THE SIMON PARK ORCHESTRA – “Eye Level”
How to evaluate a theme tune from a TV programme I’ve never seen? All I have is the name and this track. I asked my Dad if he remembered a show called Van Der Valk, which would have been popular around when I was born. “Yes!” I felt hopeful. “It had a very good theme song.” Ah. He told me it was about a Dutch detective and returned to his chess problem.
It is a good theme song, stately in general and rousing in particular (is that a zither I hear, busying itself in the background?). It doesn’t sing to me of Holland, or puzzles of detection – in fact there’s something oddly generic about its themeyness. It might as happily sit behind the credits to a wistful sitcom of middle age, or a bumptious country house drama, as behind a policier. Perhaps that’s why it got to number one.
Off to YouTube! The credit sequence helps a bit – van der Valk is steely-eyed under a shock of blonde hair, observing the goings-on of Amsterdam (LOOK VIEWERS IT’S AMSTERDAM) with a hard-won detachment. The flourish mid-way works well too, the self-satisfied beauty of old Europe hiding (no doubt) a weekly cesspit of corruption. Well, now I have a profile to fit the suspect’s name though I’m little closer to establishing a motive (for purchase).
(I started listening to the charts just as the era when TV themes got singles releases was ending – I can just about remember The Life And Times Of David Lloyd George and one of my first 7″ singles was the 1980 re-recording of the Dr Who theme (did not chart). Themes in the Top 40 feels like quite a likeable element in the popscape, especially given my romantic view of the charts as a kind of bazaar for pop culture concerns, but then I didn’t have to live with them.)
4
“Abel and his brother/Fightin’ one another”…another good ‘un from the Mitch Murray/Peter Callendar team. Surprised that it only got to #37 (though it did make #26 when it was re-released after, erm, another Tony Christie re-release). Also not disgracefully rendered karaoke-style by Jude Law in that otherwise ghastly improv gangster film with Ray Winstone, Kathy Burke etc. whose title I can’t recall offhand but it was something like Dodgy Geezers Only Killing Their Own.
Actually it was called Love, Honour And Obey. And a right royal load of rope it was too. Sort of Carry On Goodfellas.
Try as I might, I can’t make the Zaccheus stuff (#71) fit with the tune to “Eye Level”. Or rather, I can manage the first verse, but not the second.
Youtube has a clip from the 1973 TOTP Christmas Special, in which the tune has been re-scored to last for not much more than 90 seconds. Which scarcely seems worth the effort of forking out on matching orange polo-neck sweaters for the orchestra…
Peter Snow there on second violin…
…and is that Bob Wellings from Nationwide, doing a spot of moonlighting?
More theme tunes – Wings’ “Zoo Gang”, but this was only a B-sider. And then there was Mrs Brian May…
Not for another thirteen years there wasn’t, unless she sang on the Play Away theme with Brian Cant, Toni Arthur, Jeremy Irons and the rest.
And we were still a couple of years away from Wings’ re-working of the Crossroads theme. (“Crossroads must move with the times, says TV’s “Nolly” Gordon.”)
I nurse great affection for “Sleepy Shores”, “Galloping Home” and the theme from The Onedin Line.
I get quite emotional when I listen to “Sleepy Shores” and not just because it reminds me of being a kid; it’s the same feeling of knowing cosiness as protection – the world is burning but here you’re safe and all is peaceful – that I discern in “Moulin Rouge,” one of the very early number ones; a lullaby for those who knew what true horror was only a handful of years before.
On another tangent, there was a discussion programme on BBC 4 last Saturday with Andrew Marr and a panel ranging from Andrew Roberts to Polly Toynbee ranking the 20th century Prime Ministers. Each PM was covered in a short profile featuring incidental music, the most notable of which was the Theme from “A Summer Place” for Macmillan, again the cosiness of the “never had it so good” era but this time with the dramatic irony of knowing what was around the corner for him and us.
I think that was another record which topped every chart except the official one, but yes it’s the same thing – Percy Faith (yay Canada!), even though I associate him more directly with the theme tune to The Virginian since it was on every Friday at 6:45 in my youth.
Prime Ministers – I bet you they forgot Sir Alec Douglas Home. Everybody does.
I read Pearson’s substantial biography on this most unexpected of Premiers and Home himself recounted a tale about travelling back up to Berwick (and from there on to his estate in Coldstream) by rail and talking to an elderly lady, who remembered Alec as Heath’s Foreign Secretary. They spoke pleasantly until the lady alighted at Newcastle. As she got off she smiled at Home and said:
“It’s been lovely to talk to you. It’s a shame you were never Prime Minister.”
“Well actually I was,” smiled back Home. “But only for a short while!”
No, they remembered everyone including Bonar Law. Who can forget the Beatles’ press conference in the US when they were asked if they had a message for the Prime Minister, and Lennon said “Hello, Alec”?
I’ll have to hear that documentary, not least to hear what song each PM gets.
Alec Douglas Home spoke at my school in 1986, and I can remember being quite impressed – he seemed quite sensible and fair-minded. My 13 year old self wasn’t chosen to ask a question, which probably just as well (would have asked him what he thought of his representation by satirists). One pupil asked him if he thought that Hitler (who Home had met in the thirties) had had a bad press, which gives you an impression of just how right-wing public schoolboys were in the eighties!
Soon afterwards, Harold Wilson gave a talk and was obviously completely senile, which was just depressing. The look of devoted suffering on Mary Wilson’s face I don’t think I will ever forget.
Alec of course was the last member of the House of Lords to become Prime Minister, as after Macmillan resigned, he sent for by Brenda whilst still The Earl of Home. He had to win a by-election in Kinross and West Perthshire subsequent to entering Number Ten, an astonishing fact. What if he had lost?
He was also the only PM to play first class cricket and was also PM here when Kennedy got stoked. Years later, “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in” had an item suggesting that Elvis Presley could have been the assassin – “The King of Rock and Roll on the Grassy Knoll”!
Also worthy of mention – in the charts at the same time as this and missing out narrowly on at least a number 2 slot the debut of one David Essex with the mighty dubtastic ‘Rock On’ which IIRC featured on the soundtrack LP of ‘That’ll Be The Day’ without actually featuring in the excellent film of the same name.
Number three for two weeks, firstly behind Donny and Wizzard, and secondly behind Wizzard and the rudely gatecrashing Sweet.
If any Popular readers are feeling rich at the moment and are fired with unquenchable curiosity about the show, I see that Network release an 11 DVD box set – ‘The Complete Van Der Valk’ (“features all 5 series plus specials”) – next month. It retails at £99.99.
That’s “unquenchable tragedy” I think, Billy, my boy…
That documentary ranking the 20th century PMs was repeated on BBC4 last night, and I managed to note most of the music used. In some cases I didn’t recognise it, so maybe someone who’s less of an ignoramus than me on classical music can help out – it’s on again in the wee small hours of Friday morning if you want to record it!
Salisbury: Men of Harlech, played by a Boer War-style military band
Balfour: Karelia Suite – Sibelius
Campbell-Bannerman: didn’t recognise it at all!
Asquith: ditto
Lloyd George: ditto
Bonar Law: ditto
Baldwin: Rhapsody in Blue – Gershwin
MacDonald: Song of the Dawn – Paul Whiteman
Chamberlain: God Bless You Mr Chamberlain (can’t identify the singer – an unironic music-hall tribute from the time of the Munich agreement)
Churchill: Jupiter, from the Planets Suite – Holst
Attlee: see Campbell-Bannerman
Eden: ?? – a sax-based instrumental, like a less demented Lord Rockingham’s XI
Macmillan: Theme from “A Summer Place” – Percy Faith
Douglas-Home: You Really Got Me – The Kinks
Wilson: Reflections Of My Life – Marmalade
Heath: ?? – a piano piece played by Heath himself.
Callaghan: Let’s Stick Together – Roxy Music
Thatcher: She’s Got Balls – AC/DC (!!)
Major: Things Can Only Get Better – D:Ream (!)
Blair: Roll With It (and Supersonic) – Oasis
They didn’t cover Brown, since it’s too soon to rank him and they were concentrating on the 20th century anyway, but after the events of last weekend I had Roy Orbison’s “Running Scared” going through my head…
“Let Me Think About It,” surely?
i think the sibelius deserves a bit of a (!) also — exactly how active was balfour in finnish agitation for independence?
It would take some researching ability to come up with a suitable tune for Bonar Law – six months in 1923!
Last year’s much-delayed ITV Harold Wilson documentary used ‘The Rise & Fall of Flingel Bunt’ by The Shadows as ‘Harold’s Theme’, which worked really well.
For Bonar Law they could have used “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out” – Bessie Smith’s recording came out in 1923.
“Nobody Knows You When You’re Bonar Law”
I could be embarrassingly wrong about the Sibelius – it was a classical piece that was used as a TV current affairs theme, and it wasn’t Nantucket Sleighride!
My colleague who’s a 60s radio comedy fan tells me Bona Law was a legal practice featured in “Round the Horne”.
And another thread crashes through the 100-posts barrier!
HORNE: Will you take my case?
JULIAN: Well, it depends on what it is. We’ve got a criminal practice that takes up most of our time.
HORNE: Yes, but apart from that – I need lega1 advice.
SANDY: Ooh – isn’t he bold?
It wouldn’t count as his theme, being from 1969, but Alexandria Good Time by Robin Gibb mentions Bonar Law – Robin being something of a history buff. Sadly for BL, it was on the flip of the exceedingly rare withdrawn version of Saved By The Bell. So instead of being tagged to a pan-European number one, no one’s ever heard the forgotten PM’s only mention in pop. Apart from the ‘lucky’ fellow who paid something daft like 500 quid for it on ebay.
Marcello @ 99 xpost – Bit late for a correction, but Bessie Smith’s NLYWYDAO was recorded in ’29. (Wikipedia is wrong.) The song appears to have been written in ’23, which may be the source of the confusion.
Ah!
Wikipedia USELESSpedia morelike!
In his entry for The Shadows’ “Wonderful Land”, Tom pegs the number as evoking “a Sixties that ended up…not happening”. It’s a claim one might make for “Eye Level”, with reference to Europe in the Seventies. A calm, prosperous, European future beckoned. From this distance (middle-age now, mid-teens then), it evokes more the end of an era.
I wonder if anyone can help? I have christmas lyrics in my head whenever I hear ‘Eye Level’ and I hope to god I heard them and didn’t make them up… does anyone else recognise these lyrics that go along with the main theme of Eye Level? If so, please let me know where they came from…
“Ring a bell, bang a drum,
Sing Happy Christmas Day
For the Lord Jesus Christ is born
Ring a bell, bang a drum,
Sing happy, happy blessed morn”
(Eye Level Carol)
There were shepherds in the fields
Who were watching their sheep
The night was cold
But the skies were clear
An angel told them that Christ was born
And he lay in a village near
“Ring a bell, bang a drum,
Sing Happy Christmas morn
For the Lord Jesus Christ is born
Ring a bell, bang a drum,
Sing happy, happy, happy
Happy blessed morn”
Off went the shepherds
Hurrying fast
They went along the Bethlehem way
There with the baby
Was Mary and Joseph
He was lying in a manger’s hay
“Ring a bell, bang a drum,
Sing Happy Christmas morn
For the Lord Jesus Christ is born
Ring a bell, bang a drum,
Sing happy, happy, happy
Happy blessed morn”
This to the shepherds was a wonderful sight
Here on earth
was the Newborn King
High in the heavens
Was a glorious star
And they heard many angels sing
“Ring a bell, bang a drum,
Sing Happy Christmas morn
For the Lord Jesus Christ is born
Ring a bell, bang a drum,
Sing happy, happy, happy
Happy blessed morn”
It is very addictive… my friend’s kids sang it at their school service last week and it’s still floating in my head!
That Network 11-disc box set is now £18 on Amazon, and I’ve been watching it for professional television studies purposes. There’s an unforgettable moment in the 1972 series. A corpse is dragged out of the canal. Van Der Valk examines the body. “Expensive shirt. Well manicured hands. It appears our dead friend was a homosexual” he informs Inspector Kroon. A few minutes later, we get a montage of the two policemen making enquiries in various Amsterdam gay bars, to the sound of ‘Eye Level’ specially arranged for wah-wah and xylophone…
Erithian @101
You were right about Sibelius and his “Karelia Suite” if it was the piece used by a current affairs programme I think the programme was “This Week” which used the Intermezzo from it.
My dad used to have a “Favourite TV Themes” album in the early 70s with that theme on it – he’d bought it mainly for “The Oneiden Line” theme (which was incidentally from “Spartacus” by Khachaturian).
This is my favorite version of “Eye level”. Our local radio station used to play it during the morning rush. I was never able to buy a copy of it. I tried at my local music store one week and was told that it was not released yet. The next week, I was told it was out of print. I even considered trying to buy the rights to it just to publish it again! I didn’t even know it was the theme for a TV program. I still don’t have this. If it is on a CD somewhere, I’d sure like to know so I can buy it!
#6 (somewhat belatedly). How reassuring. My first thought on hearing this (for the very first time, right now) was “blimey, this makes me think of the theme from `Crown Court’”- which I used to love watching as a very wee kid, usually at my grandma’s. in the late 80s. Now I see…
Who’dave thought it. I quite like this, as far as TV themes go.
My Dad wrote the lyrics to ‘Ring a bell’ He was a Vicar and my Mum recorded the track. She was a teacher and this was written for her school at the time. This was about 35 years ago. I still sing it in my head too
Eye Level Carol : Nos 107, 108
From Canon Bernard Johns, Chepstow. GB
It was I who wrote the words of the Carol set to Eye Level, for the Marlborough Road Infants School Cardiff Christmas Presentation about 1980, the year Eye Level theme was first released (I think). The words quoted in 108 are not quite accurate:
Now there were shepherds in the fields who were keeping their sheep
The night was cold but the sky was clear
An angel he told them Messiah was born
And he lay in the village near.
Ring a bell, bang a drum, sing Happy Christmas Day
For the Lord Jesus Christ is born;
Ring a bell, bang a drum, sing Happy, Happy blessed morn.
Off went the shepherds, two three and four
It was along the Bethlehem way
There was the baby with Mary his mother
Wrapped warm in the new-mown hay.
Ring a bell…
This to the shepherds was a wonderful sight
For here on earth was their new-born king,
High in the heavens was a glorious sound
And they heard many angels sing.
Ring a bell…
Way to go, Bernard!!
Johnnie Walker gave this a spin on yesterday’s SOTS during the Pink Floyd Special, in which a certain album from 1973 was extensively discussed. Mention of Van der Valk there came none. Johnnie introduced it by saying that.. “and this was in the singles chart in 1973″. Afterwards, Johnnie simply gave the name of the piece and the performing orchestra, adding “that brought back a lot of memories”. What a bloody capital bloke!
My initial contribution to this thread (Sep ’07) mentioned my attraction back in the day to Joanna Dunham, who played Van der Valk’s wife. An absolutely lovely and classy woman. Whilst allowing myself the guity pleasure of an old episode of “Sykes” the other day, I watched as Eric turned up in a doctors’ waiting room with the ever-sneering Mr Brown (“Fotheringay” to many of us) and the bloke who played the bent jockey in “Hi-Di-Hi” before being called in to see the doctor. This turns out to be the aforementioned Joanna and Sykes is immediately smitten. The script then sinks into a very childish storyline involving Eric feigning illness so as to get a home visit from the delightful lady doctor. He also has one or two Walter Mitty dreams involving a brave Eric coming to the aid of Joanna in distress. Hattie, meanwhile, simply stands to one side muttering “Oh, Er-ikkk!” every five minutes, which is all she does every week anyway, of course.
I sat through all this with a smile on my face. Firstly, nodding sagely that the twelve year-old Waldo had zeroed in on Joanna all those years ago, and secondly, my opinion being re-enforced as to how Van der Valk managed to snare such a srummy wife in the first place.
Happy Days! (and Happy New Year, everyone!)
Joanna was indeed lovely, although technically a scrummy “second” wife, Arlette being played by a different actress in the first series
I am grateful for this, Conrad. Barry Foster must have zeroed in on Joanna too, then!!
Re: the earlier posts about the tune being set to lyrics, that was also done in the eighties to advertise Oranjeboom lager (which I saw in a Maidstone pub only a year or two ago).
And apologies if this has been commented on already, but I don’t think there’s been a (purely) instrumental Number One since, has there?
“since” = Bunny action though.
I will limit my reply to “there was at least one, it got to number one for two hours or thereabouts…”
Actually, after a quick skim through, I reckon I found one in 1999.
Lazarus – The first track Mark is referring to is explained at comment # 76 on the “December ’63 (Oh What A Night)” thread back in 1976.