JASON DONOVAN – "Any Dream Will Do"

In my first year at *dd*ngst*n Gr*mm*r Sch**l we put on a production ofJoseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I say “we” but as with all subsequent musical ventures (including the dreaded end-of-year House Shows) I did my best to keep out of it (I concentrated on the drama side of things). Had I been there a year earlier I could have been in Britten’s Noye’s Fludde. Heigh ho.

At that time (1975-6) Joseph was still what it had originally been intended to be; a modest, half-hour entertainment, an easy Biblical lesson. But Lloyd Webber and Rice subsequently sought to expand it, and it was an uneasy transition; watching the 90 minutes or so of the “full” version is to experience one of the most overtly padded-out of musicals. Still, it has over the decades provided a lifeline for teen idols suddenly in need of a friend – both David Cassidy and Donny Osmond benefited from long runs in the lead role in America, while here at the London Palladium in the early nineties the beneficiary was Jason Donovan, then just gently easing out, or being eased out, of his shortlived teen idol status.

“Any Dream Will Do” more or less tells the musical’s story, and in Donovan’s hands it is what it has always been; a harmlessly irritating but good-natured nursery rhyme with added kiddie disciples on backing vocals, though once again in the song’s more testing sections Donovan’s pipes are palpably aided electronically. I suppose we got off lightly; in Australia, Max Bygraves topped the chart with his version. Yet the central question remains; what the hell was this, and things like it (for example, the full album soundtrack), doing at the top of the charts in 1991?

This is the first 1990’s number one which I have genuinely deleted from my memory. What were we THINKING?

OK, all you people, Declare it! What part did you play in Joseph? Because you all did, oh yes….

Ahem, I’m the only member in our household who has not performed in this particular musical. My youngest daughter played “Zebulem” last year, along with her sister who was purely choir. My wife appears on the LP for the North-east production, I think she’s listed on the sleeve.

I’d say that Jason Donovan and Andrew Lloyd-Webber more or less deserve each other, really.

My one revelation tangentially related to this was made the following year (I think), on hearing Philip Schofield’s minor hit single version of “Close Every Door” (PS having succeeded JD on stage in London by then, I think), was that Schofield could actually sing. Or at any rate, and having not heard it for probably, ooh 19 years, had a better singing voice than Jason, anyway.

It strikes me (possibly incorrectly, but if so only slightly) that the reign of this dire track at the top of the charts coincides with the creation (and possibly the entire existence) of Jonathan King’s “REVVOLUTION” magazine, which was, inter alia, the first mainstream publication to list the Top 75 since the demise of Record Mirror earlier in the year. I think it lasted for four editions, and really I can’t remember very much about it, apart from having to trek several miles to the end of the District Line to find somewhere that sold it. Very much Mr King trying to get down with the kids (he wrote cautiously), too overwhelmed and oppressed by his ego to succeed or endure.

Thankfully my school didn’t touch Lloyd-Webber stuff. Gilbert and Sullivan were more flavour of the month, alongside rather more sophisticated or intelligent stuff. Afraid I regard G&S similarly to ALW. Bah.

I thought REVVOLUTION lasted just one issue! I also think I have a copy somewhere, but I’m not sure where.

Always winced at Donovan’s blowy voice but this is a pleasant enough ditty in its twee, cheap way.

The only time I ever saw Joseph was when the National Youth Music Theatre took a production to Edinburgh a year or two before this. My mum did the costumes and Jude Law played Joseph. He had star quality even then – possibly more than now, really – and he and his ‘brothers’ all sported the voguish step hairstyle that Donovan himself rocked after losing the Neighbours mullet. I thought they looked like divs.

This is perhaps the first and only song in the whole of Popular where I actually contributed to its chart success in the UK! And I remember this very clearly because this was one of the first two cassette singles I ever bought, at a UK Woolworths (which was fascinatingly different to AU Woolworths (which are more about groceries, whereas UK Woolworths seemed like a jumped-up newsagent). I also bought the considerably better ‘Chocolate Cake’ by Crowded House.

I’m pretty sure I was aware at the time that Jason Donovan was not cool, and that Jason Donovan doing showtunes was even less cool, so I’m a bit baffled by it today. I don’t think I’d even seen Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat, or even Jesus Christ Superstar, so it can’t have been knowing anything about the context. I remember it being towards the end of my 6-week stay in the UK, so methinks considering I was buying antipodean stuff, maybe I was just homesick.

#4 – Ah, allow me. David Daltrey’s best known number for aficionados of psychedelic pop was “Monday Morning”, a whimsical and actually rather dull ballad produced by none other than Andrew Lloyd Webber. I think it was the only single Tales of Justine ever released, as well as being one of the earliest Webber studio productions. It’s a massive collector’s item which appears on the “Psychedelia at Abbey Road” compilation, but it’s not really worth tracking down.

As for “Any Dream Will Do”, I seem to remember talk of Donovan’s career being resurrected by the whole Joseph hoopla, but it ended up being his last hurrah. A very absurd and out-of-place number one by 1991 standards, I used to be intensely irritated by the cheap tweeness of it, but these days I can’t actually muster up much energy to launch into a criticism of it. I suppose it must have been one of those records which mainly sold to small children (although I seem to remember it was a favourite among the West End Musical loving girls in my GCSE Music classes, and God knows there were always a lot of those in the classroom for some reason. Maybe that was the single’s target audience).

Unlike THE GAME, I have successfully spent my life avoiding Joseph And His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and pretty much chose to ignore Jase’s last tilt for the top.

Upon hearing it now, the arrangement comes across to me as a poor quality karaoke backing track, and Jase as the designated driver cajoled into doing his turn in front of a gaggle of drunken mates.

No such luck avoiding this for me…this and the rest of the soundtrack was a constant presence at my primary school’s music lessons in the late 1990s. They left out the ‘aah-aahs’ to make it less complicated, but a couple of the older kids sang them anyway, usually aah-aahing in the wrong places which pissed me off big time.

It’s stuck in the mind though as it’s one of the few I remember singing, along with ‘Mary’s Boy Child’ every Christmas. It being at #1 is bizarre though, and somewhat annoys me…where’s the breakbeat rave?! Cola Boy’s ‘7 Ways to Love’ entered the charts during Any Dream’s stay at #1, and Rebel MC’s ‘Tribal Base’ was around too, which as an early bit of drum & bass is years ahead of its time (and samples a former #1 with Enya). That’s the stuff that attracts me to the music of 1991, not all this movie/musical tie-in nonsense…

This song, a fortiori Donovan’s performance of it, is new to me. Watched Donovans’ vid on youtube followed by Donny Osmond’s (with a duet assist in its second half), and I can confirm that Osmond’s version is better in every respect: better sung, better arranged, you name it. The underlying song’s pretty weak I agree, but a really great singer (simone or fitzgerald or armstrong or jordan say) would belt it or otherwise inject it with so much personality that they’d make you like it, and Osmond is almost there I’d say. Donovan not so much, hence, yes: 2

Looking down the charts, I guess Divinyls I Touch Myself would have been a fun chart-topper…. And looking across the Atlantic, at this (pre-Bryan Adams) point Paula Abdul’s Rush Rush (the one with the mega-Rebel without a cause vid. w/ Keanu as James Dean) and EMF’s Unbelievable topped the charts. Not great, but lots better than the Don’s ADWD. His last Popular hurrah, surely?

@27. Point taken. I guess I was thinking/confessing that Simone’s voice plus her piano in place of the ghastly marimba synth stuff would probably easily put ADWD over the top for me.

Oh, and I see Bragg’s Sexuality is lurking way down the charts at this point. Interesting that he wasn’t able to parlay his charity single success into much more chart action a year later.

The very first recorded music I bought with my own pocket-money, at the relatively advanced age of 14 or just-turned 15, was the 1973 RSO LP of Joseph, in the second-hand racks of the upstairs record shop that used to be part of Ellison Hawker (small nugget of detail for 40-something Tasmanian readers there, if there are any apart from me). What can I say – all my pop music epiphanies were still months or years away. So although we never performed the show at school, the thought of it still gives me a twinge of nostalgia, even if it’s at least 20 years since I deliberately listened to any Lloyd-Webber.

Watching the video of Donovan’s performance for the first time, the memories of that vinyl purchase come flooding back, and I’m afraid Jase’s effort can’t compare (which is not to say that the 1973 recording was much chop either). To give him his due, it’s a competent vocal from an artist I generally can’t stand; but the rhythm track is awful, and the kiddie chorus too sickly by half (but then, aren’t most kiddie chorii?).

What’s most striking, though, is the sudden thought that Jase here seems to be modelling himself on the veteran star who had cornered the UK market in biblical-inspired pop. Go on, have a look at those close-ups from 0:50 to 1:20 and tell me they don’t remind you of Cliff.

Pharaoh sez: You shall be my number… 2.

Oh God I’ve just remembered doing this at karaoke a while back, changing the lyrics to ‘drew back meat curtains’ and ‘any dream is poo’, possibly to exorcise ghosts of #6. I’m so sorry, everyone.

This isn’t great, not by any stretch of the imagination – the plinkity-plonk keyboard loop that goes through the whole song just really isn’t good enough for a finished pop product for example – but to give credit to Jason it’s clear that he’s been working on his singing since his previous #1s, and while he’s still not great he’s at least competent by this point.

#23… Origins of Drum & Bass. There are some in the Rebel MC camp and and some in the Lennie De Ice camp. I’m not sure which was released 1st tbh, but Rebel MC’s track must have charted way higher. I remember taping “We Are I.E.” off the radio around the latter half of ’91 or early ’92. Can’t honestly say when though.

@37

And here’s me thinking it was Jet Harris and Tony Meehan…

@39 Amen to that (do you see etc) (except wasn’t it some other dude?)

First breakbeat/hardcore chart entry (albeit very low down) was 4hero “Mr Kirk’s Nightmare” in November 1990.

I remember being at a rave night (quite unusual in itself as I stopped raving at the end of 1989 until about 1994)in Lancashire (it was in the only rave I ever went to in Northern England (or actually outside the South-East) before I moved up here)and wondering if the track that I’d just started hearing on the pirates and Kiss FM down in London would be played.

I thought this new sound was maybe just a London/Home Counties thing (and I suppose in some ways it was at first)as it was like nothing else I’d ever heard before.
This was at the very tail end of the post-acid dance scene still being vaguely unified when you never knew what you’d hear (still a bit like 1988/89 when you could hear anything from Roberta Flack “Uh-Oh” to hiphouse to Bang the Party to Barry Blue and his “Afrodiziact”)so I didn’t think it was beyond the bounds of possibility.

It wasn’t played and I was a bit disappointed – even now the breaks/samples sound fierce. And as I missed the next 3 or 4 years that was the nearest I ever got to hearing a hardcore track in a rave setting when it was still contemporary.

A plodding bland effort flattered to number one by the shows success.

My reaction to this soppy but not disagreeable melody has always been to start singing the lyrics of ‘Crystal Days’ by Echo & The Bunnymen over the tune.

He was on Never Mind the Buzzcocks.