IT IS more than 40 years since Irish composer Gilbert O’Sullivan first topped the music charts and began his journey towards pop stardom. During a hugely success period in the early 1970s the man born Raymond Edward O’Sullivan in Waterford sold in excess of 10 million records worldwide and became one of the biggest names of the decade.
After signing with Gordon Mills - manager of Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck - and his label MAM Records in the late 1960s Gilbert scored a UK Top 10 hit with ‘Nothing Rhymed’. He followed this up with No 1s in the US and Canada with ‘Alone Again (Naturally )’ and ‘Clair’, respectively, and a European Top 10 with ‘Get Down’.
In 1972 O’Sullivan was named top British male singer by Record Mirror and a year later reached a career pinnacle when he was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Song of the Year and Record of the Year categories. He was awarded the prestigious Recording Industry Association of America gold disc in September 1973.
Gilbert had minor hits in the late 1970s and early 1980s with ‘Matrimony’ and ‘What’s In A Kiss’. However between 1982 and 1987 most of his energies were expended on court proceeding against his former manager for loss of earnings. After lengthy legal battles O’Sullivan was eventually awarded £7 million in damages.
He completed a remarkable return to the higher reaches of the charts in 2004 when the compilation The Berry Vest of Gilbert O’Sullivan reached the British Top 20. Four years later he headlined The Pyramid Stage at the Glastonbury Festival alongside The Verve.
O’Sullivan is currently readying his new album and undertakes an extensive Irish tour this month which includes Galway, on Monday March 15 at 8pm.
If O’Sullivan’s parents had not emigrated from the southern Irish city of Waterford to Wiltshire in southwest England his life could well have turned out differently. The shy young man tuned in to listen to pop music on pirate station Radio Luxembourg and almost immediately felt a connection with a wider world outside his new home in Swindon.
“The Beatles, of course, were the primary influence,” he tells me. “My friends were all into Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley but I was about two years too young for all that. Then when The Beatles and The Searchers and the whole Liverpool Beat thing came along it sort of opened up a door for me and I thought ‘If they can do it, I can do it!’ I loved popular music and really wanted to be involved in it.”
In the mid-1960s he quit his job as a postal clerk and began writing songs full-time. In 1967 he signed a publishing deal with CBS Records and it was then the label manager changed his name from Raymond to Gilbert, a play of words on comic opera writers Gilbert and Sullivan.
Also at this time O’Sullivan adopted his ‘Bisto Kid’ image of grey flannel suit, flat cap, school boy tie, football socks, and hobnail boots.
“I started making records in ’67 and at that time you had people like James Taylor and Carole King coming through and you also had Cat Stevens on the horizon,” Gilbert says. “The California sound was going on and The Beatles were still big and then in ’72 you had Glam Rock with Marc Bolan and Bowie.
“I just wrote songs and recorded them and I had no idea what I was getting in to or what category I would be placed under. I pretty much did my own thing and I never really thought about how it would fit in. If I’d looked like James Taylor with the blue jeans and the long hair I probably would have been far more successful than I was. I didn’t care though that people didn’t like the way I looked because it was always about the songs for me.”
It just so happened that people latched on to those songs - ‘Nothing Rhymed’, ‘Alone Again (Naturally )’ and ‘Get Down’ - in their millions. In late 1972 O’Sullivan emulated his heroes The Beatles when he achieved massive chart success in America. Yet the young Irishman remained grounded throughout.
“For me success wasn’t about having a Top 10 hit all around the world,” he states. “I was just happy being recognised where I lived and I never saw beyond that. So when I was No 1 in America for six weeks everyone was more excited about it than I was. It’s only in retrospect that you realise how significant it was because people like Robbie Williams, Boyzone, and Westlife have never made it in America. I’m pleased that I was able to achieve that level of success.”
Tickets available from Zhivago Records and Radisson Blu and from Ticketmaster on 0818 719300 or www.ticketmaster.ie
