Fact #171513
When:
Short story:
Engelbert Humperdinck enters the UK singles chart with Les Bicyclettes De Belsize, which will peak at No5.
Full article:
Barry Mason (songwriter) : Absolutely weird, that was. They asked us to do the score for a film with that title - a beautiful, arty film, no dialogue, about a boy on a bike, who falls in love with this girl on a poster. So Les and I do four or five songs, and the day comes to present them to the moguls, and they say, "Great. Wonderful songs, boys - but where's the title song?" So I said, "With all due respect, you just can't write a song called Les Bicyclettes De Belsize. It's not possible".
And they said, "We must have a title song. We're in the studio tomorrow. Please!" So Les (Reed, co-composer) and I walk back up Charing Cross Road, quite depressed, go into Francis, Day And Hunter, find an office with a piano, get two strong cups of tea - our drugs! - and that afternoon, we wrote it. And ironically, it was the only song in the movie that meant anything. The others were lovely songs but none of them sold, while Bicyclettes is now a standard. So that was a lucky break. We were forced to write it.
(Source : not known)
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And they said, "We must have a title song. We're in the studio tomorrow. Please!" So Les (Reed, co-composer) and I walk back up Charing Cross Road, quite depressed, go into Francis, Day And Hunter, find an office with a piano, get two strong cups of tea - our drugs! - and that afternoon, we wrote it. And ironically, it was the only song in the movie that meant anything. The others were lovely songs but none of them sold, while Bicyclettes is now a standard. So that was a lucky break. We were forced to write it.
(Source : not known)