From a mall in Milton Keynes to “Diddy” David Hamilton: a potted history of ‘Playing Popular Piano’!
I decided to revisit my book, Playing Popular Piano and Keyboards, to ready it for a third edition. It needed a tweak here or there, but it has stood the test of time since first being published by Pan in the UK and by Prentice Hall in the USA.
The process has given me the chance to reminisce about my original author book tour that took in the Pan bookshop on Fulham Road (sadly closed around 2007, so I’ve outlasted that!), a bookshop in a mall in Milton Keynes and one in a shopping centre in Reading. All the shops had laid on a piano, so they’d gone to a lot of trouble to give the book a good launch.
The last store, in Reading, provided a fitting finale to the tour and at one point I was surrounded at the piano – which was outside the shop and on the upper level, so very echoey – by a large group of scary Sunderland football fans who’d been drawn to the sound of my piano playing (surely a good sign?) who all insisted that I play Rod Stewart’s Sailing as they, drunkenly, sang along.
Still, at least they kept shouting for more, even if it was seemingly endless repeats of Sailing, so that’s something. I don’t think any of them bought the book, and I can’t ever hear Rod Stewart without feeling slightly uneasy.
I also did a few radio interviews for the book and the best two (ones I can remember!) were a down-the-line interview with Walter Love for Radio Ulster and an in-studio interview with Brian Matthew for one of his Round Midnight slots.
However, the best media exposure for the book was on a daytime TV show with “Diddy” David Hamilton called Daybreak, where each morning for a week (five days) I had to give him a lesson on playing the piano.
It was a nerve-racking experience as it was all recorded in a few hours one dark and dismal Wednesday evening – and he didn’t even take me for a drink afterwards although he was loudly inviting everyone else involved on the production! I can’t watch the DVDs I have of the show without wincing, but, actually it was a fun experience all things considered. (Maybe I should put the video up on YouTube?!)
Prentice Hall didn’t offer me a US tour (surprise, surprise) but they invited me to their offices for an editorial meeting followed by one with their rep force. Needless to say, they wouldn’t pay for my flight or other expenses, but, in any case, I had to go to New York on other business, so I dovetailed a Prentice Hall meeting in with that.
They were a great bunch of people, but, with their offices in New Jersey – which I had got myself to with some difficulty – all I can remember of my meeting is the fact that in the pouring rain, they got a staff driver to take me back to Manhattan, as I thought, but he told me he’d been instructed to drop me off just over the George Washington bridge in Harlem – which he did – rather than drive me all the way back to the Sherry Netherland Hotel (by Central Park). Charming!
Anway, enough of all that!
(The book sold very well in the UK and in the States and has just been published in its third edition!)