The New Murrey and Blue blog

Here is the next in our ‘An Interview With…’ series. Ian Churchward, lives in Torquay in South Devon and his main hobby is writing and recording songs as The Legendary Ten Seconds. He is also very interested in anything to do with Richard III and he is a member of the Richard III Society.

Joanne Larner: Please tell us about your background in general and how you got into making music.

Ian Churchward: Although we had music lessons at my school in the 1970’s I wasn’t particularly interested in learning to play a musical instrument. The motivation to try to learn to play the guitar came after I read an article about Joe Strummer of The Clash in about 1979. One of my friends at school who was called Tim Dodge let me borrow his copy of the first Clash album and I made a tape recording of it which I used to play all the time on my cassette player. Tim was also the singer in a punk rock band which he formed with some of our other school friends. This gave me the motivation to try to learn to play the guitar. I played in bands in the Torbay area throughout the 1980’s. Later I would play guitar for a Ceilidh band which was a big influence on my song writing. At school my favourite subject was history and writing and recording songs is my main hobby. I am now retired and most of my working life was spent as a bank clerk.

JL: How do you go about writing songs?

IC: It varies, sometimes I write the lyrics first, sometimes I get an idea for a melody when I am playing the guitar and then I try to write the lyrics for the new tune idea. Sometimes I want to write a song about something that really interests me. For instance I found out that Napoleon Bonaparte was on a British royal navy ship in Torbay shortly after his defeat at the battle of Waterloo. I decided to buy a book about the ship that brought Napoleon to Torbay as I felt that I could write a song about this from reading the book. During the period that I was composing my first Ricardian songs I spent a lot of time reading books to research the history of Richard III. I have recorded some songs where a friend has composed the music and I have written the lyrics. Sometimes a friend or my wife will have written the lyrics and I compose the music. When I was recording the Mer d Mort album for the Mortimer History Society Ashley Mantle wrote quite a few lyrics for some of the songs on that album.

JL: How did the Legendary Ten Seconds get their name?

IC: It goes back to the early 1980’s. I took my cassette recorder along to a local gig in Torquay, at a venue called the 400 Club, by Torquay harbour. I made a short recording of a local punk band. The recording is rather short because I didn’t find the music very tuneful. I listened to the recording the next morning and it sounded absolutely hilarious to my ears. You hear lots of noise as the band starts to play the introduction of their song, then the lead singer shouts out a swear word, and the cacophony of the band gets louder and louder. Suddenly, in the middle of it all, one of my friends, obviously sitting next to the cassette recorder, shouts out, “My God what an awful row!” This is followed by some feedback and the lead singer ranting out in time to the noise of his band. I played it to some of my best friends later that day and they loved it! I made  some copies of the recording for some of my friends and one of them called Dave Clifford took his copy to Brentford in London where he was at university. He played it to his flat mate, Carl Hutson who also thought it was a wonderful recording and Carl called it ‘the legendary ten seconds’! Thereafter the recording would be played for many years to come by myself and my close friends and fondly remembered as ‘the legendary ten seconds’, even though the length of the recording is actually about twenty seconds. As far as I am aware this is the only live recording in existence of that local punk band. When I started my solo music project about 20 years ago I thought that The Legendary Ten Seconds would be a great name for a band so that is where the name comes from.

JL: How did you first encounter and become interested in Richard III?

IC: I was aware of Richard III and his connection with the princes in the Tower from quite an early age from reading my copies of the Ladybird books about the Kings and Queens of England. This interest gradually increased over a long period of time although I never got around to reading much about him until I watched the TV documentary about the discovery of his grave in Leicester.

JL: How did you first feel an impulse to write songs about him?

IC: It was immediately after watching the documentary about the discovery of his grave. Lord Zarquon had recently joined my Legendary Ten Seconds music project and he had an idea for a new tune based upon a really nice folky sounding keyboard melody. We had started to compose a new song based upon the melody. We had the music for the introduction and the verse of a new song but no lyrics and also no music for the chorus. As soon as I had finished watching the documentary about the discovery of his grave I knew that the new song idea would have to be a song about Richard III.

JL: How did other people react to your new subject?

IC: Lord Zarquon thought it was a brilliant idea and after composing and recording one song about Richard III we decided to record a whole album about him. When we finished recording the new album it generated quite a bit of interest.

JL: Did you have any preconceptions about him?

IC: Prior to watching the documentary about Philippa Langley and the discovery of his grave I believed that he had murdered the Princes in the Tower. That was what it said in the history books that I read when I was a boy. Back in the 1990’s I had visited Middleham castle and had nearly purchased the Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Penman. I remember reading the first page in which Richard is lost in a forest and is starting to become frightened as it gets dark. I remember thinking that I wouldn’t be able to cope with a book which would end with Richard murdering the sons of Edward IV and then getting killed at the battle of Bosworth! What is really interesting for me is that I could always remember the details of the first page of that book even though I couldn’t remember the title of the book or the author. I don’t think I could tell you the details of the first page of the most recent book I have read so why did the details of that page of a novel about Richard III remain with me? Oh yes and I probably thought that he was a hunch back as well. After we had written our first song about Richard III, I read the Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. That was the first novel that I read about Richard III and the next one was The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Penman. I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to get around to reading those books as I could have started writing songs about Richard III about 30 years ago rather than 10 years ago.

JL: Tell us about the songs and albums you have written about Richard III.

IC: Well there are rather a lot! The first album that I recorded about Richard III is the Loyaulte me Lie album. With the help of Lord Zarquon I then recorded five further Ricardian concept albums. After that I decided to concentrate on composing non Ricardian songs but the albums that followed would often contain the odd Richard III themed tune.

JL: Please tell us about the first one you wrote about the king and, also, your favourite song you have written about him?

IC: The first song is called House of York. I remember that the idea for the chorus came to me when I was ironing a shirt. I looked at a couple of history books which had chapters about Richard III to help me write the lyrics. I recorded myself playing an acoustic guitar and singing. Then I gave the recording of this to Lord Zarquon who added drums and keyboards to it.

I think that my favourite song about Richard III is The King in the Car Park. My wife wrote the lyrics and I composed the tune. I think I changed one line of the original lyrics so that it mentions him becoming a tourist attraction in Leicester.

JL: There are many artists, writers and musicians who are inspired by Richard III – why do you think that is?

IC: It is because his story is absolutely fascinating and the most interesting thing is the historical mystery of the disappearance of the sons of Edward IV and the Tudor version of history in respect of Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck. Because of all of this there is the amazing Richard III Society.

JL: If you could travel back in time to Richard’s era, what would you say to him? (e.g any questions or advice?)

IC: I would tell him the date, place and time of where to catch Henry Tudor landing in Wales in August 1483 although I doubt if he would believe me. Perhaps as an alternative to tell him not to charge with his household knights at Henry Tudor unless he can make sure that first of all the Earl of Northumberland attacks William Stanley at Bosworth. Also to make sure that he arranges for lots of written documentary evidence regarding the survival of his nephews to be hidden in places where Henry VII won’t be able to find and destroy the documents,  just in case he can’t change the course of history at Bosworth.

JL:  Are there any other subjects that you have written songs about that have fascinated you?

IC: Yes science fiction, metal detecting, Torquay United football club, philately, the First and Second World Wars, are some of the things.

JL: What projects are you involved in at the moment?

IC: I have written and partly recorded an album of science fiction and astronomy songs. Another music project is about five brothers who were involved in the First World War. I’ve got about twenty or so other songs that I have partly recorded about various unrelated things that I need to finish.

JL:  Is there anything else you would like to add?

IC: I was inspired by Philippa Langley’s missing Princes project to recently record two new Ricardian albums called Ricardian Argosy and Ricardian Churchward.

https://thelegendarytenseconds.bandcamp.com/album/ricardian-argosy

https://thelegendarytenseconds.bandcamp.com/album/ricardian-churchward

One of the new songs is a comedy one about myself which includes the following which will hopefully make you laugh:-

I’ve been to the visitor centre

That was made for my favourite King

I’m sorry if you’re sick to death

Of all the songs about him that I sing

Joanne Larner: Ian kindly created a video for my novel Distant Echoes, which was inspired by one of his songs, Sheriff Hutton.  You can listen to it here: https://youtu.be/jiEoNhTbMSg?si=laVY-TM9PnKAU-nU