My Life in Music - An Interview with Vic Rust

Back in 1997, when Titanic was released into cinemas, I remember seeing an interview with the film's director James Cameron in which he said there is no point in retelling a story unless you are going to cover new ground! Cliff told me much the same when recording a cover version of an original hit, whether one of his own or by another artist. It has to be different to what's gone before. That is certainly true of Vic Rust's book on Cliff's recordings, which was published almost twenty years after me and Peter Lewry had researched, written and published our book on Cliff's recordings sessions. What Vic's book did was go one stage further by literally discussing and analysing every song Cliff had recorded in detail, something the sessions book didn't cover! The result was a very different book.

Although most would consider Vic a researcher and writer, he himself considers himself a musician with good reason! In a recent conversation I had with him, he told me why, and when looking back on his past, it's easy to understand.

As Vic told me, he grew up with music all around – quite literally. "My father, Brian, was the foremost vintage jazz and popular dance music discographer, who worked from home, had a weekly radio show on the fledgling Capital Radio, and regularly wrote sleeve notes, articles and reviews for a wide variety of labels and artists and genres. The point is that I can’t really remember a time when there wasn’t some sort of music – usually his beloved jazz – playing as the soundtrack to my youth."

Vic was born in the year when Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday was packing them in at cinemas across the country, and Gerry and the Pacemakers were at number one with How Do You Do It? (curiously enough, his twin sister has no interest in performing music, although she does like listening to pop music. Vic's musical tastes are wide and varied, so maybe this adds a footnote to the nature versus nurture debate?)

"Because of my dad’s job, I was steeped in music from birth, so it came as no surprise to me (on reflection) that my future would be welded firmly to the art. My earliest clear musical memory was overhearing a record that my dad happened to be reviewing, and which stopped me in my tracks as I listened enthralled. I crept into my dad’s study and sat on the shabby visitor’s chair and asked if he could play it again. And again. I loved the sound of the guitars, the timbre of the lead singer’s voice, the blending of the exquisite harmony vocals and the perfect rhythm... That record was Blue Turns to Grey by Cliff and the Shadows and it holds a special place in my heart because it set me on the course that has culminated in what I’m doing today - researching and writing!

"My upbringing was unconventional from the point of view that my dad worked from home and drip-fed me music, when I went to school, it was a source of immense confusion to realize that no-one else’s father in my class did the same thing, but it also helped me to understand how fortunate that, by dint of hard work and steel-eyed focus, he was able to make a living out of doing what he loved. And it sowed the seeds for me to consider it as a sideline in my later life, although it was not something that I was immediately conscious of. Instead, I became a voracious consumer of the records that my parents had in their collection, from the performances of classics of Beethoven, Bach, Rachmaninov, Debussy and so on to the comedy gold of Allan Sherman’s parodies, Flanders and Swann, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Anna Russell and Victor Borge.

"And, in between, I listened avidly to the radio, swept up in the joy of the welter of popular music, and especially rock and roll and its derivatives. At the same time, there were some fantastic books being published, such as The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles. I read it from cover to cover, such was the thrall the information had over me, and I started looking for patterns and cross-referenced information, writing lists of the bits of details that weren’t in there, such as the composers of the titles. It was my first toe-dip into the world of research (in the days when the local library was the source rather than the ease of the internet today).

At the same time, it was established that I had a rather good treble voice. Inevitably, I was pushed by my mother to audition for the local church choir – hated that bit, but I loved the performance of some of the most powerful choral pieces in the world. As I started secondary school, it was obvious that I was going to join the school choir, and I was deemed to be good enough to be asked to be part of the more elite Motet Choir, which afforded me my first journey out of England as we toured Germany.

"At home, music enveloped me every waking hour as usual, not the least because I had taken up learning to play the piano, clarinet and guitar – although not simultaneously! And my dad still received records and tapes on a regular basis to review. Once he’d done that, he passed them over to us and I would happily sit listening to them, reading the liner notes, the composers, the music publishers, copyright notices, everything was important and interesting to me! I remember when World Records produced a six-disc boxed set called The Cliff Richard Story, that was all I played for a fortnight, as I was introduced to not only Cliff’s early work, but also to the Shadows’ witty and wonderful instrumentals.

"But I also found another skill, which would help me in my future career – I could identify what an instrument was, even in an ensemble performance. My dad recognized this and I was pulled in to help him in his research for his books on jazz and dance music. “Was that a pizzicato violin or a banjo?” I remember my dad smiling with pride when I was able to identify the instrumentation. I also helped him sift through poorly-written session cards from RCA and EMI that were falling apart to pluck out the key pieces of information. There was nothing so exciting as seeing my name written in a proper book for the first time!

"I’ve always been a sucker for a great harmony and especially where they are performed using the human voice (this is why Cliff is especially appealing – he does such a great line in vocal harmony). So I jumped at the chance to be a founder member of a barbershop group (there were around twelve of us, so think Kings Singers), which was called The Calico Consort (after a piece we performed at the first concert called Calico Pie and because of its alliterative qualities). What set this apart from the school choirs was that it was more intimate – no instrumentation to support us and the opportunities for solos. It was also cheap to put on gigs!

"In the summer of 1981, just as the incumbents were about to fling themselves into higher education at university, the group went on tour to Germany. It was a great experience (even though I had severe laryngitis on the last day) and we were sad to bid farewell to the Calico Consort. Then I had the idea of going into the recording studio to set some of our repertoire down for posterity. This was where my fascination with records and the recording process was given a further fillip. In the September, I had organized three evening sessions for the group at a local studio. I was in the role of performer, soloist… and producer. I just loved sitting behind that mixing desk and working through the tapes and putting the record, Patchwork, together. So much fun was had – particularly where I was concerned – we agreed to get together each year for performances and it spawned two further records with me in the production chair – Moonlight and Magnolia and Calico Christmas.

While I was at university in Colchester, naturally one of the clubs I joined was the University of Essex Choir, which put on a performance at the end of the first and second semesters. This was where I met Richard Cooke, who directed the performances and was also the newly-appointed director of the London Philharmonic Choir. I had subsidized vocal coaching from him and, as a result, when I applied to join the LPC after university (as far as I know) I was the only member who didn’t have to go through the audition process.

"What the experience afforded me opened up completely new and exciting worlds for me. I remember the first time I went through the stage door at the lovely Royal Albert Hall, performing at the BBC Proms, appearing on television for the first time, looking out at the audience at the Royal Festival Hall, singing solos… the adrenalin rush was phenomenal and I was smitten.

"But the best part of it was my involvement in so many different recordings, nearly all of them in Studio 1 at Abbey Road, and occasionally in the hallowed quietness of Studio 2, where the Beatles and Cliff and the Shadows had laid down the majority of their tracks until the seventies. I was fascinated and a little over-awed. It was this experience that fed into some of the plot of Puppet on a String.

Unfortunately, life kind of got in the way and, in the mid-nineties, I had to leave the choir. I was the Business Manager then, but rehearsing and recording and performing in London, living in Kent and having a day-job at Heathrow Airport was just too much stress and, after much heart-searching I left.

"I was in the Tonbridge W. H. Smiths when I found The Complete Recording Sessions by Nigel Goodall and Peter Lewry. I had maintained my interest in Cliff’s music and the minutiae of his recording process and resultant records, so it was as if this book had been specifically written for me.

"I wrote a couple of novels and then worked on The Moody Blues Encyclopaedia as an exercise in maintaining my interest in research and writing. It also gave me an unnecessary excuse to listen to music at every opportunity! Come 2009, the world was in financial straits and I took the opportunity to abscond from Heathrow and take redundancy.

"It allowed me to focus on my next project, which became The Cliff Richard Recording Catalogue, helping me to visualize Cliff and the Shadows recording in Abbey Road and how the records were developed. And that has largely been my life for just over a decade. Having interviewed Cliff on a number of occasions, Nigel invited me to submit the sleeve notes for Cliff's 2017 Stronger Thru the Years album as he felt I was better suited to write what Warners wanted than he was, which culminated in being asked to write the discography appendix for his 2020 autobiography, The Dreamer. I have made great friends with the Cliff community, and, in particular, with Nigel, who has been so helpful with background information from his time as co-curator of Cliff’s EMI back catalogue."

  

Vic is often asked if he has finished with his work on documenting Cliff's recordings! Like Ernst Jorgensen who looks after Elvis Presley's catalogue, the answer in no! Not as long as Cliff continues to release singles and albums, there will always be something to write about, and collect more information to add to what would be the fourth edition of his book. As long as there is a market for more editions of his most successful book, then his work won't be finished! And it's not just confined to Sir Cliff! He is currently working on an Olivia Newton-John recording catalogue, and along with me and Juliette from Leo's Den is involved with our joint plight to get Cliff and Olivia's long lost 1972 TV special, The Case, released on DVD and Blu ray. And despite his fascination to write about Cliff's recordings, he still considers himself a musician at heart, but now a musician who writes about music!

Vic Rust is the author of The Cliff Richard Recording Catalogue, and the editor-in-chief of the charity book, Thank You for a Lifetime – To Sir, with Love.