Into New Music: Mark Wirtz
Producer, arranger, songwriter and vocalist, Mark Wirtz packed in a load of work by the time of his death in 2020. He was at the forefront of psychedelic pop and was an inspiration to both Paul McCartney and Pete Townsend amongst others. Cherry Red Records have just released a box-set anthology of over 120 songs Wirtz was involved in. Read on for Grant McPhee’s thoughts on this amazing career followed by an insightful Q&A with Steve Wilson who pulled it all together.
Artist: Mark Wirtz
Box Set: Dream, Dream, Dream: The Anthology
Label: Cherry Red Records
Taken individually, the vast majority of tracks featured within this exhaustive anthology of producer Mark Wirtz offer as fine a summary of the skill and range achieved in 1960s pop as anything by contemporaries such as George Martin. On a finer inspection, the tracks which best represent the infamous ‘Teenage Opera‘ project – which most famously includes the 1967 No.2 single ‘(Excerpt From)‘ by Keith West’ – detail a joyous rush of the very finest Toytown Psychedelia, that easily sits amongst the upper echelons of famous ‘lost albums’.
As an entirety though, the box becomes a portal into the world of one of music’s true visionaries and demonstrates this is more than merely ‘Toytown’.. The depth, vision and uniqueness contained only really become apparent when experienced on this large scale and it’s a testament to project creator, Steve Wilson, that this secret is now finally made available to the rest of us. The technical talent of Wirtz has no doubt always been apparent and while ‘Teenage Opera‘ offered a peak, this box finally lets us see the playfulness, charm, wonderment and awe he had, and how he clearly dedicated his life to channeling this through his work for others to experience too.
Grant McPhee (GM): How did you first encounter Mark’s music and what impact did it have on you?
Steven Wilson (SW): I had been collecting music from the 60’s since I was about fourteen and in the ’90s there appeared to be a surge in ’60s reissues and compilations that I started to stumble on. Then, in 1998 there was a compilation called ‘Psychedelia At Abbey Road: 1965 – 1969‘ which I bought which had ‘My White Bicycle‘ by Tomorrow, and ‘10,000 Words In A Cardboard Box‘ by Aquarian Age’ but also had ‘He’s Our Dear Old Weatherman‘, which was the first time I had seen or heard anything credited to Mark Wirtz. It is one of the most amazing tracks that I had heard, as were the Tomorrow and Aquarian Age tracks, which of course I then realised involved Mark as well, and I started to realise his name was cropping up as associated with an extremely high percentage of the music from the ’60s that I was particularly drawn to. I still was not at that immediate moment precisely clear on who Mark was other than his name, and he seemed to have some kind of mysterious presence on the music that I was finding that I loved. As a songwriter and musician myself, and someone who tends to like to be as involved as possible in the recording process, I do believe that some of the material I was discovering that was associated with Mark one way or another, did begin to have an effect on me – certainly he was influential, I have no doubt about that.
GM: Years later you both became friends. How did this happen?
SW: I had spotted in one of the dedicated Mark Wirtz reissues that he had his email address included with an apparent open invitation to contact him. This seemed remarkable, but I decided to email him, not really expecting any kind of reply. Indeed I really did not think I would get a reply but I would at least know I had written. However, I did receive a reply, and in that reply Mark was absolutely lovely, really friendly and modest, apparently far more interested in the music I had told him about of my own than he was in talking about his own works. He wanted my phone number so we could chat and then that led to regular communication. I guess in a way we became pen pals – and he would send me music, I would send him music. There was talk of us working together but this was not very practical at that time with the distance between us so we agreed we would wait until he was next in the U.K. for a protracted period but of course sadly that time never came. I regret this a massive amount and wish I had found a way to get there.
When the Teenage Opera musical, as put together by the wonderful Pete Gallagher, was previewed at the Lyceum Theatre in 2016, me and my wife Abi were invited along and finally we met him face to face after so many years of being limited to email communication. It was a wonderful day, where he was desperate to introduce me and Abi to Keith West, and my overriding memory of the read through is the entertaining and amusing running commentary Mark gave us. But he was the most avid supporter of our music, “from the sidelines” as he put it.
When we had our own dedicated radio show on a small Canadian channel in around 2011 we had the opportunity to play a lot of the music we loved by other artists and obviously we chose several of Mark’s tracks that were kind of ‘new’ at the time and which he provided as kind of ‘exclusives’. He was always extremely kind to me and my wife (and musical partner) Abi. I treasured the friendship that we had, and although there was that distance of miles between us, so we were generally limited to a ‘pen pal’ friendship, he was very much one of the most valued and loved friends that Abi and I had. He was a very kind and loyal person, and the lovely thing about this box set is that through the process I have got to know one or two other mutual friends of Mark’s who knew him in a variety of ways, but we all have similar experiences. Those people have since become friends to myself and Abi now and so the impact Mark had on my life does kind of continue.
GM: How did the project originate?
SW: This is quite complicated in some ways. I had stayed in touch with Mark’s widow Amanda after Mark’s passing. During the pandemic I had started to experiment with some extraction mixing processes (such as The Beatles and Giles Martin have used on some Beatles material) mainly to use on old demos of my own that are in a rigid mix down and where the multitracks are so old and not accessible or are unplayable or suchlike. I remembered some chats with Mark about his wish that some of the tracks he had worked on in the ’60s were available in stereo as well as in mono (he had apparently mixed ‘Weatherman‘ into stereo but that seems to have never really shown up anywhere).
So I thought, primarily for my own enjoyment and experience that I would have a go at making some stereo-esque mixes of some of these. Some worked out better than others – but those that worked well seemed pretty good so I sent some to Amanda Wirtz and she liked them and we agreed it would be nice if one or two of them could be used in some way. Through this I became involved in some other elements relating to Mark’s music to help Amanda out in some areas and this led to the box set being mooted. The original intention that Cherry Red had was for a three disc box set that would concentrate mainly on the material from around 1963 to 1970.
I felt that it would be nice to be able to demonstrate that Mark’s creativity and output didn’t just stop in 1970, there were many many more works that he was involved in post 1970 including several great solo albums. This was agreed. There was an intention from the beginning to use some outtakes and acetate stuff. I felt that it would be good to have a bonus disc for the outtakes, demos and indeed a handful of remixes. I did not believe it would be right to put any remixes on without putting the original versions of those on too.
I had also been sent some short video footage by Amanda Wirtz showing Mark playing through some of his material on piano, solo, and that is where I sourced the two intimate piano renditions from. I was provided with a whole two hour interview with Mark which I edited into short pieces, and restored (as the sound on the original was quite bad). There was not really space to include more than a very small selection of these interview pieces so I then transcribed the rest and used them in the booklet as I felt a kind of occasional running commentary from Mark himself would be nice, and allows Mark a voice into the box set. The idea of there being a bonus disc was of course also because I felt it would be nice with the main discs if, overall, they could be played from start to finish in such a way that would flow without any disruption or distraction.
I did decide though to end each of the first three discs with some form of ‘curio’ so you have the two German language single tracks and the interview clip about Tomorrow and Keith West on Disc One, the outtakes or Zion De Gallier’s ‘Me‘ and the two Pat And Penny tracks on Disc Two and the previously unissued version of ‘Avalon‘ plus ‘Mr Sun King‘ on Disc Three. During the putting together of the box set, the entire two LPs ‘Come Back And Shake Me‘ and ‘Fantastic Teenage Fair‘ were sourced in full and I felt it would be brilliant to have these two LPs (which conveniently fitted snugly) onto one whole disc by way of reissuing both LPs for the first time since 1969. Indeed they had never been issued in the UK or USA etc even at the time they were first issued. As with the bonus disc, it took a bit of persuasion on my part to get the extra disc agreed but in the end it was and I think it is a great addition to the set.
GM: It must have been exciting going through his archive. What did it feel like going through what was such a big part of his life?
SW: It was wonderful but of course I was familiar with most of the material – even the demos and outtakes were things I had been aware of and heard previously (on occasions Mark would send me music to hear such as a mix of the backing track to Chug A Lug (sometimes erroneously titled as Sad Story Of Simon The Bugle which is of course a different track all together) and is slightly different to the version currently issued etc).
The discovery of the outtakes from the work tapes of ‘Me‘ were something I had not previously heard or been aware of though. I did source a lot of other material over the course of the project, many, many tracks that have never been reissued since the ’60s – it had been my intention to use many of these on the thirty-five bonus tracks for the digital release as there are some amazing tracks there, but in the end Cherry Red evidently went with a different track list for those extra download tracks that wasn’t so related to the ones I had intended – but there are some great tracks still un-reissued that I had planned on including among those download tracks such as The O’Briens, Simon And Pi, Richard Barnes, J Vincent Edwards and Brian Henderson and so on, plus many other solo Mark tracks, including two demos never released before.
There is a different version of ‘The Sporting Life‘ that Mark recorded with Jackie Lynton for instance. What they did use on that digital download is not without merit though obviously – anything Mark was involved in is of immense interest and immense worth. Were there any exciting discoveries? As I mentioned, it was great stumbling on the Zion De Gallier outtakes – particularly the one where Mark Wirtz himself is ‘introduced’ on piano. I think the intimate piano performances are lovely. I was very pleased to have been able to include particular tracks, such as ‘Dear Auntie Mary‘, ‘Lead The Way‘, ‘Winter Will Be Cold‘ and ‘Geraldine‘ and suchlike. So much great music.
I wanted to demonstrate there was more to Mark than the kind of ‘Toytown’ sound and I hope that comes through. I tried to set the three main discs into as much of a themed or vibed experience as possible – so disc two is intended to be kind of like a ‘psych period’ overall and disc one is intended to be more of a mid ’60s pop vibe (obviously it veers into late ’60s and psych towards the end) while disc three is more intended to show the later sound that Mark developed – again there is crossover by way of starting with The Matchmakers.
There are tracks of course that on a personal level I never tire of hearing such as the two Caroline Munro tracks, and ‘Elephant Song‘ and ‘Droopy Loopy‘ and obviously the Tomorrow tracks. I adore the two Pat And Penny tracks. It was also brilliant that we were able to include the facsimile of the handwritten lyrics to Grocer Jack which I think is a lovely addition to the box set. I wanted the box set to be as immersive as possible, obviously there are limits to how possible that is, but I thought the idea of the facsimile and indeed the badge would help in this way and I think the badge is very in keeping with the spirit of the times the music is generally sourced from.
GM: What track would you recommend to someone as an introduction and what track would you recommend to someone as the track that best sums him up for you?
SW: I don’t think you can sum Mark up in one track, I think you need three. I think they have to be ones that he wrote. So those three would be: 1) Sam 2) The Song I Sing 3) He’s Our Dear Old Weatherman (or Touch Of Velvet – Sting Of Brass) Best introduction to his work – that’s tricky for similar reasons – probably also would need three to fully demonstrate his versatility, so: 1) 10,000 Words 2) Go Ahead 3) Dear Auntie Mary
Grant McPhee
@GrantMcPheeFilm
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