by Peter Howell

Obverse Books, out now

An autobiography by Peter Howell, creator of the new version of the Doctor Who theme in 1980 and member of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, taking us on the road and back to his roots.

When my contemporaries in 1980 were buying singles for groups like Madness, The Police and Spandau Ballet, I was furiously spinning (on repeat) all 7 inches of Peter Howell’s glorious new version of Ron Grainer’s iconic Doctor Who theme. After a few plays I’d flip it and listen to B-Side The Astronauts, and then it was back to the 2-and-a-half minutes of electronic joy. This was my first conscious introduction to both Howell and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, although I’d already been unwittingly listening to their work for years.

If that preceding paragraph sounds like a lot of old war stories and nostalgia, you’d be right, and it’s the ‘back in the day’ anecdotes that Howell sprinkles across his biography that makes it so engaging for fans of a certain age. He recalls the commissionaires at Maida Vale in the Seventies, the smoky offices and the very BBC way of doing things, but he also brings us into the 21st Century with capsule reviews of the band’s gigs. We travel from Portmeirion’s Festival No. 6 (the computer shut down partway through), to Glastonbury, to The One Show where a Cybermen performer fainted. There’s a list of all the band’s performances, and if you’ve been lucky enough to see the band live (for me, the 50th Anniversary Doctor Who Prom and Chichester April 2014, it’s a welcome trigger to happy memories.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, Howell starts us with his early days at the Workshop in 1974, composing a jingle for Radio Brighton’s Traffic News and working up to a demo of the electronic sound for Doctor Who, scoring episodes of The Horns of Nimon – now that I’d love to listen to. We discover the pressures of ‘remaking the Doctor Who title music’, the joys of composing K9 and Company (ahem!) and Doctor Who radio plays, as well as the many 80s serials he worked on. At times it helps if you have a rudimental understanding of music composition and synth set-ups, but even if you only have a vague understanding of Doctor Who’s Middle 8, you won’t get lost. And any book with a chapter sub-head of ‘Ooo Eee Ooo’ works for me.

All credit to Peter for exercising discretion and not revealing the expected tales of debauchery and groupies that typically follow a band on the road – we might have to wait for Dick Mills and Paddy Kingsland to write their tell-all biographies for such scandal!

Verdict: The biggest surprise here is that the book hadn’t already been written. Blow the dust off your old vinyls, flip Out of this World onto your turntable and enjoy it as a soundtrack to this affectionate look back at a life in synths. 9/10

Nick Joy

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