Macca said: Thank you for taking my song Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da to number one I replied: Thank you for paying for my house!
50 years on, how Scots rock star has a lot to thank Beatles legend for
FOR Junior Campbell and his bandmates, the first few weeks of 1969 were definitely – in the slang of the time – groovy. Marmalade had just become the first Scottish group to reach number one in the charts. And to a studio audience of miniskirted female fans – not to mention millions of TV viewers – they performed on Top Of The Pops, singing their cover of The Beatles’ Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.
Their outfits were the height of fashion – long hair, long collars and flared trouser-suits – and their accents, especially in the line of the song where Desmond ‘buys a 20carat golden ring’, carried an unmistakable West of Scotland twang.
Within weeks the song had sold half a million copies in the UK and a million more around the world.
This month marks 50 years since the song topped the charts. And although it was the group’s biggest hit, for Campbell it was only one episode in a long and fascinating career as a guitarist, pianist and songwriter.
To mark the passing of five decades since the group he founded hit number one, Glasgow-born Campbell has spoken of the highs, lows and celebrity encounters – including fleecing Gene Pitney at poker and being stripped naked by comedian Freddie Starr.
Amusingly, Campbell, 71, recalls his first meeting with Paul McCartney – in 1986, many years after Marmalade had taken The Beatles’ song to the top of the charts.
He said: ‘At the 21st birthday party of Ringo Starr’s son Zak, I met Paul McCartney properly for the first time... after spilling a drink over his daughter Stella at the bar. There was a band playing and his highness walked into the room with his then wife Linda and said hi to everybody. I got up and shook his hand. Talking about Ob-La-Di, ObLa-Da, he said, “Thank you for taking my song to number one!”, and I replied, “Thank you for paying for my house!”. It was the worst line I could have come up with, but I was p***ed!
‘Paul remains one of my big heroes. Although he sometimes has a slightly irritating demeanour, he’s the guv’nor... and John Lennon knew it.
‘I’m not sure us recording Ob-LaDi, Ob-La-Da was a great decision,’ Campbell says now, despite it being Marmalade’s only chart-topper.
‘But if you ask anyone in Britain of a certain age that’s the only thing they’ll remember of Marmalade.’
At the time of that exchange with McCartney, Campbell was based in upmarket Berkshire and co-writing the music and lyrics for the muchloved children’s TV series Thomas The Tank Engine And Friends, narrated by Ringo Starr.
Campbell recalls: ‘I was living in Ascot and John Lennon’s famous house, Tittenhurst Park, was only round the corner. When The Beatles broke up, Ringo got that house as part of the partnership deal, so he moved in there with his beautiful wife Barbara Bach.
‘The guy I did the Thomas The Tank Engine music with was working for Ringo. I used the studio there. Ringo would come in to see us in the middle of the night because he was trying to stay off booze. At least his wife Barbara thought that, but we always had a bottle of brandy... for medicinal purposes!’
Campbell was born in the East End of Glasgow and educated at Thorntree Primary, Greenfield, and Eastbank Academy, Shettleston.
His paternal grandfather, Alfredo Cancellari, was an Italian immigrant born near Lucca, in Tuscany, who changed his surname to Campbell in the early 1900s when he settled in Scotland.
‘My dad’s name was William Campbell and they called me William Campbell Junior. My parents always called me Junior and I hated it. Some, including the band, called me Wullie. My paternal grandfather died in 1941 so I never met him, but he used to play his old 78 records of [Enrico] Caruso, so my father fell in love with it and became an amateur singer. I had two elder brothers into Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino, so there was always music in our house. ‘I was doing pretty well at school, 11 or 12 years of age, then I discovered the guitar. My enthusiasm for studying went out the window.’ As a youngster, Campbell had a distinct style – he played right-hand guitar left-handed, literally upside down without changing the stringing. He joined Pat Fairley to form The Gaylords on his 14th birthday in May 1961 (later to become Dean Ford & the Gaylords, then Marmalade in 1966), acting as lead guitarist, pianist and singer. ‘Like Dean Ford and Pat Fairley, I came from the East End of Glasgow,’ he said. ‘We were kindred spirits. ‘We were excited by the music of the time, we had some proficiency for playing and singing so we emulated everybody. My mother used to say I was a better guitar player than Hank Marvin... as your mother would do! Suddenly all these people were clamouring to see us.
‘Even in the very early days at The Shack in Springboig, a little place that would hold maybe 200, we had 500 people queuing along the road trying to get in on a Sunday night. When my parents saw I was serious about being a musician, they backed me 200 per cent because my father always said his parents didn’t when he wanted to be a singer.’
As well as Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Marmalade had a string of hits, including Rainbow and Reflections Of My Life. I See The Rain, an early number co-written by Campbell and Ford and co-produced by Graham Nash of The Hollies, was praised by Jimi Hendrix as ‘the best cut of 1967’ and was number one in The Netherlands but flopped in the UK.
‘Hendrix came to see us [play] a couple of times,’ recalls Campbell. ‘He was unkempt and smoked all the time but he was a really nice guy and pretty special. It was a crying shame to lose him so young.’
He also remembers performing in 1970 at a festival in Cannes with Ike & Tina Turner and an up-andcoming Elton John.
‘In the bar at the Carlton Hotel I put my arm around Elton’s shoulders and said, “If you stick at this, you’ll do well!”,’ he recalls. ‘I remember, too, being in a BBC bar with Bobby Moore till closing time talking about football and music.
‘He wanted to be Frank Sinatra and I wanted to play for Celtic!
‘I played poker with Gene Pitney and skinned him alive. He was a lovely guy. He lived in Connecticut where one of my brothers was living. When Gene returned home
‘Ringo would come in in the middle of the night’ ‘I told Elton, “If you stick at this, you’ll do well!”’
after the first tour we did with him, he found my brother in the phone book, rang him and said, “Hi, George, this is Gene Pitney, I just called to say your little brother has been asking after you...” It was a really nice thing for him to do.’
Of his decision to leave Marmalade in 1971, Campbell explains: ‘I loved the band in the early days when we were young and hungry, but when success came everything changed. Wives and girlfriends came along wanting to get involved as well. By 1971, after ten years of hard work, I’d had enough of the band... or any band for that matter.
‘Even if The Hollies had asked me to join them, I’d have said no. I’d done the group thing.’
Campbell had solo success with the singles Hallelujah Freedom in 1972 and Sweet Illusion in 1973.
He jokes: ‘The disappointing thing about them is they became hits! It was great playing in a band with four other guys but I didn’t enjoy being in the spotlight on my own. For a photoshoot at Kenwood House in Hampstead, I was pictured lying face down wearing just a pair of shorts and a smile while the model Jilly Johnson walked up and down my back with her boobs out.
‘It was pleasant but I thought, “Why am I doing this?”.’
After taking lessons in orchestration and composition from Royal College of Music teachers, Campbell became an arranger and producer for artists as diverse as Barbara Dickson and Freddie Starr.
‘Freddie was a lunatic,’ he says. ‘Before I first went to meet him at a northern club, I got out of the shower in my hotel room when there was a knock at the door.
‘I opened it to see a chambermaid there, then Freddie suddenly grabbed me, removed my towel, pulled me into the corridor and shut the door. ‘So I was standing b ***** k naked next to the chambermaid while Freddie was chuckling away down the corridor. ‘Barbara Dickson was quite a serious girl... a Dunfermline Presbyterian as well! She knew my passion for the comedian WC Fields. One evening a crowd of us were having a lovely dinner in London, and on the walls of the restaurant an artist was flogging his work, including a picture of WC Fields. I said, “That’s brilliant!”. Unbeknown to me, Barbara bought it and sent it to me. It’s hanging in my home today.’ Campbell and his wife of almost 40 years, Susie, live in a sumptuous Sussex house which has five bedrooms, a recording studio, a swimming pool, a delightful garden and a long gravel drive, and where neighbours include comedian Alan Carr. Aside from his work on Thomas The Tank Engine, Campbell composed music for the films That Summer Of White Roses and Merlin: The True Story, as well as TV dramas The Scold’s Bridle starring Miranda Richardson and Taking Over the Asylum with David Tennant. ‘David had to learn the guitar for that, so I had to teach him... three or four chords over the phone. He was very humble and nice about it.’ Could he have made a good musician? ‘No comment!’ He also ended up representing Scotland in an impromptu football international – with Rod Stewart and legendary songwriter Bill Martin, who penned such hits as Congratulations and Puppet On A String.
‘Rod Stewart and I used to play charity football together,’ Campbell said. ‘He was always a laugh. For the 1974 World Cup in Germany, Scotland were the only home nation that qualified. Rod called me up and said, “Do you fancy going out for the games?”. With the songwriter Bill Martin, we chartered a plane.
‘After Scotland v Brazil we had to get a train to a place near the airfield. There were German fans on the railway station platform and someone produced a football, so me, Rod and Bill played the Germans... and they beat us on penalties.’
Campbell is now retired, and revealed that he has rejected calls to reform Marmalade.
‘A lot of people tried to push that over the years with the greatest intent,’ he said. ‘But our game is for young men. There are loads of my peers still doing it now, but I wish they’d all go away. They can’t recreate what was then. I don’t want to be doing Butlins in Bognor.’
New Year’s Day marked the 50th anniversary of Marmalade’s number one but tragically lead singer Ford died the night before, at the age of 73. And, although they hadn’t seen one another in 20 years or spoken in 18 months, Campbell said he had been ‘feeling numb’ since being called with the news by Nancy, the wife of Fairley, 75, who is also LA-based.
‘I always imagined the day of the “phone call”... “one of us”. I just never expected it to be Dean,’ he said. ‘The other three guys were a few years older than us.
‘Despite his exceptional talent and stage presence, privately Dean was always a quiet, sensitive boy, and pretty much a recluse as he got older, but we all kept in contact and kept our eye on him. He’d apparently developed Parkinson’s disease and his health had declined in the last few months but he seemed OK, so the news was totally unexpected and such a shock.’
As for Ford dying on the week of the golden anniversary, Campbell adds: ‘It’s surreal. When we got to number one, if the clouds had parted and the Big Man had stepped forward and said, “Dean Ford, this is your pivotal point in life. Go forth, my son, and take everything, but I will give you one caveat – 50 years from now you will die”, I think he would have taken it. But it’s so sad that he’s the first of the band to go. I loved Dean dearly.’
Campbell would love Marmalade to be properly recognised for their contribution to music, particularly in their homeland.
‘Whenever there’s a list of 100 best Scottish bands, Marmalade are never in there,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure many people know we were four-fifths Scottish. But we know what we did, and if anyone has other ideas they can go forth.’
‘I don’t want to be doing Butlins in Bognor’