This newly recorded album is a retrospective collection of many of Mike Batt's best known and some newer songs. It is intended to provide a definitive collection of recordings - all digitally recorded in 24 bit and kept in the 24 bit domain until master stage. Many use the original arrangements...but performed and produced as a cohesive, contemporary collection. Some are songs which were hits with Mike Batt as the artist, and others, such as 'Bright Eyes' and 'I Feel Like Buddy Holly', are songs which were hits by other artists - never before recorded by Mike as the artist.

This page is intended to provide track-by track information on the album - and so can be printed off as a companion to the album.

Bright Eyes

I wrote this in 1976 for the film Watership Down, and recorded it with Art Garfunkel. It didn't come out until 1979 - because the film took three years to make- and then SONY (then CBS) dropped it, for lack of radio play. I worked on, together with a young promo guy- and our joint efforts broke it eventually. We suddenly went from almost nothing to 60,000 records a day! It was number 1 in UK for 6 weeks- (CBS's first UK million seller, selling 1.7 million copies in the UK, and number one in six countries. The song is about death - and the mystery of what happens afterwards. This is my chance to do a version of my own. I've used the original arrangement, but added some heavier rhythm towards the end.

Soldier's Song

I wrote this for The Hollies in about 1979-1980. It doesn't really sound like a song for a group- in fact I was worried that Bobby, their drummer would complain about not being on it! Eventually it became one of their most popular stage numbers; I saw them perform it in Sydney around 1990 - and they did a great version, with no orchestra...and a big contribution from Bobby on percussion...

I always thought it would have been nice to do a movie based on it- we didn't even do a promo video at the time. Funnily enough, although the story is so important to the song, I didn't write the last verse until we were in Lansdowne studios doing Allan Clarke's vocal! In fact I was writing the last two lines while he was singing the first verses! My version uses my original orchestration, newly recorded.

The Walls Of The World

From the album, SCHIZOPHONIA, my first solo album. It took me a long time to get back into "my" style after shaking off the Wombles, and more embarassingly, a couple of rather too "poppy" and gauche solo singles. This was me climbing back into my skin again, and is the style I would have called my "main direction" had Wombles not happened. This is not a regretful thought, just an observation.

A Winter's Tale

David Essex rang me late in 1982 - just after my return from Australia, and asked if I could write him a Christmas hit. It was already late October so we didn't have much time. I was due to be writing with Tim Rice the following day- and was hoping to develop my idea for a musical about the Aztecs...anyway so I told Tim about the David Essex request, and we started thinking of ideas. I had recently had a love affair in Australia which had terminated, lets say for Geographical, rather than any more "acceptable" reasons. I wanted to send a message to the girl, and so we decided this would be the message. Tim came up with the title, which I thought was brilliant...we wrote a bit of the chorus and two lines of the verse, and then when Tim had gone home I sat and worked on it, coming up with the finished chorus and the second verse lyrics. Incidentally, the girl is now my wife (see ZERO ZERO page) and the songs "Please Don't Fall In Love" and "I Feel Like Buddy Holly" were all about the same situation! My wife and I call them the three "heartbreak hits". "A Winter's Tale" went to number 2 at Christmas, 1982- being unable to shift Phil Collins "You Can't Hurry Love" from the number one spot.

Love Makes You Crazy

From the concept TV show/album, "Zero Zero" and all about our hero- Ralph- played by me in the TV show- who falls in love in a world where love has been genetically eradicated. Read all about the nightmare not only of the story, but of the union problems in making the show -Zero Zero

System 605

Part of the Zero Zero project. Number 17 introduces himself. I started writing this one as early as 1980 (recorded 1982) and in fact it was going to be the first song (scrapping these lyrics and replacing with new ones) for the musical Tim Rice and I were planning to write together- "Chess". (!!!) When I was away on my boat- and in Australia doing "Zero Zero" he got (understandably) impatient, ran into Bjorn and Benny and Chess happened - (good job they did, too - it's one of the best Scores/librettos for a musical in the last thirty years). Meanwhile back at System 605 - this is a new arrangement. The original was just programmed on a Fairlight (lent to me by the Australian company, Fairlight, in order test the first one they made!

Caravan Song

Originally recorded by Barbara Dickson for the film "Caravans" (1978). I was shortlisted along with three other composers (John Barry, Michel Legrand and Maurice Jarre) for this film, but begged Elmo Williams, the producer, to let me write just one session's worth of music so that I could compete with the more illustrious names. He did, and I got the job. This song was roaring up the UK charts and suddenly, inexplicably, stopped in its tracks. The managing director of SONY (then CBS) later confessed to me that they had deliberately killed the single off in order not to miss the timing of her next single (called January, February). Nevertheless the album has been ridiculously successful considering that the film bombed. Twenty years later, an Australian record shop proprietor told us he'd persona;;y sold 5,000 copies of the album in his one small Sydney shop!

Theme from "Caravans"

Notes about "Caravans" above. This track- or rather the original recording done in 1978- was a "special" track for the album - in order to provide a dancey track for radio and clubs (although "clubby" isn't exactly the word I'd use to describe it these days. It was a big thrill to see Katerina Witt skating to it for East Germany - in fact I really ought to take her out to dinner to tell her so! So if you know her phone number...

I Feel Like Buddy Holly

One of the three "heartbreak hits" referred to in the note about "A Winter's Tale". The morning I wrote this, I actually was watching the planes come over on their way into Heathrow- (I was staying at my sister's house in Wentworth) and it actually was raining (in reality as well as "in my heart"). My God, never be a songwriter! It's too painful. When I played it to my friend Alvin Stardust, he asked me to record it with him. We both knew he wasn't, shall we say, the cutting edge fashionable artist any more by then (1982) having had his peak in the seventies. But I wanted to try to help him get a hit - a so I "risked" the song, when I knew I could have got a more "current" artist to do it [and I never liked the fashion-police mentality of radio programmers and journalists in the UK anyway]. When we recorded it, the record company promotion guys were worried that if radio people knew it was Alvin they wouldn't play it, so we sent the promo copies out with no artist name, telling them to guess who it was. By the time they found out it was Alvin, the record was already receiving heavy airplay, and fashion-snobbishness was powerless to stop it! It was top ten- (I think number 7) in the UK.

Lady Of The Dawn

I've just found an old videotape of me dressed up as "the fool" from my TAROT SUITE album cover- performing the song on Germany's Plattenkuche show (4 March 1980) - and it's WEIRD! The character I played was like an oriental Samurai- Kabuki theatre character. It's got a certain mystery to it -and I think it worked really well, but it also reminds me I've taken a few risks with my "image" over the years (not least in Britain where I squandered my credibility by appearing on SEASIDE SPECIAL and Top Of The Pops singing "Summertime City") - yes I found those videotapes too, and a right PRAT I look on those shows- stomping about in my flairs and platforms! Anyway, "Lady Of The Dawn" was big in Germany and Holland, Australia, South Africa- in fact it pops up all over the place.

The Winds Of Change

From the album "Waves" which I made just prior to my 1980-82 two year trip aboard my yacht, Braemar [pictured, off Montserrat, West Indies] in 1980, which eventually led me to Australia. The sentiment expressed in it was one I had already expressed in other songs ("Run Like The Wind" and "Caravan Song"). It is clear I wanted to "get out" wherever that took me. I was ready for a change. I remember saying to someone that if they had offered me a one way ticket on as space ship I would have taken it for the sheer adventure, rather than know my life was set to be as it was, however successful, for the rest of my days- and this was when I was HOT! - what funny things human beings are. Although I know part of this was to do with my marriage, I now can see that part of it was that I felt I needed to find more about myself, and develop away from the grinning persona I projected on TV. I was actually a very serious thinker (still am) but wasn't mature enough to combine publicly the clown with the philosopher and the clown was winning too often. These days I think I can balance the two better.

Please Don't Fall In Love

The third "heartbreak hit" (see above) - although the first written. I had no right to put "the girl" under pressure by writing this. Not that I care! We had split up amicably, if only for geographical reasons. She was in a TV drama and had struck up a relationship with one of the other actors. This was my (eventually successful) attempt to prise them apart - the sincerity of which was demonstrated by my driving to the airport and jumping on the next flight to Australia for a two day visit, arriving on the Friday and leaving for London on the Monday. The song was finished on the plane on the way there and I sang it to her that weekend. I told you it's painful being a songwriter. But perhaps it's more painful KNOWING one!

I Watch You Sleeping

I wrote this when Luke (now 19) was born. Very simply a Dad-to-son song. It was when I had been asked to supply a song for Cameron Mackintosh's Christmas Carols album for charity. I thought there might be a nativity relevance...

I Dine Alone

One of the songs from "Men Who March Away" - my newish musical, yet to be mounted. This is actually sung by Katherine when she is writing to George who has gone off to the front to fight in the First World War. She's saying that people pity her dining alone but that she doesn't care because she knows she's got him.

Railway Hotel

People always ask me if this song is autobiographical, and I always say that it's semi-autobiographical- but the name of the hotel is changed! Of all the songs I've written, this is the one where people come up to me and say that Railway Hotel is one of their favourite songs "of all time" (people always exaggerate, (I've said that a million times). It was a hit in some countries, but in the UK it was a turntable hit only (lots of play but not enough sales for charts). It's been covered a lot. (Andy Williams, Roger Whittaker, Justin Hayward, and others) but my favourite cover is by The Furies and Davey Arthur.