house band for the National Theatre in the 1980s and continues to perform sporadically with Steeleye Span multi-instrumentalist Julian Littman. Brian Protheroe – Music Biography, Credits and Discography". AllMusic. 16 June 1944 . Retrieved 23 December 2012. 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.

Very much in this mould is actor/singer-songwriter Brian Protheroe, who was Salisbury-born but came to London in the mid ‘60s, where his first band FBI (Folk Blues Incorporated) shared the same bill at a folk club with Paul Simon in 1965. Rogers, Jude. "The Apolitical Party: Noel Gallagher Interviewed". The Quietus . Retrieved 5 August 2019. From one of the shows Brian was in, comes an incendiary version of Lucille which seems to fit the aesthetic of I/You perfectly and doesn’t feel out of place at all compared with what’s gone before.Protheroe joined the folk group Folk Blues Incorporated (FBI) when he was nineteen, while at this time listening to Bob Dylan and the Beatles. He came to London with FBI in 1965, and played in folk music clubs in and around London. In 1966, Protheroe began his career as an actor. His first job was with his local repertory theatre in Salisbury. He worked there for about seven months then spent the next five years in various theatre companies around Britain, developing his musical skills as well as becoming an experienced actor. In 1968, he worked for nearly two years in a theatre company in Lincoln, where he met Martin Duncan who was also a musician, writer and actor. Over the next few years they collaborated on various musical and artistic projects. Litvinenko cast revealed for new ITV1 drama with David Tennant". tellymix. 19 June 2023 . Retrieved 20 July 2023. I was living in Covent Garden at the time. I had one room in a friend’s house, and it was literally like a diary entry of what was happening to me then. We had a cat – the cat that finished off the bread. There was a Norman Mailer book about Marilyn Monroe that I saw when I was walking through Soho one morning. So that got included. Hey Jude you were alright, was a reference to the Beatles breaking up. So it was a stream of consciousness diary about what was happening to me at that time. Further information In 2002 Protheroe played the role of Gower in Adrian Noble's production of Pericles, Prince of Tyre. In 2007 he was cast as Saruman in the original stage musical version of The Lord of the Rings. Performances began at London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on 21 June 2007. Protheroe played his final performance at the end of his year contract in June 2008.

In 1973, Protheroe was playing the part of a pop singer in a play called Death on Demand, when a representative from Chrysalis Records heard a song he had written for the show. His first single, " Pinball", was released in August 1974, [3] and it entered the UK Singles Chart at number 40 and reached a peak of number 22. [4] Then followed by an album of the same name. [3] The follow-up single "Fly Now" made Capital Radio's "Capital Countdown" chart. [ citation needed] Why do you think that relationship has endured and been so successful from a songwriting perspective? There’s lots of forums on the internet where angry middle aged men with beer bellies and living in their Mum’s spare rooms spend all day arguing with strangers on the internet about what is or isn’t progressive, this finale is what I would call progressive.a b c Bell, Max (4 January 1975). "Brian Protheroe: Pinball". New Musical Express . Retrieved 4 August 2019.

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.” Better known today as the voice of First Dates and First Dates Hotel, Brian is a well-established actor who’s graced both stage and screen since 1968 when he moved to Lincoln and made his debut in rep. Nurture a good idea when you get one. Keep it alive in your mind. See it through to the end. Try not to be too judgemental. Don’t let it die.” 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. Interview: Duncan Haskell Desert Road is out now. For further information, head over to brianprotheroe.co.ukWith a career spanning music and acting, Brian Protheroe has left an indelible mark on both stages. Renowned for his classic hit ‘Pinball’ and a run of acclaimed albums in the mid-70s, Brian now invites us to delve into the heart of his classic hit. 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.” 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!”