Mike Batt (born 6 February 1949 in Southampton, England) is a British based songwriter, musician, producer and Deputy Chairman of the British Phonographic Industry.

Career

Batt began his career in pop music at the age of eighteen as a signed artist with Liberty Records, having answered the same advertisement as Elton John and Bernie Taupin placed by Ray Williams in the New Musical Express. The talented youth quickly became part of Liberty's production team, and in 1969 he took over production duties from Noel Walker, on blues great McKenna Mendelson Mainline's seminal first release, Stink. Walker and Batt were credited on the album only as "Liberty Staff". Also in 1969, Batt released as producer/artist a Liberty single, his bouncy cover of The Beatles' "Your Mother Should Know". Batt subsequently became Head of A&R for Liberty Records.

His first hits as a singer/songwriter/producer were by The Wombles, in 1974. After eight hit singles and four gold albums with The Wombles, he moved on to work with various artists as a songwriter/producer, most successfully with Steeleye Span and their most successful single and album All Around My Hat in 1975. Also in 1975, at the end of the summer, he troubled the UK charts for the one and only hit under his own name (credited alongside the New Edition) with "Summertime City" which reached number 4.

Arguably his most famous success is Watership Down (including music and lyrics to Art Garfunkel's international number one single, "Bright Eyes", which won "Best Film Song or Music" one of his five Ivor Novello Awards. Criticized for being trite and overly sentimental, the song remains a radio favourite.

He produced the hit single Lilac Wine for UK songstress Elkie Brooks in 1978. The song was a huge hit in the UK and across Europe.

As a singer, his solo albums include Schizophonia and Tarot Suite (both with the London Symphony Orchestra). From these albums came the European hit songs “Railway Hotel”, “Lady Of The Dawn”, “The Winds Of Change” and “The Ride To Agadir”. A version of "Introduction (The Journey of a Fool)" from Tarot Suite was used as the theme for Sydney, Australia radio station Triple M from its first broadcast in 1980 until well into the 1990s.

In 1980 Mike Batt released his next album, entitled Waves. In the same year, he went off with his family aboard his boat “Braemar”, ending up in Australia after two and a half years, travelling via France, The West Indies, South America, Central America, Mexico, Los Angeles, Hawaii and Fiji. At the end of that journey, he wrote for the 50th anniversary of the Australian Broadcasting Company the musical Zero, Zero.

Returning to the UK in 1983, Batt wrote and produced three more Top Ten hits, "Please Don’t Fall In Love" (for Cliff Richard), "A Winter’s Tale" (for David Essex, with lyrics co-written by Tim Rice) and "I Feel Like Buddy Holly" (for Alvin Stardust).

The album The Hunting of the Snark, based on Lewis Carroll's epic nonsense poem, was recorded in 1984. It was presented as a dramatised concert at Sydney’s State Theatre in 1990, and was produced as a musical in London’s West End in 1991 with Batt designing and directing. Performers included: Mike Batt as The Boots, Billy Connolly as The Bellman, Roger Daltrey as The Barrister, Justin Hayward as The Butcher, John Hurt as The Narrator and Julian Lennon.

In the late eighties, Batt also produced Justin Hayward’s album Classic Blue and the music for "The Dreamstone", ITV’s high-rating fifty two part animated series, once again with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

In 1995 he made another solo album for Sony Germany, entitled Arabesque.

He was then commissioned to write the official Anthem for the inauguration of the Channel Tunnel by The Queen, entitled "When Flags Fly Together". This was performed for the Queen and President Mitterrand, along with many senior politicians, by members of the choir of the Harvey Grammar School, Folkestone.

Batt composed and produced the four million-selling album The Violin Player with classical violinist Vanessa Mae (EMI Classics, 1995) from which the Top Ten single release of J.S. Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" was taken.

In 1997 Batt produced an album for soprano, Anna Maria Kaufmann, with the Royal Philharmonic; an original dramatic song cycle called Blame It On The Moon, from which his song, "Running With A Dream" was taken as the theme for Germany’s national football team at the World Cup in June 1998.

Also in 1998, Batt produced, arranged and conducted the album, Philharmania with the Royal Philharmonic and guest singers included Roger Daltrey, Marc Almond, Bonnie Tyler, Status Quo, Huey Lewis, Kim Wilde, Justin Hayward and others. Later the same year Batt relaunched The Wombles pop group, with two hits, "Remember You’re A Womble" (at number 13) and "The Wombling Song" (at number 22). In 2000 he collaborated with Roy Wood for a single which combined new versions of oldie Christmas hits by Wizzard and The Wombles, released as "I Wish It Could Be a Wombling Merry Christmas". Although loathed by most fans who could remember the originals, it was a UK Top 30 hit, thanks largely to generous TV exposure.

After conceiving and co-creating the all-girl string quartet "bond" and producing their first single, he then created the eight piece classical crossover band The Planets. Their album Classical Graffiti was released in February 2002 and went straight to number one (classical charts) on the day of release and remained there for three months. Batt was sued for copyright infringement over the track "A One Minute Silence", which consisted of one minute of silence and was credited to "Batt/Cage". The publishers of John Cage's music alleged that the credit invoked Cage's famous "silent" piece 4'33", and that the trust was entitled to receive royalties. An out of court settlement was reached, with Batt paying a six-figure sum to the John Cage Trust.

Currently, he is dedicating most of his time to guiding the career of 22 year old Katie Melua from Georgia, former USSR. Katie's album "Call Off The Search" (containing six of Mike's songs including "The Closest Thing to Crazy") was released on Mike's own Dramatico label in November 2003. After six weeks at number one in the UK, it sold six times platinum - over 1.8 million copies - in the UK and three million copies in total, making Katie the biggest selling UK female artist of 2004. Her second album, "Piece by Piece" (including Mike's song "Nine Million Bicycles") was released in September 2005 and to date has sold 3.5 million copies in Europe, going to number 1 in the UK, Holland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and going top five in eight other countries. Dramatico has been for the last three years, one of the top 3 UK based Indie labels, based on official sales figures.

He was recently elected Deputy Chairman of the BPI (British Phonographic Industry).

biography quoted from various sources, mostly from Mike Batt's official website

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