Interview: The Legendary Leslie Bricusse - Talking PURE IMAGINATION!

It's not every day you're invited to the home of a bona fide legend - but BWW:UK editor-in-chief Carrie Dunn got the chance to do that when she visited songwriter Leslie Bricusse in London this week...

Leslie Bricusse is about to launch his book 'Pure Imagination', which he calls, rather brilliantly, "a sorta-biography".

"It's a good word for a lyricist!" he laughs. "It's not really an autobiography. It's about incidents rather than my entire life, and it's about other people as much as me. I just put down the things I remembered!"

The book is interspersed with anecdotes and quotes from some of his very famous friends - the likes of Dame Julie Andrews,Elton John and Michael Caine - and Bricusse states at the outset of one of his introductory chapters that he will be dropping names "like fragrant rose petals" throughout.

"All the reviews would be about the name-dropping, so I've headed it off at the pass," he says with a wry grin. "Everybody has been very nice."

He writes fascinatingly about the trial of the songwriter, always searching for the moment of perfection.

"You don't have a deadline to finish it," he explains. "If you can't get a word at first, it's always waiting somewhere, and it's just a case of finding it. It's amazing how many shades of meaning you find with practically the same word, and you think that's not quite what I mean - you either find two words that meld to be the right pairing, or one word of four syllables that is the word you're searching for. Seek and ye shall find."

And he writes glowingly of people who have inspired him, beginning with the Gershwins, but also Cole Porter, who he describes as "the one-man songwriter I admire most is. I learnt more from studying his writing than from any other person. We met him - it was a surprise. He was charming, and we spent an afternoon with him. I was looking at him and thinking, 'Is it possible this one man has written all the songs, the ones I lived with all my life?'"

Bricusse is also working closely with the cast of 'Pure Imagination', a celebration of his work, which begins previews tonight, opens at the St James Theatre next week and stars Julie Atherton, Dave Willetts, Siobhan McCarthy, Niall Sheehy and Giles Terera.

Of course some very big names have performed Bricusse's work, and he speaks with such great affection about his collaborations with Anthony Newley, such as 'Stop The World, I Want To Get Off'.

"To have a collaborator who is a singer is a great luxury - but there was a disdvantage in that every time we had a success, he was trapped in that for 18 months or so, so I'd work with other people or on my own. Eventually his management went for the money - he went to Vegas, and I think he was up there for too long - it affected his film, stage and recording career, and it killed our working relationship. The last thing he said to me when he was in 'Scrooge' at the Dominion was, 'My greatest regret is that we didn't write more.' We only wrote five scores. We sat there together and songs just appeared. We had so much fun."

Finding other collaborators often relied on serendipity. He recalls, "When I was at 20th Century Fox, I had an office and would go in occasionally, and suddenly find myself a resident lyricist - Gene Kelly came to my office and introduced himself as if I didn't know who he was! I wrote one song with Andre Previn - he was about to leave Hollywood and had done all these movies but he wanted to be a classical conductor - and he told me to work with John Williams, and of course he was right. I had a lovely time with John, who I've now known for 50 years. And I had the chance to work with Richard Rodgers and I couldn't, because I was under contract. I would have loved that. His music was just incredible."

He's keen that his own musical theatre scores should be sung traditionally, rather than with a rock'n'roll tinge, and is scornful of performers who "sing above the note, below the note, all around it and then the note itself. The traditional singers are best for what I do."

One of Bricusse and Newley's most celebrated scores was for the movie 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory', starring Gene Wilder, but although they were interested in doing so, they were never permitted by Roald Dahl's estate to turn it into a stage show. It has transpired in recent months that after Roald Dahl left the creative team, he decided never to work with anyone involved in the film's production again - including the songwriters.

"It's a different take on it," he says politely. "They came to us for the one song, 'Pure Imagination'. Newley and I went to see Roald Dahl's wife to ask if we could write some more songs and turn it into a show, and she said no, and we could never understand it. It wasn't until last year that we found out why. It was a great shame."

So which of his pieces of work is he proudest of?

"As a complete score, I love 'Sherlock Holmes' - but we cast it badly," he admits. "We put Ron Moody into the part - a great Fagin, not a great Sherlock Holmes. I was in Sloane Square one day, and a voice behind me said, 'And WHY didn't you think of me as Sherlock Holmes?' It was Christopher Lee. Because he was in films, we just didn't think of it. That would have made the difference."

Bricusse is still writing and still working - next up is a new show about Sammy Davis Jr, called 'Sammy'. He already happily declares, "That, I love. It's got the truth about him. It's my present to him."

In the meantime, before that's launched, he's very busy with the show and the book that share a title.

"We'll have a party next week at the theatre," he says. "And then - we'll see what happens."

'Pure Imagination - The Songs of Leslie Bricusse' begins previews tonight at the St James Theatre.

'Pure Imagination: A Sorta-Biography' is published by Faber.

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