For more than 50 years, successful records have been produced by composer Mike Batt. However, according to him, the day when most musicians could profit from albums is passed.
For artists like Art Garfunkel, Katie Melua, David Essex, Alvin Stardust, and most notably the Wombles, Batt has written multi-million selling singles. But since he first began out, the music business and the means by which musicians are compensated have undergone significant change.
How can you justify the cost of your time and money if you spend two years of your life creating a record that will only be streamed, even if it is successful? he wonders. You need to make it more of a tale and extend your aim.
He decides to recast himself as a superhero in response to dwindling CD sales. Croix Noire, Batt's most recent endeavor, is more than simply an album; it also contains a companion novella, a video game, and a comic book series, one of whose main characters strikingly resembles Mike Batt.
"Isn't it bonkers? But it's bonkers in a strange, dark manner rather than in a Goon Show sense. An executive at a record label would have rejected us right away.
Big record labels like to have material that is very similar to what was popular the previous week, while we want to produce entirely original material.
"I believe the danger is what appeals to me about it. I prefer to live on the edge, but the cool rock or pop reviewers may not always see it since they are focused on the current events."
When was he ever cool? He responds, "I've never been cool, but I don't think coolness is a commodity that should be used to determine whether or not anything is good."
The album is sort of a concept album that is largely based on the experiences of Jean-Charles Capelli, his co-creator. It is heroic life in a French dystopia affected by drugs, although it is probably not that different from many of Mike Batt's earlier works. He is, after all, the person who was tasked with writing a song about a dead rabbit and produced Art Garfunkel's Bright Eyes, the year's best-selling hit.
Perhaps most notably, he was the brains behind the Wombles' musical career. They had six top songs and three albums that were on the charts in 1974. David Quantick, who assisted with this most recent effort, believes Mike Batt's Wombles' work was unfairly undervalued.
According to Quantick, "He appears to have been here forever and is someone for whom everything is an opportunity to achieve brilliance." "Many people would have responded, 'Oh, that's wonderful,' when he made the Wombles recordings in the 1970s. I've had a few mainstream hits with kids' characters, but Mike takes the Wombles' songs very seriously and transforms them into concept albums a la the Beatles.
The albums of The Wombles are among the greatest ever recorded; they are amazing concept symphonies of eclecticism.
His numerous other accomplishments, nevertheless, have been overshadowed by The Wombles.
For the majority of his life, they diminished Batt's rock credibility, but fortunately, other events helped to restore the balance.
Batt has collaborated with Andrew Lloyd Webber on Phantom of the Opera throughout the years, and he composed the songs that propelled Katie Melua to the top spot for female artists in sales for the previous two years.
His musical, The Hunting of the Snark, had a who's who of talent, from John Gielgud and Stephane Grapelli to George Harrison, Kenny Everett, and Billy Connolly. Additionally, he recently collaborated and performed on tour with Hawkwind, the kings of space rock.
Batt has more than 50 years of experience in the field. For seven years, he served as the British Phonographic Institute's vice chairman. He is also a seasoned businessman, and no matter what happens to his most recent multi-media venture, it will be even more successful than his first significant undertaking, which was 50 years ago.
He believed that Variations on a Riff (The Big Revolt), which he had paid for with his first sizable royalty check of £11,000, would be his epic, orchestral, heavy rock, a symphonic masterpiece.
It was the first significant sum of money he had ever received. "I should have bought a three-bedroom semi because we didn't have a house, but instead I spent it on this rock extravaganza," he says. It was symphonic heavy rock, somewhat heavy metal, and somewhat avant-garde, like a hybrid between Bartok and Frank Zappa.
He lost everything, though, when the record companies refused to release it. He has decided that the world needs to hear it at last after fifty years, and he is preparing to release it on his own label.
Life has been peculiar. Mike Batt is referred to as a "strange man" by his co-creator and admirer Jean-Charles Capelli at the conclusion of a promotional film for his Croix Noire project.
Is he? "Yes, I most likely am a strange man. My father was actually a quite reasonable guy. He was a civil engineer and army officer. All the Womble outfits were fashioned by my crazy and quirky mother. She created comics. She was really cheerful. I, therefore have a variety of hereditary factors. Let's just say that I like to praise the unique."
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