Michael has given many interviews in the past and we hope to feature a few from the archives in the next wee while to give you an insight into what inspired him. Things like Goalkeepers and Elephants.
More songs about GOALKEEPERS & ELEPHANTS PERPETUAL MOTION IN BROUGHTY FERRY, FRANKENSTEIN, AND THE INVENTOR OF REVERSE, GEAR. MICHAEL MARRA IS THE SONGWRITERS' SONGWRITER. HE LOVES ELVIS, HATES BJORN FROM ABBA, AND TAKES HIS WORK SO SERIOUSLY THAT HE THOUGHT HE MIGHT DIE FOR IT. AS PARTNERSHIPS GO IT SOUNDED HEAVENLY. Abba had split, ending a sequence of 25 hits, and Bjorn Ulvaeus (the clean-shaven one) was looking for a co-writer. Dundonian Michael Marra, to his eternal regret, got the job. The break came at a frantic time. Marra, a songwriter of considerable versatility, was working on two shows at the Edinburgh Festival, one about Gilbert and Sullivan, one on music between the Wars in America. Unable to eat before or after performances, he found himself feeling sicker and sicker as the Festival went on. 'At the end of the last week I got ill, terrible pains,' he recalls. 'It was so painful that I thought, that's it, I'm on the way out, so I'd better get this Bjorn thing done so my family will have some money. 'I decided not to see the doctor until I'd finished the job. I went up to Dunkeld, where my mother has a hide out. I had a backing track and was working on the lyrics for three songs. I'd call him from a phone box, play the backing track and sing the number. I hadn't realised his English is very poor. He learned it from Elvis records, but didn't know what half of it meant - he was just making those sounds. All he wanted was lyrics which fitted mathematically with the music. I just said, "That's what you're getting', and went to the doctor.' An ulcer was diagnosed, which came as a great relief. But the experience left a deeper scar. 'I never saw any money at all, I hate that attitude: you're under contract to write songs, you don't care what they're about. It's the music business as beans.' Largely due to his contractual ill fortune, Marra's talent remains something of a secret. Yet he has some well-placed admirers - Hue and Cry covered his Mother Glasgow, and Ricky Ross has invited him to support Deacon Blue on their European tour. In song writing terms, perhaps only the Proclaimers can match his easy way with the Scottish vernacular, while his taste for bizarre story lines places him up there with Tom Waits and Randy Newman. Marra's lyrics locate simple human truths in unlikely moments. Commissioned to write for the civic bicentennial of Ullapool, he conjured a song which mixes the romance of the klondykers with wife beating. Australia Instead of tbe Stars uses odd facts about Dundee to comment on the self-destructive side of the Scottish psyche. The title laments the experience of inventor Sandy Kidd who developed a perpetual motion machine in his Broughty Ferry garden shed, but had to emigrate to perfect it. Also celebrated are the ferryboat designer who invented reverse gear; the Dundonian who, in 1680, performed the world's first dissection of an elephant; and the fact that Mary Shelley dreamed up Frankenstein while gazing out over the Tay. Many of his songs are about football, 'one of the great things in this world. I remember they ran a competition to write a football song on Nationwide. The one that won it, called "Were Are You Now, Joe Ackroyd?, was gorgeous - an old guy talking about what football had meant to him, in its biggest sense. I never found out who wrote it, but I remember thinking good on you, football deserves that. People love it, and it is important.' His own football songs are a long way from the bathtub chanting of Back Home or Ally's Tartan Army. Tbe Wise Old Men of Mount Flotida recalls the shock waves which came when the players of Queen?s Park revolutionised the game by passing the ball to each other. 'Before that you just dribbled,' he explains. During the fanciful King Kong's Visit to Glasgow, the famous ape goes to Parkhead, where upon the crowd chants, 'Why don't you take him to Ibrox, we think he might blend in.' And, perhaps most memorably, there is Hamish, a hymn of praise to the former Dundee United goalkeeper Hamish McAipine. It records how Grace Kelly attended his testimonial match at Tannadice. 'It's true,' Marra laughs. 'Very Dundonian, Grace Kelly coming among us. She didn't go to Ibrox.' Music has always been a part of his life. His mother played piano, and his father was a big fan of Duke Ellington. Young Michael's interest was first awakened when a baby-sitter played a copy of Jailhouse Rock. 'Elvis Presley's the first thing I remember. Unforgettable.' He hums the calamitous opening bars of the song. 'Later, the big thing that happened in Dundee was soul music, early Motown. Coming from John Lennon'. in fact, the early stuff the Beatles did. it was ours, it sat perfectly with us. The Four Tops, Temptations, Stevie Wonder. After that we went back to rock'n'roll, but the Dundee disease was soul music, still is.' Marra's first efforts were in a Rolling Stones-type school band called the Saints, and he progressed through folky groups Hen's Teeth (with fiddler Dougie McLean) and Skeets Boliver. 'That did very well. It got us down to London and used to the usual music business thing - we were robbed. I don't worry about getting robbed any more, I just accept that that's what they do. Our job is to be as good as possible, not to make as much money as possible.' Contracted to Polydor as a solo artist, he entered one of his blackest periods. He signed up with manager Bernard Theobald, who also had Barbara Dickson, and the 16-yearold Gary Clark (later of Danny Wilson) on his books. He recorded one LP, The Midas Touch, then started work on what was to become the independently released Gaels Blue. The songs had a heavy Scottish content, partly to annoy his manager. When the LP did emerge, to critical acclaim, its impact was diminished by a dispute with the distributors, who held onto the master tapes. 'What Gael's Blue did was make people think that I was a folk artist, and I got uncomfortable with that.' Folk, he says, is not just a ghetto, it's an absolute compartment.' Contractual problems forced him into the theatre, where he worked on Billy Kay's They Fairly Mak' You Work and Communicado's A Wee Home From Home. He also co-ordinated the music for the television series Your Cheatin' Heart, an experience of which he has painful memories. "I didn't like the BBC building, I was sharing an office with John Byrne, which was all right if you're going to share with anybody, but the building nearly killed me. It was like being in a post office.' He maintains that it was only constant playing of the LP Miss America by Canadian Mary Margaret O'Hara that got him through his year there. These days he spends all his time writing. 'Now, I think it's because of the age that I am, I can play piano without a piano. I used to insist on writing in my studio. Now I'll do it on trains, any place.' When he Is in his studio, he uses an electronic notator as a writing aid. As he plays, the notes appear magically on a stave. 'If Mozart had one, we'd be centuries ahead. It's Interesting because it leads you to do things you wouldn't do if you were sitting with a guitar.' Nevertheless, songs sometimes take him up to six months to complete. 'There might be a month on one line just being wrong, and staring at it. The bulk of what they call Inspiration will maybe give you two lines, enough to know it's worth the effort. The rest Is the effort. "I like to think I could write on any subject. It's the same for comedians - nothing should be barred, everything's up for grabs. I certainly would like to write more love songs I decided after a family tragedy that I would write as many as I could, because that's what's best for people. With a new LP, On Stolen Stationery (Eclectic Records), just out, and the Deacon Blue tour in the offing, Marra has some cause to be optimistic. Yet he is almost stubborn in his reluctance to think in terms of a career. 'I'd rather keep quiet and have other people doing my songs. But when Ricky Ross mentioned this tour, I wrote and said I had a definite interest - I've never played in Paris or Rome. That Is the pushiest I've ever been. Other than that I would have cheerfully stayed in the house, writing songs.' Marra also views the tour as a way of reaching an audience without Involving London-based record companies. 'I hope we get a decent music business here, that's not relying on them, or being told what to do by them. Why go to London when you could get robbed in Glasgow? We could all rob each other, and then we wouldn't have all this transport expense." The elephant surgeon would surely have understood. Report by Alastair McKay SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY MAGAZINE
