Mike Batt

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

Early career

Batt began his career in pop music at the age of eighteen when he answered the same advertisement as Elton John and Bernie Taupin placed by Ray Williams in the New Musical Express for Liberty Records. 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.

1970s

In the early Seventies, aged 23, married, with children, and having spent £11,000 recording half of a rock orchestral album that was never released, Batt was asked by producers of a new children's show to write the theme. Instead of taking his £200 fee, Batt asked for the character rights for musical production.^[1] The choice produced his first hits as a singer/songwriter/producer by The Wombles, in 1974. the collaboration produced eight hit singles and four gold albums.

Now financially successful, Batt 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.

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. He wrote the song Bright Eyes for the animated film version of Watership Down. Recorded by Art Garfunkel, it reached number 1 in the UK singles chart.

1980s

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” 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 (including the European hit “The Winds Of Change”). 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).^[1]

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 1980s, 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. A number of stars performed for the Dreamstone soundtrack; notably Billy Connolly, Ozzy Osborne, former British heavyweight boxing champion Frank Bruno (all of whom performed 'The War Song of the Urpneys'), Bonnie Tyler (who sang a duet with Mike entitled 'Into The Sunset'. It wasn't used on the show, but it was meant to be Dreamstone's official love song) and Joe Brown (performing 'The Vile Brothers Mountain Band' along with Gary Glitter). Mike himself performed the theme song from the series 'Better Than A Dream'. The show was completed and finally aired in 1990.

1990s

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.^[1]

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.

Later he would work on the music for the 1999 Watership Down TV series, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Art Garfunkel once again performed a song for the TV soundtrack (though not Bright Eyes) called 'When You're Losing Your Way In The Rain' which wasn't used in the show. The song however originated from Mike Batt's earlier album 'Tarot Suite' and was originally performed by Colin Blunstone. Bright Eyes was instead performed by former Boyzone member Stephen Gately though the new version was not as successful as Art Garfunkel's original. Other stars who are featured on the soundtrack are Cerys Matthews from Catatonia performing 'Thank You Stars', which would later be covered by Katie Melua for her album Piece By Piece, Paul Carrack from Mike and the Mechanics performed 'Winter Song' and Gary Martin provides the narration for 'Frith's Blessing' to music by Batt. Mike also performed an original song 'A View From A Hill'.

2000s and current work

A fervent Conservative supporter, Batt was asked to write the 2001 UK General Election song Heartland, thereby replacing Andrew Lloyd Webber as the official Conservative Party composer.^[2]

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.^[3][4]

Batt formed his own record label Dramatico in 2002, which has a small group of artistes including Carla Bruni.^[1] Dramatico has since 2005, been one of the top 3 UK based Indie labels, based on official sales figures. Batt is presently dedicating most of his time to guiding the career of Katie Melua from Georgia, whom he discovered in 2002 while scouting for a jazz musical project he was working on. Melua's album "Call Off The Search" (containing six of Mike's songs including "The Closest Thing to Crazy") was released on Dramatico 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 Melua 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.

In 2008, Batt started the year with one concert in Munich and a radio-concert-tour in Germany to promote his new CD "A songwriter's tale" - a compilation of his best written hits, some first sung by himself and most of them newly recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Henry Spinetti, Ray Cooper, Chris Spedding, Mitch Dalton and Tim Harries.

His band on his toured through Germany in January... Henry Spinetti (drums), Chris Spedding (guitar), Tim Harries (bass), Frank Gallagher (keys and violins), Luis Jardim (percussion) and Florence Rawlings (vocals and background vocals).

References

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

Notes

External links

• Biography at Discogs.com
• Mike Batt Official Site