Almost in reverse of Britten’s dictum, his early progress seems to have been cautious, and his middle years a slow and heroic effort to remake and expand his means. Only in later decades has an ever-increasing ease and spontaneity come to him so that, by now, something like half his entire output has appeared since his 70th birthday. “Compose all you can while still young,” Benjamin Britten used to advise, “because, as one gets older, it becomes much, much more difficult.” And a pretty imposing array of masters, from Haydn and Berlioz, to Sibelius and Elgar, seem to have come to similar conclusions as age or self-criticism increasingly inhibited their creativity towards the end.
Then one remembers composers such as Rameau, or Janacek who only truly found themselves after the age of 50. Yet the history of Western music to date hardly records – not even in the case of Richard Strauss – so extended and innovatory an Indian summer as that of the veteran American composer Elliott Carter. “I was in Dury’s band – Kilburn & The High Roads – and we co-wrote the hit “What A Waste”.”It’s my first real concert,” says Melvin. “Life begins at 50-whatever it is.” Rod Melvin & Guests will be at Larry’s Music Room, Pizza on the Park, London SW1 (020-7235 5273), tomorrow at 8pm.
He will mix in songs from the past 30 years from Paul Simon’s “Something So Right” to “Only You” by Yazoo, Bowie’s “Life On Mars” to Dylan’s, “Forever Young”. “I play six or seven nights a week and keep changing my repertoire, but these are my favourites. I don’t know if anybody will get up and sing along,” he says. “It will be a bit more formal, I think.”The first half of the concert will be more retrospective of his career, combining jazz standards by Hoagy Carmichael and Nina Simone, his heroine, and some Ian Dury classics.
The CD is meant to reflect what really happens while he’s tinkling away late at night “I was trying to keep it real It’s OK for people to sing along. You don’t get that in East End pubs these days,” says Melvin, also a singer/songwriter whose style has been likened to that of Randy Newman and Nick Cave. “Bette Midler’s husband once called me England’s new Nina Simone, but I’m not black and I’m not a woman.” He played the piano on the 1975 Brian Eno classic album Another Green World, and was the resident pianist on the Comic Strip Live show in the Eighties. These days, with collaborators from his company Rooftop Music, he works on film scores and theatre shows.Some of his new work will be played in the second of two 60-minute sets in Larry’s Music Room, including a political song he wrote for a cabaret in Hollywood about America and war, called “The Opinion Song” “It’s about bigotry,” says Melvin. “It’s rather nice, don’t you think?” says Melvin.
Melvin has seen a lot in Soho over the last 30 years, having played the piano in numerous haunts.
