Mike Batt
Mike Batt was born in Southampton on 6 February 1949. As a
teenager he played piano and organ in several school bands and
sang in a duo called That Lady's Twins.
He also played organ in a strip club and wrote advertising
jingles for Smarties and Guinness.
 Moving
to London in 1967 he offered his original compositions to a
number of record labels, and by 1968, at the age of 19, he was
made A&R Manager at Liberty Records where he produced The
Groundhogs' debut album, Scratching The Surface and Hand
Me Down My Old Walking Stick by 12-string guitar
American blues renegade Big Joe Williams, and became the
keyboard player in avant-psychedelics Hapshash & The
Coloured Coat.
In 1970 he formed his own company (Batt Songs Ltd), invented
The Mike Batt Orchestra and began releasing the Portrait Of
. . . series of cover-version records (eg: Portrait
Of The Rolling Stones), featuring songs by Bob Dylan, Simon
& Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, and The Rolling Stones performed
by The Mike Batt Orchestra.
A legend was born in 1973 when Batt was commissioned to write
the theme tune to the children\'s television show The
Wombles.
Over the next 18 months he proved a veritable one-man hit
factory, churning out The Wombling Song, Remember You're A
Womble, Banana Rock, Minuetto Allegretto, Super Womble, Let's
Womble To The Party Tonight, Keep On Wombling, Wombling In The
Rain, Superwombling, and I Wish It Could Be A Wombling
Merry Christmas Every Day (with Ron Wood).
1975 finally saw Batt leave Wimbledon Common to perform his
new solo single, Summertime City, on Top Of
The Pops -in an afro, scarf and union jack
platform heels. The single reached number four.
Production duties for Steeleye Span's All Around My Hat,
Elkie Brooks' Lilac Wine and The Kursaal Flyers' Golden
Mile album took up most of 1976, and in 77 Batt released Schizophonia
- an Arabian classical-rock solo album, inspired by
Moroccan freedom fighters under Mohammed V.
The following year he wrote and produced the film score to
Elmo Williams' Arabic folklore endeavour, Caravans, in
conjunction with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, picking up
an Ivor Novello Award along the way.
The close of the decade found him producing Bright Eyes, sung
by Art Garfunkel for the Watership Down soundtrack. It
went to number one in the UK for six weeks, sold 11 million
copies worldwide, and won Mike Batt his second Ivor Novello
Award.
He celebrated by releasing the Tarot Suite album by
Mike Batt & Friends. "Friends" in this instance
included Colin Blunstone, Rory Gallagher, Roger Chapman and the
London Symphony Orchestra . . .
In 1980 Mike bought a 1931-built 20 metre yacht called Braemer,
restored it and then spent two and a half years sailing around
the world with his (first) wife Wendy and their two daughters,
Samantha and Robin, taking in the West Indies, Caracas,
Venezuela, the Panama Canal, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico and
Los Angeles.
He interrupted his jaunt briefly to travel to Holland and
produce Barbara Dickson's All For A Song album and Six
Days In Berlin for the Berlin Opera Orchestra, before
returning to the boat and writing a musical called Zero Zero.
Over the next ten years Batt was responsible for writing (or
co-writing) a plethora of successful songs, including A
Winter's Tale (David Essex), Please Don't Fall In Love (Cliff
Richard), Soldier Song and If The Lights Go Out (The
Hollies), Sometimes When I'm Dreaming (Art Garfunkel),
and Dragon Dance (the musical accompaniment for
British World Championship figure skaters Barber and Slaton).
He also wrote and produced the concept album The Hunting
Of The Snark featuring the London Symphony Orchestra,
Roger Daltrey, Art Garfunkel, Julian Lennon, Cliff Richard,
Captain Sensible, Deniece Williams, Stephane Grappelli and
George Harrison.
In 1994 he received a Royal commission to write music for the
inauguration of the Channel Tunnel, and two years later composed
a piece for the Queen's 50th wedding anniversary. It was
performed by the massed bands of the Scots, Welsh, Irish,
Coldstream and Grenadier Guards, together with 100 pipers.
The Royal connection continued when, in 2000, Mike performed
with The Wombles at the Queen Mother's 100th birthday party.
Since then he has continued to compose, arrange, conduct, and
produce at a prolific rate, as well as discovering and producing
Katie Melua.
In 2002 Mike released a rock & roll classical album
called Classical Graffiti with his new group, The
Planets. The album contained a track of silence, called A
Minute's Silence and credited to Batt/Cage. A dispute
with John Cage\'s publishers erupted over plagiarism of the 1952
Cage work 4' 33" and debate ensued over who owned
the copyright on silence.
Mike attempted to "prove" his silence was radically
different by staging performances of both works at Baden Powell
House in Central London, but the dispute was resolved via an
out-of-court "six figure sum" donation by Mike to the
John Cage Trust in a gesture of respect.
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