The Sanest Guy In The Room

Don Black Constable £20

We can all sing along to Diamonds Are Forever, Born Free, and To Sir, With Love but few of us know the stories of how they came to be written.

Don Black has been lyricist to some of the best- known singers of the past 70 years and is, according to music writer Mark Steyn, ‘the sanest guy in the room’. When working with towering showbusiness egos, Black simply lets ‘their tantrums go in one ear and out the other’.

Born in a Hackney council flat in 1938, Black ( far right, with Dean Martin) had an uneventful childhood (he has no time for Graham Greene’ s remark t hat ‘ an unhappy childhood is a writer’s goldmine’). After a brief stint as a stand- up comic, he discovered a knack for writing lyrics and began collaborating with Matt Monro, whom Black calls the best singer ever to come out of this country. Over the course of a starstudded career, Black has written lyrics for Lloyd Webber musicals and Bond themes, collaborated with John Barry, Lulu, Michael Jackson and others, and, in 1966, won an Oscar for Born Free. He sprinkles his memoir with warm reminiscences and self-deprecating anecdotes about the music business, such as the moment he first met Little Richard and said ‘Hello Little’, or the time Monro gave him an earful for scheduling a meeting with the impresario Bernard Delfont at the same time as the singer’s favourite courtroom drama was on TV. As Black notes, it’s usually singers and composers, not lyricists, who get the glory. This book should help redress the balance. Even if you don’t share the author’s endless passion for the Great American Songbook, or agree with some of his rather dismissive assertions about the state of music today, you’ll come away from this entertaining book with a new appreciation for a craft that’ s too often overlooked.