Tales from the Halling Valley pts. 1&2

Introduction

Tales from the Halling Valley 1 consists of the first six tales of the epic “Tales from the Halling Valley”. They have virtually nothing to do with Norway’s Hallingdal or Halling Valley…but deal largely with my family, and are filled to the brim with fascinating facts and history, told from an uncompromisingly Biblical perspective. I’ve adhered to the truth to the very best of my knowledge and ability, and I urge all who read this introduction to take a ride through the whole of the incredible story to follow. You won’t regret it!

The Mysteries of Ormonde

I was born Carl Robert Halling at 3.50 in the afternoon of 7 October 1955 at the tail end of West London’s Goldhawk Road which is a bit of a no-man’s-land inasmuch as it’s the only part of the road – prominently featured Franc Roddam’s 1979 film of the Who’s “Quadrophenia” - not to bisect Shepherds Bush, being officially in Hammersmith, but considered by some to be part of the more bourgeois area of Chiswick. My first home was a small workman’s cottage in Notting Hill, but by the time of my brother's birth on the 2cnd May 1958, the family had already moved to nearby Bedford Park, which while also in Chiswick, but by postcode this time, is part of the Southfields ward of South Acton.
My father had been born in Rowella in Tasmania’s Tamar Valley, but largely raised in Sydney, the son of an Englishwoman, Phyllis Mary Pinnock, probably hailing from the Dulwich area of south London, and a Dane by the name of Carl Halling. However, his paternity is uncertain, given that his two siblings, Peter and Suzanne, had been born in Britain to a British army officer by the name of Peter Robinson, and Phyllis had left her husband while already pregnant with Patrick.
According to Phyllis’s younger sister Joan, their maternal grandmother’s maiden name had been Butler, which allegedly links the family to the Butlers of Ormond, a dynasty of Anglo-Norman nobles named after the Earldom they went on to rule in Munster, Ireland, although Walter was the name by which they were first known.
The Butler saga begins in earnest with the Norman Invasions of Ireland, which took place in 1169 at the behest of Dermot MacMurrough the King of Leinster, one of five kingdoms of pre-Norman Ireland. A beautiful land once given over to Druidry and the worship of the Sidhe or Faery Folk, Ireland had long been Christian (although paganism had persisted). Nonetheless, an invasion had already been authorised by the first – and only - English Pope Adrian IV in 1155, and was destined to be blessed by his successor, Pope Alexander III.
MacMurrough had been forced into exile in 1166 by a coalition of forces led by the High King of Ireland Rory O'Connor, and had fled…allegedly to Bristol first and then to France. There are various accounts of what happened next, but it’s certain he asked Henry II, first English King of the House of Plantagenet, for help in regaining his kingdom. Henry offered his support, after which MacMurrough began recruiting allies in Wales, Richard de Clare, the man known as Strongbow, foremost among them.
In 1167, he returned to Ireland with a small army of merceneries, but it wasn’t until 1169 that a full-scale invasion by the Anglo-Normans and their Welsh and Flemish allies - and led by Strongbow - got under way. Contemporary accounts apparently refer to the invaders as English, although they have also been described as Anglo-Norman, Cambro-Norman and Anglo-French. The Flemish contingent was culled largely from those Flemings who’d arrived in Britain with William I, and had been settled in Wales by Henry I, to be perceived by the hostile Welsh as English. Also believed to have taken part in the invasion was one Theobald Walter, patriarch of the Butlers of Ormond.
Two years afterwards, Henry II set foot in Ireland, the first English King to do so, and so High Kingship was brought to an end, to be replaced by over 750 years of English rule. Henry was an ancestor of future generations of Butlers, and a grandson of William the Conqueror, which may provide a kinship with the mysterious Merovingian dynasty of Frankish Kings. When Henry's son with Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the future King John of England Prince John arrived in Ireland in 1185, he was accompanied by Theobald Walter, and as his father had been Butler of England, he was appointed Butler of Ireland and given a portion of land in eastern Munster that would become known as Ormond. Hence the name, the Butlers of Ormond.
Theobald wed Maud le Vavasour around 1200, and they had one son, Theobald le Botiller, 2cnd Baron Butler (1200-1230), whose son with Joan du Marais married Margery de Burgh, a descendant of both Dermot McMurrough and the legendary Brian Boru, thereby bringing royal Gaelic blood into the Butler bloodline. One of their grand-children James Butler was appointed Earl of Ormond in 1328. He’d been born to yet another Theobald and the beautiful Eleanor de Bohun, grand-daughter of Edward I of the House of Plantagenet…also known as the Angevins from their origins in Anjou, France. Dubbed The Hammer of the Scots, he was the Anglo-Norman monarch who'd had Scottish landowner Sir William Wallace executed in 1305 for having led a resistance during the Wars of Scottish independence.
The Earldom of Ormond was created for Theobald's grandson, James Butler, son of Sir Edmund and Lady Joan Fitzgerald in 1328. Through their issue all subsequent Earls of Ormonde were descended. The 7th Earl, Thomas Butler was the great-grandfather of Anne and Mary Boleyn. On his death, Piers Roe Butler became the 8th Earl, but as the King wanted the Earldom of Ormond for Thomas Boleyn, father of Anne and Mary, Piers resigned his claim in 1528. Ten years later, it was restored to him, heralding the title's third creation. By this time, England had become a Protestant nation, and the Anglican faith established in Ireland as the state religion, despite the fact that the vast majority of the people were Catholic.
Years of vicious feuding between Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond - known as the Black Earl - and his own mother's family the Fitzgeralds, culminated in a victory for the Butlers in 1565 at the Battle of Afane. which helped provoke the Desmond Rebellions of 1569-73 and 1579-83, the second of which was bolstered by hundreds of Papal troops. Defeated by the Elizabethan Armies and their Irish allies - Court favourites the Butlers predominant among them - they were succeeded by the first English Plantations carried out in a devastated Munster.
A few years later in 1609 the first Ulster Plantation came into being in the wake of the Nine Years War which was largely fought in Ulster, the island's most Gaelic region, between Ulster chieftains and their Catholic allies, including in 1601-1602, 6000 Spanish soldiers sent by Phillip II, and the Protestant Elizabethan government. The routing of the Ulster Earls and their allies led to the famous Flight of the Earls to Europe, the end of the Gaelic Clan system, and the colonization of Ulster by English and Scottish Protestants.
As for the Earldom of Ormond, the fifth Earl of its third creation James Butler was placed in command of English government forces based in Dublin following The Irish Rebellion of 1641, which was an uprising by the Old English Catholic gentry who had become more Irish than the Irish themselves. Most of the country was taken by the Catholic rebels, whose leader was the Duke's own cousin Richard Butler, 3rd Viscount Mountgarret, and in time it evolved into a conflict between the native Irish and the newly arrived Protestant settlers from Britain which resulted in the massacre of thousands of Protestants, the precise number being a matter of much debate.
A year later, with the English Civil War (1641-1651) under way, Ormonde, who was a Royalist sympathizer, despatched an estimated 4000 troops to England to fight for King Charles I of the Scottish House of Stuart against the English Calvinist Roundheads under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, and was made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland by Royal Appointment in 1643.
By 1649, Ireland had become a stronghold of support for the King with Ormonde in overall charge of the Royalist forces and Irish Confederation of native Gaels and Old English Catholics, all of which had the effect of attracting the attention of Cromwell and his New Model Army. Ormonde attempted to thwart the English Puritan invaders by holding a line of fortified towns across the country, but their leader defeated them one after the other, beginning in 1649 with the Siege of Drogheda.
In the summer of 1650, following a long series of humiliating defeats for the Irish, Ormonde, having been deserted by Protestants and Catholics alike, was urged to leave the country by the Catholic clergy, which he promptly did, seeking refuge in Paris with the exiled Charles II. On the Restoration of the Stuart Monarchy in 1660, James Butler was showered with honours by the new King of England, Scotland and Ireland and was made Duke of Ormonde in the peerage of Ireland in the spring of '61.
Eight year later, he fell from favour as a result, allegedly, of courtly intrigue on the part of Royal favourite James Villiers, the 2cnd Duke of Buckingham. In 1671, an attempt was made on his life by an Irish adventurer named Thomas Blood, but Ormonde escaped, convinced that Buckingham had put him up to it, but nothing was ever proven. In 1682, he became Duke of Ormonde in the peerage of England, dying four years later in Dorset, and soon after his death, a poem was published which celebrated his great nobility of character, an essential decency that was never compromised.
One of his sons, the 2cnd Duke of Ormonde, commanded a regiment at the Battle of the Boyne under William of Orange, and took part in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715. His son was the third and final Duke of Ormonde. The Earldom, however, lasted until the end of the 20th Century, becoming dormant in October 1997 with the death of James Butler the 7th Marquess of Ormonde, who had two daughters, but no sons. It may be that I’m a distant relative of theirs…and given that my great aunt Joan was a down to earth person and no mere fey moon spinner, it seems churlish to doubt that I am, and if indeed I am, then I'm related to many perhaps even all of the most blue-blooded families not just in Europe but the entire world.

Joan’s sister, my grandmother was born Phyllis Mary Pinnock sometime towards the end of the 19th or beginning of the 20th century.
According to my father's account, her first true love David Wilson was a scion of the Wilson Line of Hull which had developed into the largest privately owned shipping firm in the world in the early part of the century. Sadly, he perished during the First World War like so many of England’s most gilded young men, the flower of England, immortalised in Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth”.
She subsequently married an officer in the British army, the aforesaid Peter Robinson, and they had two children, Peter Bevan who went on to become a successful musician, and Suzanne, known as Dinny. At some point between Peter’s birth and that of Patrick, Phyllis decamped with her husband to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, with the purpose of working as a tea planter, where she met two fellow workers who went on to become her second and third husbands, and these were the Dane Carl Christian Halling, and the Englishman Christopher Evans.
According to what Pat has told me, Carl was some kind of student of several Eastern religious traditions including Buddhism, fluent in the great Indo-Aryan language of Sanskrit, one of the liturgical languages of both Hinduism and Buddhism…a well educated man who’d once been quite wealthy, but who somehow ended up in Ceylon among the tea planters.
At some point after becoming pregnant with her third child, she took off with Carl to Tasmania, where the child was born Patrick Clancy Halling, to be raised as Carl’s son, but largely in Sydney, New South Wales. It was in Sydney that Carl contracted multiple sclerosis, after which according to family accounts, Mary made a living variously as a journalist, and teacher.
Her three children were musically gifted, Patrick as a violinist, Peter as a cellist and Suzanne as a pianist, but of all of them Pat was the true prodigy. At just eight years old, he won a scholarship to the Sydney Conservatory of Music, soloing for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra a year later, but he reserved his real passion for the water, this love of the sea and ships and specifically sailing being a legacy from his mother Mary - as she went on to be known by Pat and his immediate family – who spent much of her adult life by the sea.
Soon after Carl’s death on the eve of the second world war, Mary and her family set off for Denmark, Carl having wished to be buried in his native country, and then to London where Pat studied both at the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama under the tutelage of the great Austrian violinist Max Rostal.
He joined the London Philharmonic 0rchestra while still a teenager during the Blitz on London during which he served in the Sea Cadets as a signaller, seeing action as such on the hospital ships of the Thames River Emergency Service, which, formed in 1938, lasted for three years, using converted Thames pleasure steamers as floating ambulances or first aid stations.
Following his time with the LP0, Pat played with the London Symphony Orchestra together with his brother Peter, going on to specialize in Chamber music, his career including eight years with the Hirsch quartet, led by Leonard Hirsch, and the formation of his own string quartet, the Quartet Pro Musica. He also played with the Virtuoso Ensemble, whose distinctions included first UK performances of works by Peter Racine Fricker and Humphrey Searle, among other British 20th Century composers.

The Ascent of Miss Ann Watt

In the late 1940s, Patrick Clancy Halling married my mother, the Canadian singer Ann Watt…born Angela Jean Watt to British-born parents in the city of Brandon, Manitoba. Her father an Irish builder had been born into an Ulster Presbyterian family in the village of Castlederg, County Tyrone, while her mother came from the great industrial city of Glasgow, her own father having been a Mr Hazeldine possibly from Liverpool or Manchester. This means that AJ Watt is of mixed Scottish, Scots-Irish and English ancestry, not that there’s any real difference between these three ethnicities. My mother is an ethnic Briton, full stop.
My paternal grandfather was probably a descendant of the planters sent by the English to Ulster, many of them originally inhabitants of the Anglo-Scottish border country and the Lowland region of Scotland. According to some sources, Lowlanders are distinct from their Highland counterparts, being of Anglo-Saxon rather than Gaelic ancestry, although how true this is I’m not qualified to say. Whatever the truth, the sensible view is surely that their bloodline contains a variety of kindred strains including as well as Anglo-Saxon, Gaelic, Pictish, Norman and so on, depending on the precise region.
Thousands of these Ulster Scots emigrated to the United States in the 1600s, and their descendants are to be found all throughout the US, but most famously perhaps in the South, where the greatest proportion of those identifying as just American are believed to be the descendants of the original Colonials and therefore mainly of British (English and Scots-Irish) ancestry.
Angela Watt was the youngest of six children – with only five surviving - born to James and Elizabeth Watt and the only one not to be born in either Scotland or Ireland. While Angela was still an infant, the family moved to the Grandview area of East Vancouver where James found work as a carpenter. By this time, James had abandoned the extreme Presbyterian Calvinism of his Ulster boyhood and youth for the sake of the Wesleyan theology of the Salvation Army, and my mother was raised in the Army at a time when their approach to Scripture was what would be described as fundamental today. His swing from the extreme (Calvinist) Protestantism of his youth in Ulster to the Wesleyan Arminianism of the Salvation Army could not have been more radical, leastwise as I see it.
To explain, Calvinists are those Christians who've traditionally subscribed to what is known as the Doctrines of Grace - or Five Points of Calvinism - which stem from the Protestant Reformation. According to these doctrines, God predestined a limited Elect of men and women to be saved and that this election is unconditional, given Man's total inability to respond to the Gospel without Grace, which is irresistible, and that salvation is irrevocable.
Calvin was himself powerfully influenced by Augustine of Hippo (345-430), the great North African Church Father who was an early proponent of a type of Christian determinism known as Predestination. This is based on the belief that God has foreordained every minute detail of history from the foundation of the world, including who would come to salvation in Christ, and who would be passed over. Double predestination, which was emphasized by John Calvin involves God's active reprobation - or rejection - of the non-Elect. Up until Augustine, the majority of Church Fathers were advocates of the doctrine of Free Will, later revived by Jacobus Arminius and John Wesley.
Some Calvinists are what is known as supralapsarian, from the Latin lapsus meaning fall. They believe that God's Elective Decree occurred prior to the Creation and Fall, and that it was accompanied by the reprobation of the non-elect. Calvin himself was a supralapsarian. Others, known as infralapsarian, maintain that Election followed the Fall. Most have been supporters of double predestination, thereby allegedly forming part of the largest group within Reformed theology.
Calvinist Churches became known as Reformed in Germany, France, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, and Presbyterian In Britain and the nations colonised by British Presbyterians such as the United States, Canada, Australia and so on. Their faith was expressed in written confessions, or creeds, such as the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession of Faith, and the Canons of Dordt, as well as the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Westminster Catechisms. All are in essential agreement, together with the Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689, which has been upheld by Calvinist Baptist churches to this day.
After having been employed to defend Predestination from the attacks of fellow Dutchman Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert, The Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius began to have doubts about the validity of Predestination himself and so the seeds of what ultimately became known as Arminianism were sown. However, no doctrine was formulated in Arminius' lifetime, and Arminius never saw himself as anything other than Reformed.
After Arminius' death, his followers became known as the Remonstrants. They maintained Election doesn't involve reprobation, and is in accordance to God's foreknowledge of who will and who won't come to saving faith under the influence of God's universal or Prevenient Grace, rather than as a result of Predestination. They also maintained that salvation is for everyone who responds according to their own God-given power of choice, and that far from being eternal as the Calvinists believe, it can be shipwrecked and finally lost. The only one of the Five Points of Calvinism which they upheld was Total Depravity, although for them, this didn't involve a total inability to respond to the Gospel.
They expressed their beliefs through the Five Articles of Remonstrance. However, the Synod of Dordrecht of 1618-'19, which had been organised for the express purpose of condemning Arminius' theology, declared both it and its followers anathemas, before drawing up the Five Points of Calvinism, and expelling all Arminian pastors from the Netherlands.
As I see it, few if any men have done more for the cause of classical Arminianism than the great John Wesley. It should be emphasized at this stage that Arminius himself was far from latitudinarian in theology, and the same is true of the great English cleric. Both upheld the doctrine of Total Depravity, while Wesley laid great emphasis on the importance of personal sanctification or holiness. Sadly though, during the early 16th Century, the epithet Arminian was applied to those Anglican divines who sought to return the Church of England to the ritualism of pre-Reformation times, but their theology was a serious deviation from the classical Arminian model, while that of Wesley was wholly in tune with it even while he added certain distinctions of his own.
Out of this mix, the Wesleyan branch of Methodism ultimately emerged, there having also been a Calvinist one, which was the basis for Welsh Presbyterianism. Significantly thanks to Wesley, the one true Arminianism was handed down to succeedent generations of Arminians up to and including the Pentecostals and most Charismatics. At the same time, John Wesley never left the Church of England, and considered himself to be both Anglican and Reformed, which today would automatically mean Calvinist. Wesley was a fervent Free-Willist who yet upheld God's fierce hatred of sin...bequeathing this fiery brand of Arminianism to subsequent adherents within the Holiness churches and beyond...and it's still in existence today, among those devoted to a return to Biblical Pentecostalism and fundamental Wesleyanism, such as the Alliance of Biblical Pentecostals, and the Fundamental Wesleyan Society.
The Salvation Army was arguably once a haven of fundamental Wesleyanism, and one of its zealots was my paternal grandfather James Watt, who was opposed to worldly pleasures such as dancing and the theatre, and in his day, even the drinking of tea or coffee was frowned upon. This was the spiritual climate in which my mother came to maturity.

At the age of 14, Angela joined her friend Marie and Marie’s mother on a car trip just beyond the US-Canadian border into the state of Washington, where she saw her very first movie, a romantic civil war picture entitled “Only the Brave” starring Gary Cooper and Mary Brian. Its effect on her was little short of seismic, as by her own admission it introduced worldly ideas into her psyche for the very first time.
After leaving school, Angela worked for a time as an office worker in a laundrette managed by her sister Cathy until such a time as she was able to make her living exclusively as a singer. Many of her greatest triumphs took place at the Theatre Under the Stars, one of Vancouver’s most famous musical theatres, which officially opened on August the 6th 1940. At the TUTS, Miss Ann Watt as she became known played the lead in such classic operettas – which were the musical comedies of their day – as Oscar Straus’ “The Chocolate Soldier” (1908 ), based on the George Bernard Shaw classic “Arms and the Man”, “Naughty Marietta” (1910) by Victor Herbert, with libretto by Rida Johnson Young, and “The Student Prince” (1924 ) by Sigmund Romberg, with libretto by Dorothy Donnelly.
For the CBC with full orchestra, she broadcast many popular classics. Among those she performed to the accompaniment of Percy Harvey and the Golden Strings were “I’ll See You Again” from Noel Coward's “Bittersweet” (1929), and with baritone Greg Miller, “A Kiss in the Dark” from Victor Herbert's “Orange Blossoms” (1922), and “Sweethearts” from the musical play also by Herbert. Among her loveliest interpretations were - in addition to those already mentioned - Herbert's "Neath the Southern Moon” from “Naughty Marietta”, “Strange Music” from “The Song of Norway” (1942), adapted by Wright and Forrest from Grieg’s “Wedding in Troldhaugen” and “Can’t Help Singing” (1944) by Kern and Yarburg from the eponymous movie featuring Deanna Durbin. She also broadcast Classical songs such as Delibes' “Les Filles de Cadiz” (1874) and Charpentier's “Depuis le Jour” from "Louise" (1900), and German liede sung – due to wartime restrictions on the German language - in English to the piano accompaniment of Phyllis Dylworth.
After the war, she hoped to expand her career either in the US or the UK, but despite a successful audition for the San Francisco Light Opera Company, she ultimately opted for England, once a ticket to sail had become available to her.
She set sail for Britain laden with letters of recommendation from her singing teacher Avis Phillips, as well as numerous press cuttings from her brilliant Canadian career. She'd been led to believe that once in London, she'd effectively take the singing world by storm, at Drury Lane and elsewhere. Sadly though, soon after arriving, she failed an audition for the internationally famous Glyndebourne Opera House, home of the annual festival of the same name.
However, she did land a small role in the Ivor Novello musical, “King’s Rhapsody” which opened at the Palace Theatre on the 15th of September 1949, with its author one-time matinee idol Novello in the title role. It ran for 841 performances, surviving Novello who died in 1951. She also broadcast for the BBC, and among the performances that were captured on record were her versions of “De Fleurs...” from Debussy's "Proses Lyriques" (1892-'93), the only songs for which he wrote his own - heavily Symbolist - lyrics, and the popular Harry Ralton standard “I Remember the Cornfields” (1951?) with lyrics by Martin Mayne...and appeared in an early television show called “Picture Post”. Sadly though, it wasn’t long after her arrival in London that she realized her voice was deteriorating, and her top notes most of all...possibly as a result of sleeping difficulties; although her former lifestyle in Vancouver, where in the city’s night clubs she was often to be found carousing into the wee small hours must also have played its part.
She went from one singing teacher after the other in the hope that her once near-perfect voice might be restored to her but little came of her efforts, although one of her tutors, who just happened to be the great German soprano Elisabeth Schumann did offer some hope. Schumann suggested to my mother that once her time in England was over – she recorded her last liede 78s in London with the British pianist Gerald Moore - she accompany her back to New York City where she’d been resident since 1918.
My mother, however, turned the great Schumann down, feeling she’d already spent enough money on lessons, and besides she was seriously involved with a London-based musician my father Patrick Halling, whom she married in June 1949, and so uprooting would not have been easy, and they were far from rich. They spent the next seven years living the vie de bohème in a peaceful post-war London and on the continent, travelling by car or motorcycle, just happy being young and in love in that relatively innocent period between the end of the Second World War and the birth of the Youth-Rock culture, after which things would never be quite the same again…

Patrick Halling: A Musical Voyage 1

On the 7th of October 1955, Pat and Ann Halling's first son Carl Robert was born at the former site of West London's famous Queen Charlotte's Hospital, and two and a half years later, a second son came into the world in Bethnal Green. The 1960s were only two years away and unless I'm mistaken it was in this totemic decade - which witnessed an unprecedented explosion of pop and youth culture - that Pat moved into the session world where he was to record for film, television and above all popular music.
In the meantime, my mother's musical life was put on hold while she concentrated on being the mother of two small boys, and supporting her husband in his various passions, which included dinghy racing on the Thames and elsewhere. Despite her strong aversion to sailing, she crewed for him for many years...specifically at the Thamesis Sailing Club in Teddington, West London where he was a member for much of the sixties, winning several racing trophies initially in a Firefly (number 1588)..while his career as a session player thrived.

According to what he's told me, he worked on early sessions for British musical sensations Lulu, Cilla Black and Tom Jones, as well as with superstar producers Tony Hatch and Mickie Most. Hatch wrote most of Petula Clark's hit singles of the sixties, some alone, some with his wife Jackie Trent, and she went on to become a major star in the US as part of the so-called British Invasion of the American charts, as did several acts produced by Most, including the excellent Herman's Hermits, featuring former child actor Peter Noone.
Pat became close to both Most and composer-arranger John Cameron, who together helped Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan achieve a string of international hit records once he'd moved away from his early Folk-Protest style towards something far more Pop-oriented, starting with the psychedelic "Sunshine Superman" (1966), which was a massive stateside smash, and the first produced by Most.
Among those session musicians who played for Most in the '60s were Big Jim Sullivan, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, who also arranged for him. Page went on to join seminal British Rock band The Yardbirds, which had been managed first by Simon Napier Bell, then by Most's business partner Peter Grant. When the Yardbirds collapsed in 1968, the two remaining members Page and bassist Chris Dreja set about forming a new band, also to be managed by Grant. Page's first choice as vocalist Terry Reid turned the job down, but he recommended a young 19 year old singer from the Midlands of England known as Robert Plant. Page duly travelled to Birmingham with Dreja and Grant to look the youngster over, and was impressed by what he saw. He then invited Plant to spend a few days with him at his home, the Thames Boathouse, in the beautiful little Berkshire village of Pangbourne for initial discussions related to the band...all this taking place in the summer of '68, just months before I joined the Nautical College situated a few miles from the village itself. So, the nucleus of the New Yardbirds came into being.
Shortly afterwards, a friend of Plant's, fellow Midlander John Bonham came onboard as drummer, and an old session buddy of Page's, John Paul Jones replaced Chris Dreja as the band's bass player, as Dreja wished to leave the music scene to concentrate on a new career as a photographer. Jones supplemented this role by helping Page with the arrangements, and performing keyboard duties. The New Yardbirds were now ready to fulfill their contractual tour of Scandinavia, which they began in September 1968.
With their first album - recorded at West London's Olympic Studios - not yet released, they made their debut as Led Zeppelin at the University of Surrey on October 15, 1968. This was followed by a U.S. concert debut on December 26, 1968, and so Led Zeppelin went on to become the most famous Hard Rock band of them all equalled only by the Stones in terms of legendary darkness and mystery.
It seems incredible that a force of such seismic power and influence as Led Zep should emerge from the relative innocence of the London Blues and session music scenes of the sixties. But then a similar thing could be said of British Rock as a whole. What was it that transformed an interest among young men of largely middle class origins in the bleak brooding music of the Blues into a musical movement which took America and the world at large by storm in the late '60s and early '70s? That's not an easy question to answer, but I'm going to give it some sort of a go.
The Blues themselves may provide something of a solution to the puzzle, because they are believed to have begun life as a secularised version of the black Gospel music of the American south, with lyrics reflecting the sensuality, isolation and anguish of lost souls victimised by life and alienated from God, and they found fertile soil in the still repressed United Kingdom of the late 1950s and early sixties, and especially in the affluent south among men such as Brian Jones from the genteel spa town of Cheltenham in Gloucester, Eric Clapton from Surbiton - via Ripley - in Surrey, and Jimmy Page from nearby Epsom, also in Surrey.
But the British Rock explosion was not just fuelled by the Blues. By the early '60s, an effervescent fusion of Rock and Roll, Skiffle, R&B, Doo-Wop, Soul and even traditional Classic Pop had emerged from several British cities most notably the tough industrial towns of Liverpool and Birmingham, before going on to take the UK charts by storm. It was the sound of Beat, and no band encapsulated it quite like the Beatles. That said, to further confuse matters, the term Beat - or rather Big Beat - had been used to describe a music genre as early as 1961 by the writer Royston Ellis, a close friend of John Lennon's due to their shared appreciation of the Beat poets. In Ellis's book "The Big Beat Scene", the term Beat is used to describe the music of the first British Pop stars to emerge in the wake of the Rock revolution, such as Billy Fury, Joe Brown, Marty Wilde et al, as well as a host of lesser known ones...but then Rock is also used as an abbreviation for Rock and Roll in the same book.
The Beatles are seen by some as the inventors of modern guitar Pop. While this is debatable, they are without doubt the best known and most successful Pop group in history. Yet they themselves resisted being typecast as mere Pop, and could be said to have ultimately promoted a type of Rock with Pop elements which was yet no less removed from pure Pop than the Blues-based Rock of their chief rivals the Rolling Stones.
The overwhelming melodicism of their classic period of 1964-'69 was founded on a vast variety of musical genres including Classical and Folk, Classic Pop, Country and Western, Rock and Roll, Soul and Motown, and even the Blues, leading one to conclude that largely through the Beatles, Rock became the ultimate musical smorgasbord, a veritable Babel of musical styles. During their brief few years of existence, they informed the development of Rock to a greater degree than any other group or solo singer, and that includes the Rolling Stones, whose early style was far more rooted in the Delta and Chicago Blues than that of the Beatles, which was lighter, or Poppier. The Stones' uncompromisingly primal rythmic proto-Rock went on to form the basis of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal, and yet even these have to a greater or lesser extent benefited from the unrelenting melodic inventiveness of the Beatles, although the same could not be said of Punk, which is Rock stripped to its most essential ingredients.
That's not to say, however, that the Beatles introduced melody into Rock and Roll, because it already existed by the time they had their first hit single in 1962. One of its chief sources was what has become known as the Brill Building Sound, named after the very building in New York City where many of its songwriters were housed and which had been a Pop music centre since the '30s, the term Pop music having been coined - allegedly - as early as 1926. Brill Building Pop could be described as traditional Pop informed by the Rock and Roll revolution, and so partaking of Rock rythyms as much as the sophisticated songwriting techniques of Classic - pre-Rock - Pop.
There was a somewhat notorious interregnum period of Popular Music between the decline of the first wave of Rock and the onset of Beatlemania and it lasted from about 1958, the year of Elvis Presley's induction into the US Army, and around 1963 when the Beatles started to go global. Much has been made of the fact that the music's initial threat was neutralised during this brief era, and that this process coincided with the first wave of teenage idols - both in the US and UK - who while heavily influenced by Elvis visually, had nowhere near the same devastating effect on the moral establishment.
It's my contention that in spite of the bad press it's received over the years, the first wave of Pop to arise in the wake of the Rock and Roll revolution was infinitely more fertile and diverse than it's been given credit for, and that's especially true of the Brill Building Sound, whose melodic and lyrical sophistication harked back to the golden age of the Great American Songbook. It's sheer wholesomeness has attracted much hostility, but it should be remembered that for the first two years or so of its existence, the music of the Beatles was pretty wholesome too, and I can't help thinking it's a shame it didn't remain that way; even though many - perhaps most - of their finest songs were written after 1965.
Its chief songwriters included Goffin and King, who wrote hits for the Shirelles, the Crystals, the Drifters, Bobby Vee, Gene Pitney and others in the immediate pre-Beatles era. They certainly influenced the Beatles, who covered one of their songs, "Chains", which was soulfully sung by John Lennon. Carole King of course went on to become a superstar in her own right during the singer-songwriter era of the late 1960s, one of the most obvious examples of a survivor from the Brill Building era. Another was Burt Bacharach, who with lyricist Hal David went on to even greater glory in the '60s at the height of Beatlemania. Despite reversals, he continues to be recognised as one of the greatest popular songwriters of all time. Other Brill building teams included Leiber & Stoller, Sedaka & Greenfield, Mann & Weil and Barry & Greenwich. As well as writing songs for major acts from Elvis Presley to the first great girl groups, their work facilitated the pioneering production techniques of Phil Spector, and influenced much of the Pop that was to dominate the '60s, including the Beatles themselves.
Yet, while the Beatles remain indelibly associated with modern Pop, by about 1966, they were as much a Rock as a Pop group and this had less to do with their music than their lyrics. These had started to acquire an intellectual dimension by that totemic year, which was significantly attributable to the influence of Bob Dylan. Pop as a whole in fact had acquired a gravitas at odds with the innocent and sentimental music of the early Beatles - as well as other bands within the outdated Beat genre - as a result not just of Dylan's influence as the first great poet of Rock, but an increasing melodic complexity on one hand...and an increasing spiritual darkness on the other. This latter was at least partly founded as I see it on the growing influence of the Blues, which led ultimately to the British Blues movement of the late 1960s. The term Rock was somehow perfect in describing the way out new music that arose out of it, although when this moved in to supplant Pop as its main name it's impossible to say. One thing is certain...as soon as it did, Rock became far more than a mere music form. I'd go so far as to say that it was a way of life of life almost from the outset, a philosophy, even a religion one of whose prime components was rebellion against the traditional Christian moral values of the West.
Could this be the reason - or at least one of the reasons - why the US and Britain came to be its spiritual homelands, given that these are the nations most associated historically with the rise of Evangelical Christianity? Perhaps so. Whatever the truth, Rock is clearly more than just another form of Pop. Yet, in the modern sense of the word, Pop is intrinsically tied to Rock, or rather was...until about 20 years ago, when the latter started to decline as the leading voice of youthful rebellion, to be slowly replaced as such by other forms of popular music such as Hip Hop, Contemporary R&B, and Electronic Dance Music.
Today, Rock no longer represents the dark side of popular music, being just one of its many faces, just another branch of the entertainment industry. After nearly half a century of waging war against a world view rooted in God's Holy Word, Rock has very little ability left to shock...although some may still be offended by its persisting lyrical darkness...I certainly am, but I'm in the minority in the UK, if not in America. Yet, the damage has been done: Western society has been irrevocably altered by Rock Music and the socio-sexual revolution it led.
Had it not been for this devastating youthquake, Pop might never have moved beyond the kind of novelty song Tin Pan Alley was producing at such a furious rate in the early 1950s, such as Bob Merrill's wonderful "She Wears Red Feathers"; but would that have been such a bad thing, when you consider Rock's ultimately disastrous legacy, the result of over a half a century of "letting it all hang out"? I don't think so.
But to return to Pat, whose contribution to the growing Rock movement was ever both innocent and involuntary:
For the legendary Beatles producer George Martin, he led the string section that was filmed live for "All you Need is Love", written specially for the "Our World" program which secured an international audience of 350 million people at the height of the so-called Summer of Love on July 25th 1967. It was the first satellite broadcast in history, and one of the most famous pieces of film ever made. Also taking part were Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Donovan and Marianne Faithful.
A year later, he worked on a project that was as much a concept album as any of the Beatles records of the same period, Ken Moule's superb "Adam's Rib Suite", which fused elements of Jazz, Pop and Classical music to recount the history of womankind from Eve to Cleo Laine. Needless to say though, it was infinitely less successful than any comparable record within the Rock genre, Rock being at the cutting edge of popular culture in a way that Jazz had once been, but no longer was.
However, by the turn of the decade, a reconciliation between the two alienated factions was well under way, with Jazz-Fusion coming from one camp and the more populist Jazz-Rock from the other. In '75, Pat served as leader for Mike Gibbs' "Only Chrome Waterfall Orchestra", an unsung classic of British Jazz fusion which was finally released on CD in 1997. Adam's Rib followed it on CD exactly ten years later.
By the time of his involvement with "Adam's Rib", Pat had already moved into the worlds of film and television, and his early TV career included solos for the much-loved British sitcom "Steptoe and Son" (1962-1974), penned by one-time Tony Hancock writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, with music, including the well known theme tune, by the Australian composer Ron Grainer.
When it came to his early film career, he served as concertmaster for the great Johnny Green on Carol Reed's version of Lionel Bart's "Oliver" (1968), arguably the greatest film musical of recent times, and for John Williams on “Fiddler on the Roof” (1971), another film masterpiece based on a stage musical, this time directed by Norman Jewison. In addition to Williams, he's served as concertmaster for several other major 20th Century musical figures, Dimitri Tiomkin, Nelson Riddle, Maurice Jarre, Georges Delerue and Wilfred Josephs among them.
He worked with Williams again on the musical version of James Hilton’s “Goodbye Mr Chips” (1969), directed by Herbert Ross, and featuring wonderful performances by Peter O’Toole as Chips and Petula Clark as his wife Katherine. The screenplay was fashioned by one of the 20th Century’s leading playwrights, Terence Rattigan, while Leslie Bricusse provided both the music and lyrics for the songs, some of which are enchanting despite what certain critics have said about them. David Lindup, father of Level 42's Mike, whom Pat had first met while they were both working for British Jazz legend John Dankworth was one of the orchestrators on the project, under the masterful musical direction of John Williams. Sadly for all its virtues, "Chips" was not a critical success, although it was nominated for several major awards and enjoys a passionate following today, notably on the internet.
Also in '69, Pat worked on another film which has since grown in stature, David Lean's penultimate movie "Ryan's Daughter", written by playwright and screenwriter Robert Bolt and with music by French composer Maurice Jarre. Like "Chips", "Ryan's Daughter" was poorly received by the critics, although it was a moderate box office success, and is considered by many today to be a worthy addition to Lean's superb body of work.

Patrick Halling: A Musical Voyage 2

As the sixties gave way to the '70s, Mickie Most entered the second phase of his glittering Pop career, although he was briefly involved with highly successful Hard Rock band the Jeff Beck Group which had been formed in early 1967. Beck had signed a personal management contract with Most who apparently wanted to turn him into a solo star, even though his backing band included one Rod Stewart on lead vocals. The Jeff Beck Group having failed to produce any hit singles, Most's business partner Peter Grant eventually took over their management, arranging a six week tour of the US in early '68. They went on to take America by storm, anticipating the success of another Grant-led band, Led Zeppelin.
While Grant went on to Rock mega-glory with Zep, Mickie set about turning RAK - which they'd founded together in 1969 - into one the key Pop record labels of the '70s and home to several classic Glam, Pop and Teenybop acts such as the soulful Hot Chocolate and former Detroit rocker Suzi Quatro - with whom Pat worked on several occasions with Mickie at the helm - as well as Mud, Arrows, Kenny, Smokie and Racey.
Talking about Pop, in the early 1970s, John Cameron became an unlikely member of a successful Pop act himself as part of CCS, a band he put together with Mickie for RAK, and featuring the Blues guitarist Alexis Korner as band leader, but with Danish musician Peter Thorup doing most of the vocals.
Alexis Korner has been called the Founding Father of British Blues, and with good reason because possibly more than anyone he was the incubator of the '60s Blues Boom which was one of the great cornerstones of the entire Rock movement. Some of the bands who were swept to stardom in its wake went on to be part of the celebrated British Invasion of the US charts which could be said to have transformed the American cultural landscape.
Born in Paris of Austrian and Greek ancestry, Korner began his musical career in 1949 as a member of Chris Barber's Jazz Band, but his love of the then lesser known music of the Blues led to his forming the band Blues Incorporated in 1961 with singer Long John Baldry, harmonica player Cyril Davies, guitarist Jack Bruce, saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith and drummer Charlie Watts.
The list of musicians who were drawn to Korner's regular Rythym and Blues night at the Ealing Jazz Club in the early '60s included future members of the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones, as well as Rod "The Mod" Stewart, and spectacularly handsome Oxford undergraduate Paul Jones. Paul had apparently been Brian Jones' first choice as vocalist for his band the Rollin' Stones, which he put together in 1962 with piano player Ian Stewart from Cheam in Surrey who'd been recruited from an ad in Jazz News, but he turned him down, only to resurface at a later date as front man for another Blues-based band which achieved mainstream Pop success, Manfred Mann.
A mere nine years after their formation, with poor Brian Jones no longer living, the Stones started work on the album which is widely considered to be their masterpiece, "Exile on Main Street". These first sessions took place in the basement of the Villa Nellcôte, a 19th century mansion on the waterfront of Villefranche-sur-Mer in France's Cote d'Azur, which had been leased to Keith Richards in the summer of '71, although several tracks had already been recorded at West London's Olympic Studios, as well as at Mick Jagger's country estate, Stargroves near Newbury in Berkshire. Much has been written of the ultra-decadence surrounding the "Exile" sessions, which saw various icons of the counterculture passing through Nellcote as if there to bestow their blessings on the proceedings. They could be said to be the quintessence of the Rock and Roll lifestyle following a mere decade of Rock culture, which had yet already altered Western society as a whole almost beyond recognition. However, blame for this transformation can't in all good conscience be laid exclusively at the feet of Rock. That would be absurd.
It seems pretty clear to me that the cultural revolution of the 1960s didn't just appear out of nowhere, and that tendencies inimical to the Judaeo-Christian moral fabric of our civilisation can be traced at least as far back as the Enlightenment of the 16th and 17th Centuries, which could be said to be the starting point of the Modern Age. Much of the groundwork had already been done in other words, and that's especially true of the two immediate post-war decades, in which the Existentialists and the Beats became international icons of revolt, with lesser groups like the Lettrists of Paris acting as scandal-sowing forerunners of the '60s Situationists...Britain's first major youth cult surfaced in the shape of the Edwardians who later became known as Teddy Boys or Teds...a cinema of youthful discontent flourished as never before creating a desire among many young people to be identified as wild ones and rebels without a cause...and Rock and Roll - perhaps already jaded as an art form by 1972...the year the Stones' "Exile on Main Street" finally saw the light of day - took over the world, with Elvis Presley as its first true superstar.
That same year saw Pat work on an infinitely more humble musical project, Richard Harris' "Slides" which, while a success on the Billboard charts at the time has since been sadly overlooked, although it was released on CD with another Harris album "My Boy" in 2005, receiving very high ratings from Amazon reviewers both in Britain and the US.
A year later, Pat worked on the first of two pictures helmed by the great Fred Zinnemann, whom he was kind enough to introduce me to - and on the set of "Julia" (1979) unless I'm mistaken - and he was utterly enchanting. This was "The Day of the Jackal", based on the novel by Frederick Forsyth, and with music this time by Georges Delerue, whom I also met with Pat. Although not a commercial success, it's now seen as a classic British thriller in the tradition of Carol Reed's "The Third Man", and Edward Fox's mesmerising performance as the elegant ruthless Jackal helped turn him into a major star.

Patrick Halling: A Musical Voyage 3

By the start of the 1970s, for a teenager like myself and many of my friends, Rock and Roll music had divided into two categories. One we knew as Commercial, a word we tended to spit out like some kind of curse, the other, Underground, or some other term reflective of its shadowy exclusivity. While the former was effectively pure Pop, whose domain was the Hit Parade or Pop charts weekly featured on the British TV program Top of the Pops, the latter consisted of groups who made music largely for the growing album market...and there were those Rock acts such as Led Zeppelin who never graced the singles chart despite earning fortunes through concerts and album sales. Within album Rock many strains co-existed as I recall, including Hard or Heavy Rock, Soft Rock of the type of Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills and Nash, and the Art or Progressive Rock pioneered by the Beatles, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, the Doors and others.
Despite himself Pat was part of it from the outset, notably through his association with the Beatles, who by '67 were at the forefront of the Rock revolution, having arguably left much of their Pop career behind them once they'd retired from touring, although their Rock was ever replete with beautiful Pop melodies.
However, it was Jethro Tull, a British band that achieved both commercial and critical success on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond, that marked the height of his relationship with the new Art Rock phenomenon. Working with front man - as well as singer, flautist and composer - Ian Anderson, and conductor, arranger and keyboard player David Palmer, Pat served as leader for two Tull albums, which is to say, “Warchild” from 1974, and “Minstrel in the Gallery” from a year later, both recognised today as undisputed masterpieces of the Progressive genre.
During the Prog Rock boom which was at its height from about 1969 to 1975, Pat played on several albums which while not successful in the mould of best sellers by Tull, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes and others, have nonetheless received fresh critical acclaim through the internet, some of this verging on the adulatory.
They include “Definitely What” (1968) by Brian Auger and the Trinity, “Cosmic Wheels” (1973) by Donovan, “Beginnings” (1975) by Yes guitarist Steve Howe, "Octoberon" by Symphonic Rock pioneers Barclay James Harvest, and two by Gordon Giltrap, “Visionary” from '76 and “Perilous Journey” from the following year. Giltrap, I feel safe in asserting, is one of the most outlandishly gifted guitarists -acoustic or otherwise - in the history of recorded music.
For composer-producer-arranger-conductor Johnny Harris, who has worked in various capacities with some of the greatest names in entertainment of the last half century including Michael Jackson, Sammy Davis Jnr., Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Johnny Mathis and Tom Jones, Pat led the strings on “All To Bring You Morning” (1973), his second solo album, which featured no less than three one-time members of Prog Rock legends Yes, namely the aforesaid Steve Howe, vocalist/composer Jon Anderson, and drummer Alan White, who just happened to be recording next door at the time as Johnny and friends and were great admirers of his work. It achieved a CD release in 2008.
For his very close friend Derek Wadsworth he played on “Metropolitan Man” (1974) by Alan Price, the former keyboardist for British Invasion band the Animals. They scored an international mega-hit in 1964 with their version of the traditional Folk song "The House of the Rising Sun" produced by Mickie Most, who masterminded the first two years of their career, during which they became Pop sensations in the US almost on a par with the Beatles and the Stones. Alan Price left in 1965 to form his own Alan Price Set, which, with songs such as the classic “House that Jack Built” from '67, combined musical virtuosity with lashings of commercial appeal, a gift that was one of the hallmarks of classic sixties Pop, but which had perhaps declined somewhat by the turn of the ultimate Pop decade.
In the early '70s though, the Glam-Glitter genre took off in Britain, taking the Pop charts by storm in the process. Among those artists who became superstars through Glam, a heterogeneous mixture of Pop and Rock whose purveyors flaunted an outrageous androgynous image were Marc Bolan, David Bowie, Rod Stewart and Elton John, all of whom had been striving for Rock and Roll success for years.
Bolan is widely credited with inventing Glam, although it had been foreshadowed in the '60s by the Stones and others, but its true pioneer was arguably Little Richard, known today as the Reverend Richard Penniman.
Among the first generation of Rock stars he was the most overtly androgynous, although it's been said he took much of his image from a little known Rock shouter named Esquerita, who was believed to have been even wilder than Richard....if that were at all possible. A product of the southern Bible Belt like Richard, Esquerita died young at only 49 years old from an AIDS-related illness after a life of relative obscurity.
As a child Richard had attended Pentecostal churches in his native Georgia, and seriously considered becoming a preacher of the Gospel; but it was also in these churches that he developed the musical gifts that were to lead to his ultimately embracing the music which he has gone on record as declaring to be incompatible with the Christian life. In fact, few Rock stars have been quite so vocal in their denunciation of the spiritual dangers of Rock music as Little Richard Penniman. For a time, however, he was the most outrageous of the early Rock idols, and many of Rock's most dynamic performers - Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart and David Bowie among them - have cited him as a seminal influence.
The Glam Rock era of 1971-'73 was to some extent a revival of the sartorial flashiness - and musical simplicity - of early Rock and Roll...and one which swept a host of gifted young musicians who'd been striving for major success since the early 1960s to fresh levels of stardom in the UK and elsewhere. Yet, despite the Pop star status they enjoyed in the UK, several of these were viewed as serious album artists as well as TV idols, among them Rod Stewart, David Bowie and Elton John, and significantly all three remain international Rock icons to this day. On the other hand, other Glam acts were viewed largely as singles bands during a golden age for the British Pop charts...and one that seriously advantaged a certain East End boy of part Irish Traveller extraction by the name of David Cook.
As David Essex, he became a star on the fringes of Glam, not through Rock nor teeny bop Pop, but largely through acting both onstage and in the movies. It was his own song, "Rock On" a massive hit on both sides of the Atlantic in 1974 that really put him on the map as a major heart throb...together with the '73 movie "That'll be the Day", directed by Claude Watham, in which he plays a young tearaway in a bleak pre-Beatles Britain who yearns for Rock and Roll stardom, and ultimately leaves his young family to pursue it. In the follow-up, "Stardust" (1974) - also the name of Essex's third British hit single - he achieves his dream...but ends up living as a wasted recluse in a vast castle in Spain.
Both "Rock On" and "Stardust" were produced by New Yorker Jeff Wayne. Pat worked with him not just on "Rock On", but his own “Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds” which has achieved classic status since its release in 1978.

Towards the middle of the '70s, Soul music, a popular genre which had evolved out of Gospel and R&B birthed a mutation known as Disco, one of whose hallmarks was the liberal use of strings often played in a staccato style. In consequence, Pat was involved in several major Disco projects, including the band "Love and Kisses" formed by Alec R Costandinos, which produced three albums between 1977 and '79. While these have been obscured by Giorgio Moroder's groundbreaking work with Donna Summer, they were massively successful at the time, yielding several US hit singles and helping to define the Disco sound. Both Pat and Costandinos had earlier worked with another French Disco pioneer Jean-Marc Cerrone on his hit album, "Love in C Minor" from 1976.
Pat played on several other Costandinos records, including an acknowledged Disco masterpiece "Romeo and Juliet" (1978) which unlike many of the classic works of the Disco era was not flagrantly risqué in the lyrical department, which for a Christian such as myself can only be a good thing.
He also worked on the album “Limelight Disco Symphony” (1978) by Melophonia which was a Disco tribute produced by Franck Pourcel and Alain Boublil to Sir Charles Chaplin, who'd died on Christmas Day '77. Some years previously, Pat had worked with him on sessions which involved some of his classic films being set to new musical arrangements, and he'd introduced me to him, and he was charming; in fact it was one of the most memorable events of my life.
Boublil went on to write the libretto for the musical "Les Miserables" with composer Claude Schonberg, and it was John Cameron who arranged it for them. Pat was involved with the London production of "Les Miz" for many years as the leader of the orchestra, one of several highlights of a theatrical career which has involved his working with such legends as Ella Fitzgerald, Perry Como, Tony Bennett, Tiny Tim, Barry Manilow and Boy George of Culture Club, and touring with Tom Jones, Barrie White and others. But it's his participation in Bing Crosby's final tour of London in September 1977 that is perhaps the most memorable of all. In that same month, Bing, his family, and his close friend Rosemary Clooney began a concert tour of England that included two weeks at the London Palladium. He recorded an album "Seasons", and a TV Christmas special with David Bowie and Twiggy in the UK. His duet with Bowie on "Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy" was listed in Britain's TV Guide as one of the 25 most memorable musical moments of 20th Century television. After the tour Pat actually managed to wangle an autograph from Bing during a last recording session at Maida Vale studios. Der Bingle had initially objected to Pat helping himself to a piece of his sheet music, before relenting with the words, "he seems like a good man", and autographing the music into the bargain. He died some days afterwards on October 14th, following a round of 18 holes of golf near Madrid where he and his Spanish golfing partner had just defeated their opponents, towards the end of a year which had seen the deaths of a string of cultural giants including - in addition to Bing - Charlie Chaplin, Groucho Marx, Joan Crawford, Maria Callas and Elvis Presley.
Speaking of John Cameron...he was one of the men responsible for a rare classic of British Soul, "Central Heating" (1978) by London-based Funk outfit Heatwave. John served as producer on the sessions, with Pat as his concermaster, while the songs were mainly written by keyboardist Rod Temperton. Temperton was the white Englishman who went on to write several of the most memorable numbers from the best-selling long player in musical history, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" from 1982, which was produced by Quincy Jones, as well as for Quincy's own album "The Dude", for Patti Austin, George Benson, Anita Baker and others. Three Heatwave songs, all written by Temperton and produced by Cameron were millions sellers in the US, these being "Boogie Nights", "The Groove Line" and the lovely ballad, "Always and Forever", sung straight from the heart by tragic former US serviceman Johnny Wilder Jr, who had one of Soul's greatest and most underrated voices.
At the end of the '70s, Pat played what was possibly his most memorable ever solo for a television program and that was for the stunning opening and closing theme to BBC’s “Life on Earth” (1979), composed by Edward Williams and conducted by Marcus Dods. This 13-part documentary series by British naturalist David Attenborough - whom I met very briefly at a social function with his wife in the late 1970s, most probably ’79 - is widely considered to be one of the greatest ever made; but for some people- and as a Christian I include myself among them- it was controversial, given its foundation in the Theory of Evolution.

Patrick Halling: A Musical Voyage 4

The '80s was a difficult decade for session musicians like Pat as the synthesizer started making stronger inroads than had previously been the case into the world of recorded music, and that's especially true of the so-called New Pop that arose in Britain in the wake of Punk. Several New Pop acts took part in the so-called Second British Invasion, which saw British bands dominating the American Pop charts to a degree unknown since the first one led by the Beatles. This was significantly due to a demand on the part of the newly launched MTV music channel for colourful videos of which there was a shortage in the US at the time, and it enabled several - largely synth-driven - British bands such as the Human League, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, Culture Club and Eurythmics to score massive transatlantic hits.
Despite the inexorable rise of electronic Pop, Pat's career proceeded apace during the '80s. In 1980, he worked once again for his close friend John Cameron, this time on "The Mirror Crack'd" based on the Agatha Christie novel, with music by John C., and featuring a roll call of Hollywood legends including Elisabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, and Kim Novak, with Angela Lansbury as Miss Marple. Pat even had a small non-speaking cameo in the movie as a World War II bandleader, a walk-on admittedly but a featured one. He worked with John Cameron again on a further star-studded Christie movie, "Evil Under the Sun". Both were helmed by Bond director Guy Hamilton, and produced by John Brabourne, and Richard Goodwin, who became a friend of Pat's, and they were to work together several more times in the '80s and '90s.
For Richard’s wife writer/director Christine Edzard, he was the violin soloist for “Biddy” (1983), working again with Christine - with Richard producing - on “Little Dorrit" (1988), based on the Dickens novel, and “The Fool” (1990), which was written by Christine with Oliver Stockman. All three movies were scored by French composer Michel Sanvoisin. Incidentally on “Little Dorrit”, based on the novel by Charles Dickens, Pat is credited either as soloist or song performer, duty he shared with his beloved friend, Catalan cellist Francisco Gabarro, known as Gabby, as well as the celebrated clarinettist Jack Brymer.
For Beatles legend Paul McCartney he led the orchestra for the soundtrack to the movie “Give My Regards to Broad Street” (1984), which sold well, including as it did reworked versions of six Beatles classics including "Eleanor Rigby", although the film itself performed poorly at the Box Office. Since '84, its reputation has barely improved, although on the US and British versions of Amazon it benefits from a good deal of affection on the part of everyday net users, a testament to the enormous good will MacCartney continues to generate on a worldwide basis.
Three years later, he worked with another Pop superstar of Irish ancestry, Enya Brennan - although unlike Macca she was actually born on the Emerald Isle - on "To Go Beyond II", final track of the highly successful “Enya” album to be precise. The album was later remastered and renamed “The Celts”, for use by the BBC for the 1992 TV series of the same name.
Other television projects on which Pat worked in the '80s include “Hold that Dream” (1986) based on the novel by Barbara Taylor Bradford, with original score by longtime friend Barrie Guard, “Tears in the Rain” (1988), from a novel by Pamela Wallace, with music again by Guard, and “The Darling Buds of May” (1992-1993), based on the novel by HE Bates, and with music by Pip Burley and Guard.
In 1989, he worked with a yet another Rock legend, Pete Townsend, serving as leader on the concept album "The Iron Man - The Musical", based on the novel by Ted Hughes. Townsend was of course the guiding spirit of the Who, whose contribution to the so-called British Invasion of the US by English bands, led by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, was little short of earth-shaking...as even more than the Stones they provided the basis for much of the Hard and Heavy Rock to follow. Interestingly, Pete's father Jazz saxophonist Cliff Townsend had been a colleague of Pat's during their time together on the BBC 1 program Parkinson, named after British chat show master Michael Parkinson.
In 1990, he appeared on John Williams’ album “The Guitar is the Song”, having earlier worked with the great Classical guitarist on “John Williams plays Patrick Gowers and Scarlatti” (1972), and specifically on Gowers’ “Chamber Concerto for Guitar”, as well as “Portrait of John Williams” (1982), on which he served as leader of the String Orchestra for Vivaldi’s Concerto in D major, and “Cavatina” by Stanley Myers, known by many as the theme to “The Deerhunter”.
Moving into the so-called Noughties...between 2000 and 2002, Pat played violin for Nuages, a band specialising in Swing, Vocal Jazz and Classic Easy Listening formed by his good friend Barrie Guard, and featuring myself on vocals. We laid down a series of superb demos - beautifully arranged by Barrie - at his home studio in the outer suburbs of London, and even went so far as to record a pilot radio show but to no avail. We gigged sporadically for about a year and a half, and response to our music was polite at best, until a final concert at the 2002 Shelton Arts Festival brought us into contact with the kind of intimate cultured audience we perhaps should have been aiming for all along...and we all but brought the house down. Sadly though, for a variety of reasons Nuages dispersed soon afterwards.
On a brighter note, there's a fascinating tale attached to singer-songwriter John Dawson Read for whom Pat served as leader on his two '70s albums, “A Friend of Mine is Going Blind” (1975) and “Read On” (1976). Sometime around 2005, fellow singer-songwriter Michael Johnson included an MP3 of Read singing the title track of his first album, “A Friend of Mine” on his website, and many Read fans began communicating through the site in consequence. His subsequent re-entry into the music world after nearly thirty years of relative - although not complete - inactivity, resulted in a third album, “Now…Where were we?” being released that same year.
Until quite recently, Pat served as leader - under the headship of conductor and composer Ronnie Hazelhurst - for the BBC comedy series that is the longest running in television history, Roy Clarke's "Last of the Summer Wine". Working alongside Pat on the series was harmonica maestro Jim Hughes, whose playing it is that makes Ronnie's gently pastoral theme tune so distinctive. With Jim's help, Pat began work on an album of popular song standards - featuring myself on vocals - some time in the mid Noughties, possibly 2006. Eventually given the title “A Taste of Summer Wine” thanks to the generosity of Ronnie Hazelhurst, it's credited to James Hughes Carl Halling with the London Swingtette, the latter consisting of, in addition to Pat's own Quartet Pro Musica, Judd Procter on guitar, Manfred Mann founder member Dave Richmond, and John Sutton, on bass, and John Dean and Sebastian Guard on drums. The album was engineered by sound recordist Tony Philpot, and Keith Grant - formerly of West London's legendary Olympic Studios - and finally released in 2007. Olympic became one of the great recording centres of British Hard Rock after it had been bought by Keith and Cliff Barnes in 1966, with the Stones, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Queen all recording there, as well as the Beatles, The Small Faces, Procul Harum, Traffic, Hawkwind and others.
Other recent projects of Pat's have included the world premiere of the string quartet “A Poet’s Calendar” by long-time friend Derek Wadsworth, which took place at the Riverhouse Barn studio in Walton on Thames, Surrey, on the 10th March 2007, with Pat leading his own revived Quartet Pro Musica, and the first live performances of Quartets 1 and 2 by Jazz drummer and composer Tony Kinsey. As things stand, Pat plays in two quartets, the previously mentioned Pro Musica, and the Leonardo, formed in 1993.
Despite having worked as a professional musician for more than half a century, Pat is still a force within the music industry, and has recently spoken on television and elsewhere on his work with the Beatles. He also paints now under the quaint monicker of Clancy, the middle name he once rejected. Furthermore, he's still winning up to two races every Sunday for his local sailing club. There seems to be no end to the man's almost preternatural energy and force of will. Although there's no hard and fast evidence that Pat has Scandinavian blood, research related to the Norwegians who emigrated to the American Midwest - and particularly Minnesota -from about the mid-19th Century onwards, reveals that one of the characteristics of the inhabitants of the Halling Valley known as Hallings and speaking a dialect known as Halling is firmness “in thoughts and beliefs”, so that he would “rather break than bend”. This in the words of the Norwegian-American writer Syver Swenson Rodning, who in 1917 took first prize in an essay set by a man called Hallingen called “A Halling is a Halling wherever he is”. The Hallings themselves settled primarily in Spring Grove, Minnesota, with traces of their subculture surviving into the 1930s. Perhaps then, alone among the three children born to Phyllis Mary Halling, Patrick is a true Halling with roots deep in the Hallingdal in Norway's Buskerud County where the Halling Valley River lies.