Nicky Campbell swings the way of jazz
FOR many people except, perhaps, those who know him best, Nicky Campbell's latest change of direction has come as something of a shock.
For Campbell himself, broadcaster, DJ, presenter and, now, songwriter, it amounts to a kind of homecoming.
Not only is Moonlight's Back In Style, his album of self-penned swing jazz songs with actor Mark Moraghan of Holby City fame, the fulfullment of a boyhood dream, it is also means a return to a place which played a special role in his childhood - Harrogate.
It was here as a youngster first falling in love with music that he used to visit his maternal grandmother in the late 1960s.
And it's here at Harrogate Theatre where in two months' time some 40 or more years later he and Moraghan (plus a seven-piece swing band) will present the stage version of songs which have won him unexpected acclaim from the likes of Sir Terry Wogan, Michael Parkinson, Michael Ball and Sir Tim Rice.
Talking over lunch in The Mitre in Knaresborough after a Sunday morning which has seen him first presenting a live debate show The Big Question in York for BBC 1 before dashing across to Harrogate to make an emotional pilgrimage to his late grandmother's house, the memories come flooding back for Campbell.
"I remember visiting my granny and grandpa on my mother's side in their house on Leeds Road. I think he was captain of Harrogate Golf Club. I can remember coming for holidays and It's A Knockout being held there one summer's evening on an expanse of green meadow. It was around about the same time I started writing music and lyrics, bashing away at an old baby grand piano."
Despite an unusually varied career in TV and radio since then taking in everything from Radio 1 DJ to Watchdog, Wheel of Fortune, Radio 5 Live and, a brief and ill-fated stint presenting flagship current affairs show Newsnight, the one thing this sharp-witted son of Edinburgh has not been known for is music.
All that changed when he met actor Mark Moraghan on BBC celebrity singing contest Just The Two Of Us in 2006.
Bonding over their shared love of swing jazz and Big Band Music; Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis Jr, one thing led to another and the idea for an album of songs written by Campbell, sung by Moraghan, was born.
"Not matter how busy I was, I never really stopped writing music. I used to do the jingles when I was on Radio 1 and I often write the theme tunes for the shows I present such as The Big Question, for example.”
A man forever on the move to meet a packed schedule; he’s off to Afghanistan shortly, Campbell says his life changed when he got an Apple Mac with its own recording facilities software.
Away from home from his wife Tina and four children thanks to the non-stop pace of work, gaps in his itinerary usually see him tinkering with a song or two on his laptop in some hotel or other.
It’s this dedication and passion, as well as a fierce intelligence which has wrankled with some over the years, which has prevented Moonlight’s Back In Style from being a mere vanity project.
The quality of songs such as We’ll Never Have Manhattan, A Blast From The Past and Love Ran Out Of Time, is such that idea of the album won the support and participation of arranger Paul Buck, producer Bill Pick and some top class musicians from a genre of music which has outlasted most of the men who created it.
“What I’ve tried to do is something Mark calls ‘New Swing’. The songs have the feel of the classic era, those Nelson Riddle-style arrangements but the lyrics are about the here and now. Swing has to be knowing and witty and sophisticated but to be knowing and witty and sophisticated I think you have to reference the world as you see it today.”
Not one to suffer fools gladly, Campbell is equally tough on himself - or are both traits signs of a deeply-felt commitment to a professional honesty which means he prefers to describe himself as a “journalist” rather than “presenter”?
I ask him why if the album and live shows are to some extent the culmination of 40 years’ worth of hoping and longing and thinking and working he doesn’t actually sing his own songs?
“To be honest, I just can’t sing as well as Mark. The timbre of his voice suits the songs better.”
For the forthcoming show at Harrogate Theatre, Campbell and Moraghan will not only be presenting songs from the album but also the classics of a genre which never goes out of style.
The emphasis is on sheer entertainment and, between numbers, Campbell will recount past meetings and experiences with some of the greats; Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Bono, Sinatra.
“I was at Sinatra’s last-ever show,” says Campbell suddenly getting more serious, “of course he was old and the voice wasn’t the same but he was truly great. Swing is about character as much as anything else.”
graham.chalmers@ypn.co.uk
l Moonlight’s Back in Style presented by Kula Productions is at Harrogate Theatre on Friday, May 7, at 8pm.
l Tickets costing 20 are available from the box office on 01423 502 116 or simply go online at their website:
www.harrogatetheatre.co.uk
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Wednesday 08 February 2012
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