English national treasure Alan Bennett produced his first
play in 1968: Forty Years On, in
which the retiring headmaster (John Gielgud) of an English public school is
presented with and performs in an end-of-term play put on by the students: a
sendup of all the myths of English cultural identity between the turn of the 20th century and the end of World War II. (The play is very much the godson of the
old Beyond the Fringe sketch “Aftermyth of War”.) Besides Gielgud and the show’s
musical director, Carl Davis, the cast included a number of precocious talents
just out of public school, including budding lyricist George Howe. In the show’s
downtime, Howe and Davis worked up an entire song cycle inspired by the themes
of Bennett’s play. Somehow it became a Project, and the Project landed at MCA
and became this concept album, We Were
Happy There, produced and arranged by A-lister Mike Leander (hitmaker for
the Rolling Stones, Lulu and Cliff Richard). Gielgud reads selected poems and
prose from English writers to set the scene between each song.
1968-1969 was a hell of a good period for anti-war movies in England – The Charge of the Light
Brigade and The Bed Sitting Room to
name only two – but We Were Happy There
is neither that savage nor that surreal; the tone is nostalgic and infused with
the more naïve sense of historical irony of a young man just leaving the nest. There’s
feints of cynicism, but the mod-a-go-go pop arrangements and the sentiment win
out. Bennett of course has since enjoyed a long, distinguished career as a
playwright and novelist, and when a Granada TV executive approached Ray Davies
of the Kinks about writing a musical drama for television in early 1969, Bennett was actually
Davies’ first choice for a writing partner. They didn’t end up working together,
and the Granada TV project fell through, but it led to the creation of the
Kinks’ album Arthur (Or The Decline And
Fall Of The British Empire), which frankly is a piece of greatness that’s more
worth your time. We Were Happy There is
an almost-forgotten progenitor of the Big Nostalgia Kick that turned so toxic in the
1970s, and you can probably draw a line from it straight through to All This And World War II.
Pax Britannica / The Empire Builder
Nanny Hawkins / Boy
Extracts of letters from Julian Grenfell / The Lost
Generation / High Wood
The Girls of Nineteen-Twenty-Six / Girls
Extract from “The Civil War in Spain” / Spain
Vergissmeinicht / Goodnight Sugar
Extract from “English History, 1914-1945” / Well Done / I Am
a Paper Bag
Recessional / We Were Happy There
DISCLAIMER: To the best of my
knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any
format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know
and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your
art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.
