Mantovani: A Lifetime in Music [Hardcover]

Venetian born, British educated, and classically trained in music, Mantovani and his imaginative new sounds for light orchestra brought instant name recognition and a modest fortune to one man, and inexplicable pleasure to millions who rushed to install newfangled stereo speakers to their record players and flocked by the thousands to glamorous concert halls and stark gymnasiums to enjoy popular and light classical music like it was never played or heard before.

MacKenzie provides amusing colloquies in this biography between the maestro and his musicians during recording sessions and concert rehearsals. They not only entertain us, but inform our understanding about his subject’s personality, a man with “a British head and an Italian heart.”

The author meticulously places Mantovani and the sound revolution he instigated in the context of his times. With bountiful details and a wealth of personal recollections, the author provides enormous insight into the budding recording industry of popular music and the fascinating lives of musicians, arrangers, producers, engineers, “fixers”, and yes, even sales distributors, whose energies and individual talents symbiotically seized the "sound" Mantovani had in his head and advanced its creation and promotion in all the world's continents.

One such talent deserving long overdue focus was Ronald Binge, whose early collaboration with Mantovani is fully and fairly illuminated here. The author's objective account graciously invites closure on the debate over who should receive "credit" for the unique "layered string sound" that reverberated in the radio airwaves in the early fifties with “Charmaine”, “Greensleeves”, “Wyoming”, and other lilting waltz melodies that launched Mantovani’s meteoric rise on the Billboard charts.

Thanks to MacKenzie's prolific research, readers will also get to know other unknown or little remembered musicians like trumpeter Stan Newsome, percussionist Charles Botterill, flautist Lionel (Solly) Solomon, accordionist Emile Charlier, violinist (and father of “The Man from Uncle”) David McCallum. All of these and others whose brilliant solo performances were wisely featured by Mantovani in his repertoire, enriched the distinctive lush sound of the world's most mesmerizing orchestra.

Indeed, this biography is as revealing about one life as it about the lives of those who helped make Mantovani a music legend. Nonetheless, MacKenzie provides compelling evidence that Mantovani's success resulted primarily from his own ability to inspire and impose his will on musicians and business collaborators. Not a mean feat in an industry filled with strong wills and artistic egos. But Mantovani commanded such a high degree of respect for his unwavering commitment to standards of excellence that relatively few with whom he worked became grossly offended or alienated. Besides, who could complain when the popularity of the Mantovani sound and the novel attraction to stereo and the rise of FM radio stations in America fed off each other to produce a lucrative money engine for so many, some of whom including British tax collectors who benefitted more than the maestro himself.

Few today recall that Mantovani was the first recording artist to sell one million stereo records and whose success as a British musical act in America was incomparable until the Beatles stepped ashore. And who knew Mantovani and the Rolling Stones shared at one point the same record label and recording studio, continuously swapping the amount of echo for their respective sessions. How ironic it is that record company profits from the unprecedented sales of Mantovani recordings fueled the advance of Mick Jagger’s career.

Colin MacKenzie’s startling revelations make this biography provocative and groundbreaking. It shatters myths and misinformation, and sheds new light on a subject who has long been obscured and the target of rappers’ razzing, jazzers’ jabbing, classical musicians’ contempt, and deejays’ disdain. That pretty much covers everyone, except those millions who actually listened (and some who still are) and mystifyingly attracted to the way Mantovani's strange music weaves magical memories and sweet dreams out of fervently resilient melodies. For them, the laughter from others is worth every listening moment.

I'm more familiar with his 1930s Tipica Orchestra than his later more famous concert orchestra, so this book has really enlightened me as to the extraordinary success Mantovani had with his cascading strings and his large orchestra. In fact this biography puts the cascading/tumbling strings into perspective, for this aspect of the Mantovani sound was only a contributing factor to the heights he achieved as Decca's "bread and butter". I like the fact that the author tells us about those who worked with and for Mantovani and gives them due credit for their contribution. He doesn't ignore critics of Mantovani's music either and the picture presented is balanced as well as affectionate.

I was very pleased that Mantovani's earlier success as the leader of a brass-less dance band was duly recognised. He has many admirers from that period alone. I imagine that this part of Mantovani's story will be a revelation for those who only recall his big concert orchestra of later years.

My only complaint is that I would have preferred some proper photo pages on appropriate paper. There are many interesting photographs throughout the book and many are presented in too small a size and are not as clear as would have been the case on appropriate paper.

However the text is excellent and I found it difficult to put it down. This is the best biography I've come across in quite a while and I really enjoyed every page. I would recommend it to anyone interested in 20th Century popular music. Mantovani was the biggest-selling British artist in America before the Beatles, and over his career sold in excess of 50 million albums. This book helps us to understand why.