Episode 041 - Seven Inches Of History 003 - Anthony Newley - Why

The accidental pop star who couldn't wait to get back to the theatre.

Anthony Newley never really wanted to be a pop singer. He wanted to be in the theatre. The trouble was, the British public had other ideas, and in February 1960 they kept "Why" at number one for four consecutive weeks, making it very difficult for him to pretend the whole pop star thing wasn't happening.

The route to the chart had been almost accidental. Newley had been cast as a rock and roll singer in a 1959 film called "Idle on Parade," recorded a few songs for it, and watched in mild surprise as one of them reached number three. The record industry noticed. So did the public. Before long, Terence Nelhams-Wright from Hackney, the boy who had played the Artful Dodger in David Lean's Oliver Twist, was one of the most recognisable faces in British pop.

"Why" was written by Bob Marcucci and Peter De Angelis, a pair of American songwriters who knew exactly what the teenage market wanted. Newley gave it something extra though. That slightly theatrical quality in his delivery, the sense of a performer actually thinking about the words rather than just singing them, lifted the record above the merely competent. Four weeks at number one. His first chart-topper, and not his last.

What makes the story interesting is where he went next. "Stop the World, I Want to Get Off." West End. Broadway. A creative life that made the pop hits look like a warm-up act. Which, for Newley, they probably were.

Seven Inches of History is Rainbow Valley's bite-size series working through every UK number one of the 1960s, one record and one story at a time. Short, sharp, and full of corners you didn't know were there.

Every episode is waiting for you at https://directory.libsyn.com/shows/view/id/rainbowvalley.

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