10 Songs That Changed Me – Song 3

Song 3 – Rite de la Terre

Never heard of it? Well neither had I until this morning, or at least I had no idea what the tune was called. Quite by chance I found it on Spotify and a huge piece of my musical history fell into place finally. Now, strictly speaking this is a tune, not a song, as are the four following it in this trawl through my musical upbringing, but they belong to a fairly neglected area of musical creation nowadays, namely the television theme tune.

Without sounding too much of an ‘in my day’ bore – I hope! – I put the decline in their overall quality down to the way that people started to fast forward through them on VHS and now ignore them altogether on streaming services. Of course, there are still good examples of the genre in the TV programmes nowadays, but the sheer number of memorable theme tunes from my childhood pointed to the early 70s in particular as a golden era.

Anyway, back to Edward Michael’s Rite De La Terre. It introduced one of the most original and challenging children’s programmes of all time, Timeslip. When it was shown on ITV, I was 6 or 7 years old, and I can’t remember if or when it was repeated. The content of the programme was way above my head at the time, but that theme tune was the reason I tuned in week after week. It is a foreboding, scary theme tune that unsettled me as a child and still does now. When I got the series on VHS many years ago, it was that theme tune which sent the hairs on the back of my neck rising. The programme itself was as accurate a picture of the future as was scientifically possible at the time, with episodes involving Virtual Reality, global warming and cloning turning out to be pretty much on the money as those scientific concepts hardened into everyday reality. Have a trawl through YouTube and eBay or elsewhere on the internet for artefacts of this marvellous, forgotten series. Just to whet your appetite, here is that theme tune that finally has a name!

Next, we have a theme tune from 1972 that is instantly recognisable as the sound of Sunday afternoons, at least in the Southern Television region. I give that little caveat, because the regional variations at the time were sometimes very large indeed. For others of my age it may have been the sound of a Saturday or Sunday evening, but whenever you heard it during the weekend, the fantastic Galloping Home will bring memories flooding back. Although I knew the tune, and in this case the title, I had no idea of the identity of the composer behind it until today. Denis King has had a varied career to say the least. A member of the King Brothers, Britain’s first ‘boy band’, whose tunes would be familiar to those with memories of the late 50s and early 60s. He studied orchestration at the Guildhall School of Music from 1970 after the group disbanded. It’s fair to say that he hit the jackpot pretty much straight away when he composed the exhilarating theme to children’s equestrian drama Black Beauty! His musical expression of the freedom of a horse at full speed is 50 years old now, but still instantly recognisable to those of a certain age and, almost certainly, their children. Here is a tune that is simply iconic.

Moving back into the realm of sci-fi, it’s the third ITV theme tune in a row in an era when the BBC tended to dominate children’s viewing. If I say the words SuperMarionation to you, you might look at me blankly or nod your head as you remember the incredible theme tunes from the Barry Gray Orchestra. The partnership between Barry Gray and Gerry Anderson began with the very first puppet series from 1956, the largely forgotten The Adventures of Twizzle, and stretched throughout the 1960s with Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and, my favourite of all, Joe 90. The adventures of a bespectacled nine year old, employed by WIN as a very special agent who could enter places fully grown agents couldn’t, and who could be given the brainwaves of any person when he sat in the machine BIGRAT, captured my imagination from the start, quite literally. Gray’s psychedelic theme tune was an outstanding theme tune that sits with the classics of any genre. Many of you will have other favourites from the Gerry Anderson stable, but for me, it’s another taste of childhood weekends that is imprinted on my mind.

Changing channels now, I move onto a programme that shaped my childhood love for the cinema. Screen Test was, in my childhood, one of the few ways you could see film clips outside of Disney Time. Four children answered questions about the film clips they had just seen in a game of visual and aural memory. I used to love playing along although I was not particularly brilliant at the visual questions if memory serves. As well as the questions, it had Michael Rodd who was one of the best TV presenters of the time. He also appeared on Tomorrow’s World which I became a regular viewer of because of Rodd’s presence, and he was one of the great communicators in a TV era packed with them. Syd Dale’s Marching There and Back was the military style theme that introduced the programme and contributed so much to it. There were lots of great BBC theme tunes in the 1970s, but this is my pick of the lot.

For my final theme tune, I am changing the channel again to ITV. They really did have a run of excellent theme tunes in those days and they held me in their thrall from that day to this. My final choice comes from composing legend Dudley Simpson. His incidental music was heard in pretty much every iconic Doctor Who story from Planet of the Giants in 1964 to the somewhat less iconic Horns of Nimon in 1980. Alongside his Doctor Who work, he was responsible for two of the most readily identifiable pieces of science fiction music from the 1970s. In 1978 he composed the music for Blakes 7. Despite never liking the series itself, I always liked listening to the theme tune before turning over to another programme. However, in The Tomorrow People it hit the spot both as a theme tune and a genuinely intelligent science fiction series. Whilst the theme tune itself was extremely good, it was the incredibly unsettling visuals that went with it that really stick in my mind. All that is left is to ask, were you the blue or the green?

I hope that, for those of you who remember this era, I have brought back some memories and singled out some of your favourite theme tunes. If I have missed any, let me know in the comments. See you for Part 4 very soon.