"Something In The Air"

[NormanD]

"Enquiries about half-remembered songs" is the perfect description for this thread.

I am convinced that there is a longer version of "Something In The Air" by Thunderclap Newman that was on the later LP. It features a longer piano solo by Andy Newman that had been edited down for the 45.

Yes? No? Has anybody got it? Does it matter? With barbers now being murdered, can the situation in Iraq get any worse?

Norman

[Rob Hall]

The barber thing sort of adds a new dimension to David Crosby's sad lament "Almost Cut My Hair". (Maybe I should add an "irony alert" smiley here.)

I'm pretty certain there was a longer version of SITA somewhere but, like you, I can't place it. I remember they were a Pete Townshend discovery; he also produced it, I think.

[Charlie]

I am convinced that there is a longer version of "Something In The Air" by Thunderclap Newman that was on the later LP.

Maybe I should ask the man himself. He walks past my front window most days, Sainsbury's shopping bags weighing him down. Never in a hundred years would you guess this scruffy-looking guy wrote one of the most successful songs of the sixties.

We've never exchanged even a hello, somehow I think he treasures his anonymity.

[NormanD]

We've never exchanged even a hello, somehow I think he treasures his anonymity.

He may have come out of anonymity. If you do stop to chat he might well ask you why you weren't at his gig on July 1st: http://www.thunderclapnewman.com/tn/

Had I known about it, I might have heard the full version there.

I actually thought that Andy Newman was dead (yes, another wrong call). Obviously not.

You can watch it on YouTube via the link above. "Something In The Air" is a nigh perfect pop song, complete with those hand claps, just where they should be.

Norman

[Chris P]

Andy "Thunderclap" Newman helped me rewire our house back in the early 80's (he is a trained electrician as well as a fine pianist). A very droll, laid back and indeed somewhat scruffy chap who was living in a small house twixt Clapham Common and Wandsworth Road, with pictures on the wall of the days of his chart success (dolly birds on either knee)seeming incongruous in the surroundings. An affable somewhat eccentric cove.

[Charlie]

Andy "Thunderclap" Newman helped me rewire our house back in the early 80's (he is a trained electrician as well as a fine pianist). A very droll, laid back and indeed somewhat scruffy chap who was living in a small house twixt Clapham Common and Wandsworth Road, with pictures on the wall of the days of his chart success (dolly birds on either knee)seeming incongruous in the surroundings. An affable somewhat eccentric cove.

That's where he still lives, but I didn't realise that was/is his occupation. In the same very short cul-de-sac lives Charlie Sinclair, former bass player with Kilburn & the High Roads, and also a full-time electrician. What's in the wiring down that street?

[Adam Blake]

I used to love that song. I loved it when it was a hit when I was nine, I loved it when it was used at the climax of the very wonderfully Swinging Sixties movie: "The Magic Christian". But I learned to stop loving it when Talk Talk appropriated it for their "call waiting" muzak. Anyone who's ever had a problem with Talk Talk/The Carphone Warehouse will know what I mean. One wonders if they ever listened to the words. That song is as much of a call to arms as any pop song that ever got to No.1

Must have been exciting when it seemed like it was true for at least five minutes there back in 1969...

Trivia note: Jimmy McCullough who died so tragically young was only 15 when he played lead guitar on that record.

[NormanD]

Thunderclap Newman worked for the GPO, and was the hero of Post Office engineers (my mate was one at the time). Most of the ones I knew seemed to have a reckless view of electricity.

Some kind soul has since sent me an album cut of SITA, which is the same length (a bit of mix separation, etc, but no extended solo). Have I been experiencing false memory syndrome?

Norman

[Rob Hall]

A quick check on Wikipedia tells the story behind the song - Townsend is on bass, apparently. Amazon.co.uk has the album ("Hollywood Dream") listed for £7.48. It has a version of SITA plus another, listed as "the single version", which suggests that there is a difference.

[Chris P]

Charlie wrote :

"I didn't realise that was/is his occupation" (Electrician)

Well I'm not sure if it was a day-to-day occupation or whether, having the training and knowledge, was something he occasionally undertook...We got in touch with him because Chris Cutler (drummer & polymath) recommended (boom boom - obscure joke) him.

[Gordon Neill]

I've got a copy of the 'Hollywood Dream' CD. Yes, as well as appering as the opening track, 'Something In the Air' also appears in its 'single' version. Mysteriously, however, they both come in at 3 minutes 54 seconds and, to my ears at least, sound exactly the same. Certainly not worth getting the CD for it.

[Rob Hall]

Perhaps you could quiz Mr Newman on this subject when you interview him Gordon.

[Antony Spano]

Hi all, I managed to turn your questions on to Andy Newman himself and that's what he said about:
1) longer version of 'Something In The Air': there has been a release back in 1991 from a band (Andy doesn't remember its name) that recorded a longer version of SITA using the original track minus the piano. So, apparently another pianist/keyboardist recorded a solo in what was an extended 12" single EP or LP, twenty minutes long. Andy heard it once from a neighbor, didn't think much of it and never heard of this band/musician again. But it wasn't Thunderclap Newman!
2) the two versions of SITA on the Hollywood Dream CD release: The original version was recorded mono and that's the version then released as single, later - Andy said- the record company attempted to release the same recorded song in stereo so that's why we now have two versions of it.
I hope it helps and if more questions crop up I'll do my best to help out.
(But does all this really matter? Well....).
Cheers,
Antony.

[Charlie]

Never in a hundred years would you guess this scruffy-looking guy wrote one of the most successful songs of the sixties.

We've never exchanged even a hello, somehow I think he treasures his anonymity.

When I wrote that comment, it did not occur to me that Andy Newman himself would ever read it, or I might have rephrased the 'scruffy-looking guy' part of it. Anyway, apparently bearing no ill will, the man himself left a message on my answer phone, saying if I called him back, he could resolve some of these queries. I did ring back, but he wasn't there.

But just now I saw him in the High Street and accosted him: 'Are you Andy?'

Indeed he was and is, and he gladly answered the questions posted in this forum.

First off, I got it wrong, he didn't write the song, Speedy Keene did.

Second: there were two different mixes of the original recording, the first in mono for the single and the second a few months later for the album.

Third: no, he didn't get any money from sales of the record for many years, as record companies claimed there were debts that remained unrecouped. But recently things got sorted out, by people acting on behalf of Speedy Keene's relatives after Speedy died. He left half a million pounds, some of which was spent on accountants and auditors who challenged Universal's insistence that no record royalties were owed.

Indeed royalties were owed, and after an initial lump sum was grudgingly handed across, split four ways between the original musicians who comprised Thunderclap Newman, regular accounting has followed. "Very convenient timing," said Andy, "as I had decided to cut back and start working only part time."

Oh, fourth and perhaps most important: Thunderclap Newman is playing tonight at the Windmill, Blenheim Gardens, off Brixton Hill.

[NormanD]

Oh Charlie - but did Andy say whether the later album mix had a longer piano solo from him? I don't think I can make the Windmill gig tonight, is anyone else going? I may have to stalk the streets of Clapham instead looking for a bearded gent.