Musical polymath and actor details his collaborative album with KPM and happy conversations with Jean-Michel Jarre and Keith Mansfield.
An initial obvious link between library music and the progressive rock world is when Van der Graaf Generator covered Sir George Martin’s Theme One –an epic psychedelic fanfare allied to BBC Radio 1 –as a single in 1972, notably used by the late Tommy Vance for the Friday Rock Show’s Friday Night Connection slot. Over the last decade, Matt Berry has regularly referenced the composition and production of 60s and 70s theme songs and sound beds in his own work, such as on 2018’s Television Themes. Finally he’s made a record, Simplicity, in collaboration with the British library label KPM –and he couldn’t be happier.
How did you get into library music?
Through watching television as a kid in the mid-70s. Library music was used for sport, current affairs, everything, because apart from the Radiophonic Workshop, there wasn’t a BBC outfit for coming up with TV themes. Library music was used quite creatively sometimes and quite bizarrely in other cases. But the library material was always excellent quality and really well put together with great influences, whether it was big band, jazz, soul, funk, rock, pop… you can hear it in all of those 60s, 70s and early 80s records on labels such as KPM, Bruton and De Wolfe.
It’s interesting to think that the theme from Grandstand, say, was selected from library music.
It could have been used for a quiz show and it would still fit. Something up-tempo would be for sport or a quiz, a march would be for news or a documentary. Then you’d get something silly that would be used on sitcoms, such as Terry And June. A bizarre choice is Holy Mackerel! by Brian Bennett. That would have been intended for comedy but for some unknown reason was picked for Rugby Special.
In the 90s, a thirst for nostalgia in the UK ran parallel to Britpop and that’s when albums from the KPM –Keith-Prowse-Maurice – Music Group library became sought after.
I collected quite a few and the music –mostly instrumental –fascinated me. Martin Green had done a lot of crate-digging for the compilation The Sound Gallery, and that highlighted TV themes and adverts too. I loved the compositions and the playing… I have to also give credit to Chris Evans and Danny Baker, who were playing this music on their radio shows at the time, creating interest in tracks you hadn’t heard since you were a kid, and in the people who made them.
How did the partnership with KPM come about?
I’ve talked about KPM over the years, and then I was invited to an event that was a Q&A with [composer] Keith Mansfield. I had to go! While I was there, Jack Lewis [KPM VP and A&R
