Cover design by Barbara Fry

Barry Booth
Diversions
Castle Music

Sometime composer of music for ur The Two Ronnies puts tunes to lyrics by Michael Palm and Terry Jones? Could work...

That Diversions a deliciously quaint ‘chamber pop’ album peopled by would-be trampoline artists and reserved office clerks — has only just been exhumed seems criminal. First out in 1968, it was produced by Tony Hatch, who wanted to mould TV/film composer Booth as a pop idol. Booth’s misgivings about his voice made him reluctant to tour and the album became marginalised. If the phrase ‘John Shuttleworth unplugged’ seems pertinent, the pathos is more transparent here, and Booth’s baroque strings and colliery brass-imbued arrangements evince a serious talent. Jones and Palin’s picaresque lyrics are superb, and the voice that so concerned Booth is full of fragile, Northern soul. Apparently, he offered The Last Time I Saw You to Roy Orbison, Palin briefly entertaining fantasies of a songwriting career.

James McNair

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