Max Boyce: The Road to Treorchy

CROWD SINGS # And we were singing hymns and arias... #

'And they are still singing hymns and arias.

'Four decades after it was written, everybody knows the words.

'This people's anthem is part of the amazing story of Live At Treorchy,

'the album that turned unknown singer and comedian Max Boyce

'into an international star,

'launching a career spanning 40 years

'and two million record sales.

'Recorded in a Rhondda rugby club in 1973,

'this collection of comedy, poetry and song astonished the industry

'by coming from nowhere to stay in the charts for three years

'and attract fans across the world.

'Live At Treorchy still stands as a beacon of Wales and welsh identity,

'captured forever in nine unforgettable tracks.'

Maybe in years to come, they'll look back on him as one of the great bards.

It was almost like a folk song. That kind of thing.

It's there with Under Milk Wood and Ryan At The Rank.

It's almost as important to us, as a family, than the rugby itself.

As important a statement of Welsh culture as anything by Dylan Thomas or Saunders Lewis.

He was funny, damn him!

CHEERS AND WHISTLES

'This is the story of Max Boyce and The Road To Treorchy.'

-Oggy! Oggy! Oggy!

-AUDIENCE: Oi! Oi! Oi!

'When Live At Treorchy was released in 1974,

'nobody, least of all Max Boyce, could have predicted that,

'40 years later, many of its songs would be sung across the world.

'And what a variety of songs there were - raucous rugby songs,

'like The Scottish Trip, celebrating the camaraderie of Welsh fans on tour.'

# ..Went up by train and by car

# When the juice of the valleys start flowing

# We all saw the game in the bar... #

'But there were also songs of sadness of poignancy,

'like Did You Understand? which explored the decline of coal,

'a subject that touched Max personally.'

# I remember the time

# Of the collier and the candle

# Of a long, bitter fight that darkened the land... #

'And there was the surreal comedy of the Outside Half Factory.'

# ..But he's had some rejects lately Cos there's such a big demand

# So he sells them to the northern clubs

# And stamps them "secondhand"... #

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

'All of these songs came from one man who could write about this world

'because he was rooted in it.

'Maxwell Boyce - singer, poet, comic -

'was born into tragic circumstances on September 27 1943,

'in the mining town of Glynneath.'

My father was killed in a mine explosion a month before I was born.

We lived in one room in my auntie's house.

It wasn't tough for me. I don't remember any hardship.

It was tough for Mother. She had to go to work. She was only 28.

'Growing up in a post-war valleys mining community, Max was surrounded by song and verse,

'but he had no ambitions to be a performer.

'Max left school at 15 to support his mother.

'Like almost every other man in the village,

'he went down the mines.'

I'm glad, looking back,

because I worked ten years underground.

That gave me a licence, as it were,

to write songs I would never had written had I not worked in the mining industry.

'In between night shifts,

'the young Max did what many teenagers did in the '60s,

'he picked up his first guitar.

'Not the most natural musician, Max spent years trying to master Bert Weedon's Play In A Day book.'

Everyone had them. So I bought it.

'His perseverance paid off,

'following a chance meeting with a local agent in a music shop.'

I went in this back room full of old guitar boxes and sang songs to him,

like, country songs.

The two I auditioned were, amazing, The Wreck Of The FFE about a train crash and the Wabash Cannonball!

-LAUGHS

-Oh, and Paddy McGinty's Goat!

# Now, old Paddy's goat had the wondrous appetite... #

'So I went round the clubs singing country songs

'and I was very ordinary.'

'Ordinary or not, Max soon shifted from singing other people's material to his own.

'Inspired by Bob Dylan and the protest singers,

'he reflected his surroundings.

'As he developed his gift for comedy and social comment,

'the changing South Wales valleys provided plenty of source material.

'The early '70s brought Wales a golden generation of rugby talent.

'Kings on the field, they dominated the game,

'trouncing the old enemy with almost monotonous regularity.

'Off it, industrial turmoil and the decline of coal took their toll.

'Max's own working life reflected these changes.

'He quit the colliery to work as an electrical engineer in the Metal Box factory in Neath.'

I was glad to leave.

Everybody who worked there has a love-hate relationship.

You love the camaraderie.

As I wrote in the song, "Now those dusty mines have seen the last of me." I never wanted to go back.

'This change of job also brought a change of fortune.

'Max began making regular appearances on BBC Radio Wales.'

I wrote topical songs about everything.

I'm always grateful to the boys at the Metal Box.

The BBC rang me up at 10 o'clock and said, right,

Margaret Thatcher had stopped free school milk

and would I write a song about it?

I said, "I'm in work."

The boys said, "Don't worry. We'll cover the breakdowns."

I'd be at night shift at Metal Box, writing songs about Margaret Thatcher stopping free milk.

On a night shift, it was quiet. We had our jobs to do, which we did.

In the quiet times, Max would do his composing.

He'd catch up on the sleep

he'd missed by getting up early to record.

'If he was stuck for a rhyme, his workmates weren't short of suggestions.'

He'd say, "Don't be silly. That doesn't sound right."

Some of those songs could have been really, really bad.

Luckily, Max had the common sense not to listen to us!

Then I was getting in trouble. They were strict on absenteeism.

If you were sick, you put S on your card. If a pattern developed, they'd sack you.

I'd say, "I've got a massive concert."

"Oh, OK. Put down D."

D was "domestic trouble".

So my card was covered in Ds. Ds everywhere!

The personnel manager... I was going through the factory, singing songs. ..he said,

-ENGLISH ACCENT:

-"Can I say, I've got so much respect for you, Max, young Boyce.

"You're such a cheery fellow for someone who's had so much domestic trouble."

'By 1971, he was making his first television appearances,

'but a stage show in Swansea would lead to his big break."

'He was invited to support Ken Dodd in the Brangwyn Hall.'

There was so much laughter going on,

because Max is so parochial, that Ken Dodd really objected to this.

He was put out the fact that his spot was taken.

He said something like, "Well, you can support me next time."

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

'In Swansea that night, EMI producer Bob Barratt

'was blown away by Max's show-stealing antics.'

He asked could he see me and came to a concert somewhere.

Then we met here at the beautiful Langland Bay Golf Club.

'Bob Barratt wined and dined Max and offered him a two-album deal.

'The young and naive performer was only too happy to sign.

'Four decades later, Max dearly wishes he'd read the small print.'

Signed my life away, really.

I was so delighted, really, to sign a major recording contract,

I'd have signed anything, and I signed it for 1.25% first album

and the second album for 1.5%.

The follow-up to Live At Treorchy was We All Had Doctors' Papers,

-which went to Number One, so, 1.5%

-LAUGHS

'Still, he'd signed the deal and the show had to go on.

'Without an agent or any promotional backing,

'Max had to make his own arrangements for the recording of his first EMI album.

'In parochial Wales, Max's fame was largely in the Swansea valley.

'On the advice of friends from Penygraig Rugby Club,

'Max booked the Treorchy RFC clubhouse, just 16 miles from his home town of Glynneath.

'There was one problem - they'd never heard of Max Boyce.'

We didn't know who or what he was.

They hadn't heard of me, that was the other side of the coin. We couldn't sell the tickets.

Oh, yes! That's right!

And I think Max himself went out

and was giving tickets to people just in the road.

They came because they almost felt sorry for me. I had no audience!

'The audience wasn't the only problem.'

Max arrived with with the backing group.

He said, "Where's the piano?"

We all looked a bit stupid. "Piano? I've never bothered with a piano."

He said, "I've got to have a piano."

He said, "Let's phone around a few clubs and see if they've got one."

They phoned around and said, "Yeah. There's one in a club 350 yards from here.

"They said come and fetch it."

A gaggle of boys, believe it or not, humped this piano out to the road

and rolled it up on its casters!

Brought it to the side, chucked it on the stage. Said, "Here we are."

You can imagine, it was not very good.

'For the sound engineers from London sent by EMI to record the gig,

'it must have been challenging.'

It's very posh now, but in them days, there was no players' lounge.

It wasn't very pleasant to look at.

The club mascot, the zebra, his head was sticking through the front wall.

On a Saturday night, you were knee deep in beer from the bar and broken glass, everybody drunk.

But we loved it. It was our club.

'And so, on a cold November night in 1973,

'Maxwell Boyce, Metal Box factory employee,

'singer, poet, comedian, entered the Treorchy Rugby clubhouse,

'little knowing what fate had in store.

'There is no footage or photographs from that legendary night

'but, for those who were there, the memories are unforgettable.'

-The atmosphere was electric.

-It was buzzing when we walked in.

It was packed.

They were queuing up from six, outside the door.

They did let them in a bit early.

'Employing all his wit and charm,

'Max had persuaded half the Rhondda to attend his concert.'

I think they understood it was a very important night for me.

'The Treorchy clubhouse held just 250 people.

'By 7 o'clock it was full to bursting.

'Beer and Babycham were flowing, and Max's nerves were beginning to shred.'

'It must have been very tense for him. He was really trying to get himself psyched up.'

I can see us now going, "Come on, Max! You can do it!

"You'll be wonderful!"

And virtually pushing him out through the door, so he was almost at 100% as soon as he went out.

-COMPERE:

-We're all set. A great welcome awaits, Max Boyce.

APPLAUSE

It was like an explosion. That was the difference.

He came rushing on with this enormous leek and "Oggy! Oggy!"

-Oggy! Oggy! Oggy!

-Oi! Oi! Oi!

The leek was everywhere!

I was just...flying.

-It was better than I'd expected.

-Laughter from start to finish.

-Heard it before, have you?

-LAUGHTER

I think I stood on a table there and said, "I've come home!"

I hadn't planned anything. I don't think I knew what I was going to do.

'I had a dream the other night, the strangest dream of all

'I dreamt I was in heaven and away from life's hard call

'It was as I'd imagined, with the silver stars beneath

'Seven there from Treorchy Thousands from Glynneath.'

LAUGHTER

'With the audience warmed up, Max launched into his set list.'

Right. Here we go, then...

'His choice of material was simple.'

It was everything I'd ever written at the time - minus the Wabash Cannonball and the Wreck Of The FFE.

# We...went up to the highlands of Scotland... #

'Honed over his apprenticeship on the club circuit,

'the songs Max performed had the formula that has served him since.'

# ..We'll all bring our wives back a present... #

'Wry observation.'

-# ..So we can go next time again. #

-LAUGHTER

'Great jokes...

'..and a big catchy singalong chorus.'

# Singing...

-MAX AND AUDIENCE

-# Too-ral-ay-oo-ral-ay addi...#

'Max was particularly canny with his distribution of unwanted tickets.

'He made sure the famous Treorchy Male Voice Choir got their share,

'giving himself the best unofficial backing singers possible.'

At the back are the Treorchy Male Voice.

-And down the front is like Treorchy Co-op.

-LAUGHTER

# Singing... #

I thought the singing was tremendous for a live performance.

It was absolutely tremendous. It was in tune.

A few slurs cos everybody was drunk.

It was a hell of a sound. Really good.

We had a good singsong.

# ..in the bar! #

CHEERS AND WHISTLES

'Switching from song to poetry, Max celebrated Llanelli's triumph

'over the All Blacks in 1972

'in almost bardic fashion.'

It's called simply 9-3.

LAUGHTER

I think I wrote it the next day, in about half an hour.

Twas on a dark and dismal day in a week that had seen rain

When all roads led to Stradey Park with the All Blacks here again

They poured down from the valleys they came from far and wide

There were 20,000 in the ground and me and Dai outside...

As a Llanelli boy,

you wouldn't be surprised that 9-3 is my favourite track.

It's because it brings back all the euphoria and excitement of that day,

31 October 1972.

Llanelli beating the All Blacks 9-3. And I was there!

Another Max phrase. I WAS there.

..The shops were closed like Sunday and the streets were silent still

And those who chose to stay away were either dead or ill

But those who went to Stradey, boys will remember till they die

How New Zealand were defeated and how the pubs ran dry

Oh, the beer flowed at Stradey piped down from Felinfoel

And the air,

the air was filled with singing and I saw a grown man cry

Not because we'd won but because the pubs ran dry...

Llanelli was just a mad carnival.

Max, in 9-3, brings all that back.

Well, thank you, both...

'In between poetry and song, the jokes kept coming.'

The only break I had was when a chap came out, walked past with a tray of drinks.

I stopped and I said...

'Big round you've got there, lad...!'

-On the committee, are you?

-LAUGHTER

'Live At Treorchy wasn't just a comedy night.

'What made it so special was the depth and variety of material,

'which switched seamlessly from belly laughs to quiet reflection.'

# In our little valley they closed the colliery down

# And the pithead baths is a supermarket now... #

If you listen to the record, it's absolute silence for the ballads. There's not a clink of glass.

They could identify to those coal mining ballads I sang at the time.

# ..It's hard, Duw, it's hard... #

Duw It's Hard is a love-hate relationship song,

where you moaned the closure of the industry that supplied work,

but you didn't want anybody to work in those conditions.

Only someone who'd been in that environment could have written that.

It wasn't some nancy folk singer coming and saying,

"How horrible it is!" This is a miner talking about the closure

and saying, "It was bloody hard. I don't want to work under there."

# ..Cos it's hard... #

He hits the nail on the head.

He said, "I'll never regret not going back down there."

A lot of miners say, "Best job I ever had - for the camaraderie."

It wasn't a great job. It was dirty, filthy, dangerous.

Yet, there's that honesty about the camaraderie. "I will miss what we had."

"..But I can't forget the times we had

# The laughing midst the fear

# Cos every time I cough I get a mining souvenir... #

They had a mining souvenir.

God alive! That was on every corner!

When I saw some of these ex-miners stopping to take a breath,

leaning against a gate or against the fence,

I knew exactly what he was talking about.

# ..The pithead baths is a supermarket now... #

I was reading the Western Mail

and there was an advert in there.

"Carpets for sale.

"Carpet Kingdom.

"The old pithead baths, Cwm Ebbw Vale."

I thought, "Yeah. The pithead baths is a supermarket now."

# ..Aye, the pithead baths

# It's a supermarket now. #

APPLAUSE AND WHISTLES

# We paid our weekly shilling for that January trip... #

'Max closed with a rousing rendition of Hymns And Arias.

'To the audience who learned it that night, it was a fresh take on Welsh fan culture.

'To those who weren't even born in 1973,

'it's the most familiar rugby anthem of all.'

The crowd starts singing Hymns And Arias,

it's such a motivation.

It's a Welsh rugby hymn, really.

They don't come much bigger than that.

On the field, we can feel it. We've got a lot of thanks to give Max.

'The people of Treorchy helped Max's material come alive.

'Every song buzzed with the energy of those who could say...'

I was there.

People say, "Was you really?" "I was, actually, you know."

If you went to Rhondda, you'd find 30,000 people who said, "I was there that night."

There were no edits. It was just as it was.

One take. Bang.

We was all drunk, all singing. It was just a great night to us.

A heady night. Magic night. Yeah.

There's a conspiracy between me and an audience.

'But the recording was just the beginning.

'Max Boyce, Live At Treorchy sneaked out in the spring of '74

'with no fanfares, no promotion and no prospect of success.

'But in a dreary grey world of strikes, power cuts, three-day weeks and hung parliaments,

'something surprising happened - the album began to sell.

'Mostly in Wales, then throughout the UK by the truckload.

'After ten years of hard slog, Max was an overnight sensation.

'How had this happened?

'One man is prepared to take credit for the album's success in Wales.'

I am partly responsible for the fact that Live At Treorchy became a best-selling LP.

When it went on sale in the National Eisteddfod in Carmarthen

in August 1974, I was working at a shop which had a stand.

It was the only stand where Max's record was on sale, and there were queues every day.

It sold hundreds of copies.

But I'd like Max to realise today that part of that best-selling sale

was down to my skills as a salesman.

'As for its unexpected success over the border,

'Tenby record shop owner Laurie Dale thinks he has the answer.'

We had this record that came in, Live At Treorchy,

which meant very little to me, but I listened to it and thought it was so funny

that I thought I'd put it to the hotels.

I gave it to all the hotels in Tenby and they all played it in the bars.

Suddenly, before I knew it, I was selling boxes of these.

And they were all going to English tourists.

These tourists went back to England and couldn't find these LPs.

So they would ring me up and say, "Could you send me a Max Boyce LP?"

I'm thinking, "This is crazy." So I rang EMI and said, "You ought to promote him a little."

Of course, he said, "Oh, no, no. They'd only sell in Wales."

I said, "No, no. Tourists are buying them like mad." The rest is history.

I was called the poor man's Max Boyce.

It's thanks to Max, really, that I'm here, he and Billy Connolly.

Because their regional backing kicked the whole thing off.

'In today's money, Live At Treorchy made 1.3 million.

'Not that Max saw much profit with his 1.25% cut,

'but it allowed him to become a professional performer.

'And while Max's follow-up album, We All Had Doctors' Papers,

'remains the only comedy album ever to top the UK charts,

'it's the songs and poems of Live At Treorchy that are recited from Glynneath to the Gold Coast.

'So what is the secret of their remarkable staying power?

'For a start, there's their sheer Welshness.'

Max made Welshness the central phenomenon of the act.

Yes, it was overblown and a bit kitsch and a bit over-the-top,

but we loved it because he was proud of his identity

and not afraid to sock it to other people, English people, and say,

"Hey. We are Welsh and we're proud of it.

"We're rugby fanatics. We've got our own language. We're happy with our identity."

It's almost like Max invented our own Vera Lynn.

He invented Welsh jingoism, which was allowable.

It's not nasty nationalism, in any way.

It's passionate patriotism.

We realised for the first time that Welsh people had a great sense of humour,

just as we all have, but it had not been represented before.

So suddenly there's this guy saying, "Look, we're good."

'The experience Max described struck a chord with working people wherever they lived.'

There's something very human about the stories Max tells.

They happen to be set in Wales.

They could be set in other places, if you gave them a different accent.

He empathises with people, not a certain type. With people.

He's not upper class, you see. He's one of us, working class.

'It's more than 40 years since Max wrote Live At Treorchy's greatest hit.

'He's left it until now to reveal a dark secret about Hymns And Arias.'

I was cleaning the house out and I came across this original version of Hymns And Arias.

It's unfinished and it was actually called...Twickers.

I must have changed it before I sang it but it's down here as Twickers.

It's like finding the Dead Sea Scrolls!

'It may feel like an ancient manuscript to Max,

'but all these years later, Hymns And Arias is Wales's second anthem.'

When they start singing it, the feeling, I can't describe it.

To hear that stadium reeling to the song you've written is something that is just magical.

'All together now...!'

# And we were singing

# Hymns and arias

# Land of my fathers Ar hyd y nos

# And we were singing hymns and arias

# Land of my fathers

# Harry the horse

# Ar hyd y nos. #

CHEERS AND WHISTLES

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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