“The director told me he wanted a song about death… Not only that, but it was a rabbit”: Mike Batt on Watership Down, his concept albums and the connection between the Wombles, Steeleye Span and (maybe) Hawkwind

Best known for writing the theme tune to the popular children’s TV show The Wombles, British composer and arranger Mike Batt began his career gigging in seedy strip clubs, but soon found himself teaming up with Family on their debut album. He’s since had a strong association with progressive music, working with everyone from Steeleye Span to Hawkwind. In May 2023 Batt discussed his career so far with Prog.

There are polymaths, and there’s Mike Batt. He’s most widely known in the UK as the man behind the hit-laden music for children’s TV show The Wombles, but not long before that he was a young singer-songwriter with dreams of arranging and conducting orchestras.

Southampton-born Batt found himself with a top job in A&R at Liberty Records in London in 1968 at age 19, and moved into arranging via Family’s debut album, Music In A Doll’s House. Batt also recorded albums of popular cover versions, created film scores, collaborated with Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Webber and wrote jingles for adverts.

For all his commercial work – and massive success with songs such as the No.1 hit Bright Eyes from the film Watership Down, the discovery and management of best-selling jazz-pop musician Katie Melua, and classical acts Vanessa Mae, Bond and The Planets – Batt has always pushed the envelope.

He moved from The Wombles to producing Steeleye Span to creating his own, elaborate and imaginative solo records. He’s put the wildest combination of contributors together, such as Frank Bruno, Ozzy Osbourne and Billy Connolly for The Dreamstone TV series (“If you don’t ask, you don’t get!” he says), and saw his 1984 Lewis Carroll mega-musical The Hunting Of The Snark fly high, with animations he’d created himself, then get hobbled by the record industry.

And yet, in the pursuit of art, he would still throw all caution to the wind. “I’ve not been constantly wealthy, because I’ve taken risks,” Batt tells Prog. “I’ve done things I wanted to do, not because they necessarily paid the mortgage.”

He’s currently promoting his Croix-Noire collaboration with young French writer Jean-Charles Capelli, aka Ace Hansel Jr, and developing a Reggie Perrin musical with authors David Quantick and Jonathan Coe, based on the 70s sitcom that explored a suburban middle-manager’s escapist fantasies. His 1973 orchestral rock album – that cost him ￡11,000 and fell through several major label cracks – Variations On A Riff, has just hit Spotify. “I can’t think of a better way to describe my life than this line I wrote for Caravan Song [in 1978],” he says. “‘I don’t know where I’m going... but I’m going.’”

What’s your background?

My dad was a civil engineer and my mum was a very wacky, lovely, cartoon-drawing art teacher and PE teacher. I was born in Southampton but we kept moving around because of my dad’s job – York, Eastbourne, Coventry, Bradford. Finally, we settled in Winchester, Hampshire. I used to go to Southampton Civic Centre for gigs, where I saw Jimi Hendrix. I wore my military jacket that I got from an advert in NME’s back pages.

When did you start getting into music?

When I was 12 The Beatles were just getting going and that was so exciting. Every time they had a single out it would be the talk of the trolleybus to school in Bradford. I had a friend, Cass Novakowski, who taught me to play the accordion. Learning the buttons on the left hand of it gave me all the chords I needed to tinkle out some tunes on a piano we had, which was mainly in the house as a piece of furniture.

When did your love of orchestration came in?

A leaflet came through the door from the Concert Hall Record Club, where you could get four classical LPs for nothing if you eventually bought one album for 26 shillings [around ￡3]. I went for it and the first one I chose was Schubert’s Ninth Symphony. I just fell in love with it.

I very much wanted to arrange and conduct; I used to fantasise about writing music down. Because of The Beatles, George Martin became an inspiration for me.

Meanwhile, you were out in Winchester playing piano.

Aged 14, I used to play in pubs for two quid a night, keeping the customers happy. The best way to learn piano is to play alongside some drunken guy. I had a regular, Marcus, who used to hang off me, singing Slow Boat To China in a key that doesn’t exist, like between F and F sharp. It trained my ear, and I used to really enjoy it. You also had to play loud to be heard, which gave you power.

When did you get into a band?

When I was 15 a group called Phase Four, all 19-year-olds based in Southampton, asked me to join. I had a Woolworths chord organ with a microphone strapped to it. Then my dad bought me a Watkins Telstar and I had to pay him back out of gig money. When I left school I got a job playing organ in The Johnny Ralph Trio, in a strip bar in Southampton.

Delightful! When did you start touting your wares in London? 

At the age of 18, I thought to myself, “I am now a songwriter.” By night I was at the strip club, by day I was on a train to London. I would never send my stuff to record companies – I always asked for a meeting. That’s how I met the assistant of the assistant of Jack Baverstock at Philips, Dick Leahy, who ended up being one of the most powerful and brilliant executives in the industry [with Bell Records].

My biggest break came when I answered an advert in NME, one that Elton John also answered, as did Bernie Taupin. It was Liberty Records, looking for talent. It amazed me that a record label was advertising for talent because usually they told you to fuck off. I went in to see the A&R man, Ray Williams, who was about 20. I brought in a tape I’d recorded at home with a mic hanging from the ceiling light. My cousin had played violin and we had a drummer in the next room. I was signed on the spot to the publishing company, and one song became my first single [Mr Poem, 1968].

That was fast work. You seemed to move into arranging very quickly too.

I did the arrangements for Family’s Music In A Doll’s House. Their music blew me away, and from a prog point of view that’s probably when the flame was lit in me to do rather unusual orchestral heavy rock. I wasn’t credited on that, but I should have been. If I had, I reckon I’d have had a bigger career as an arranger in my younger days.

But the journey upwards continued, didn’t it?

Ray Williams left and I got offered his job. I was promoted to head of A&R at the age of 19. I knew nothing about it, but it was fun as I was out seeing bands all the time, such as early King Crimson and Egg. Ray had already signed the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and The Idle Race. I signed the Groundhogs because I got very into the blues, and with Tony McPhee and Jo Ann Kelly I put together the [compilation] album Gutbucket.

What was your role with Hapshash And The Coloured Coat?

I was sitting in my Austin Reed suit, in my ridiculously posh office – crystal chandeliers, a signed Picasso lithograph on the wall, a box of White Owl cigars on the desk – completely inexperienced, wondering what was gonna happen next. And it was Hapshash.

They were designers and they ran the hip clothes shop, Granny Takes A Trip. They’d recorded one album and were going deep prog. They were missing a member who was a guest of Her Majesty’s Prison Service. They said to me, “Why don’t you join the group?” And I’m thinking, “I’m the A&R man, why should I join?” And then I thought, “Why not? It’ll be fun!”

So we co-wrote Western Flier. I wanted it to be very psychedelic and of-the-moment. We recorded at Trident, the place lit up with candles and joss sticks. Tony McPhee was on guitar, and Mickey Finn randomly turned up. The picture on the back of the sleeve is from their flat, and I look about 15 in it.

How did you get involved with The Wombles?

I was at Liberty for about 18 months, then they got swallowed up by United Artists. I hated the corporate life. I wanted to be an artist and to do more arranging and conducting. I had an agent who got me some jingle work; I did things for Guinness and Smarties. Then one day she rang me and said an independent company were making a BBC show; would I like to talk with the man with the wonderfully fictitious-sounding name of Graham Clutterbuck, from FilmFair?

I met with him, and Ivor Wood, who did the design for the Wombles TV characters. In the book they’re teddy bears; Ivor gave them the pointy noses. I suggested that rather than compose a jingle I would write a song, and I did it in a day. ‘Wombling’ wasn’t a verb until I wrote the song. And they were only ‘free’ because it rhymed with ‘me’. That was my first hit, and then I had to write a follow-up – Remember You’re A Womble.

The Wombles’ songs brought all your influences together, didn’t they?

Oh, the variety of it! I always wanted to write for a military band, so I had Wombles On Parade. For light classical, Minuetto Allegretto, and then a Christmas song. I think this comes from my psychedelia mindset – always experimenting.

Why did The Wombles’ music become so popular?

It tapped into the British sense of humour, our sense of the ridiculous. There’s nothing more ridiculous than seeing The Wombles on Top Of The Pops. But that only happened as I was trying to get some marketing for the single and the label didn’t want to know. I asked my mum to make me a Womble costume, which I wore for a week, from the Saturday, all around London. At one point I hailed a taxi at Green Park and the driver got so confused when I put my Womble head in his window that he said, “Sorry, madam, I’m not going that way,” and roared off.

On the Tuesday I got a call. Top Of The Pops had asked if there was a band, and could we do the show on the Thursday? There wasn’t, but I said yes and asked three mates to help: Hapshash drummer Andy Renton, his brother Tony, and Robin Le Mesurier, son of John and Hattie Jacques. For the next two days me, my sister and my parents were sewing costumes.

That Thursday, the Wombles got together for the first time in the BBC dressing room. I showed them some steps... then we were on TV.

Steeleye Span approached you to produce them at this time, didn’t they?

Tim Hart and Peter Knight got in touch – I got the gig because they liked the drum sounds on the Wombles tracks! They were broad-minded and commercially minded. We did two albums: the very successful All Around My Hat and the medium-successful Rocket Cottage. I got on brilliantly with Pete – he could roll a joint with one hand, which impressed the hell out of me – and he contributed solos to some of my records, such as Arabesque.

Tell us about your solo albums.

After The Wombles, my contract was converted to solo work. Schizophonia [from 1977] was originally a concept album called The Adventures of God And His Pals, with God being like Lord Snooty, the Beano comic character. I started writing songs, then I felt it was a bit silly. Then I imagined this Arabic story and found one about Mohammed the Fifth and the Berber Revolt in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I loved the musical challenge of writing Arabic-sounding music.

You used the London Symphony Orchestra on that, bringing classical elements forward...

Yes, and even more so on Tarot Suite. That had more Bartók and Stravinsky in it. I used tarot to stimulate ideas and the symbolism inspired me. Tarot Suite featured my gang – Tony McPhee, Roger Chapman, Colin Blunstone – and Mel Collins, who was wonderful. I’d ask him to play like [Motown saxophonist] Junior Walker to throw him, but you couldn’t.

Did Watership Down resonate with you, being a Hampshire lad and the work being named after a hill there?

No, the record company recommended me for a title song. The director told me he wanted a song about death. Fucking hell! Not only that, but it was a rabbit. I then realised it was a human analogy, and what happens after death. I sat at the piano and Bright Eyes came into my mind because that’s what a living person has.

Then they asked me who would I like to sing it with and I had a top three: Art Garfunkel – but I thought he’d never go for it – Colin Blunstone and Jon Anderson. People who were going to break your heart. When Art heard it, though, he absolutely loved it.

In ’79 and ’80 you went around the world on a boat with your family. How was that for you creatively?

I had a small studio on board and that’s where I started writing Waves, my least freaky album. I had a record deck too, which never jumped even in a force five gale, and we bolted a piano to a bulkhead, then bolted the stool to the piano so when we hit high seas I wouldn’t fall off. My marriage was failing so I took us all to sea... it wasn’t the best idea.

Six Days In Berlin was written on that trip, wasn’t it?

Yes, while sitting in a harbour in Barbados! My imagination was going wild and it’s the most experimental album I’ve done – a symphonic, wacky one. Halfway through it goes backwards – I copied the score back-to-front.

Your outfit on the Six Days cover goes well with the look for the Zero Zero project you did in Australia...

That’s just a coincidence – it was a jacket I bought two doors down from [Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop] Sex in King’s Road! On my voyage, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation knew I might head there, so they commissioned me to write a piece for their 50th anniversary with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Opera House. I was delighted and I thought I’d make it one of my albums.

Then they asked if we could do it in a studio. Still delighted! Then I started to get ambitious. What if it was a story? With dancers? And projections? So I wrote about a guy called No.17, living in a dystopian future where love has been genetically eradicated.

I was very proud of that production, and getting to use electronic instruments, such as the Fairlight, as they were emerging.

Why did you choose The Hunting Of The Snark as a musical project?

I was back in the UK after my relationship had fallen apart and in Foyles book shop on Charing Cross Road, looking for a biography on Al Capone. I tripped over this pile of books that were all The Annotated Snark by Martin Gardner, which analysed Lewis Carroll’s book. I sat down and read a whole chunk right there. I was being used quite a lot by the LSO by then so I planned a deadline to write a piece and record it.

What happened to the project?

I had a cast list to die for, including Art Garfunkel – as I’d worked on his Greatest Hits – John Gielgud and Roger Daltrey. There was a bidding war for my recording, and it went to Sony. A senior A&R man edited some sections and killed the dramatic flow. I told them I’d return their advance to get the record back; I couldn’t release it as it was. It took a year, so they’d save face.

We did a brilliant live show at the Royal Albert Hall in 1987; Justin Hayward stood in for Art. I then spent ages getting that on TV. It aired on BBC Two on Boxing Day and the visuals were gobsmacking – an animation technique I’d come up with for Zero Zero. But the critics hadn’t heard the music and didn’t understand it. Meanwhile, in the theatre world I’d crossed a line: they hated that I’d directed it, designed it, written it and orchestrated it.

No one would have expected this collaboration: you and Hawkwind. Was Dave Brock a Womble?

I’m not telling you! I knew Hawkwind back in ’69 when they were signed to Liberty. We reconnected after when me and Katie Melua were at the US embassy to get visas at the same time as Dave and his wife Kris. By 2017 they’d asked me if I’d like to produce an upcoming album, The Road To Utopia. We went into Air Studios and did some reimaginings of past tracks.

Then they said, “We’d like to do a symphonic tour.” It was difficult, in an interesting way! The 30-piece orchestra were going, “Oh my God, we’re playing with Hawkwind!” and Hawkwind were going, “Oh my God, we’re playing with an orchestra!” I was there to keep it together.

There were incidents like, “No, Dave, you can’t go off and do 16 bars of that, the horns are coming in.” But it was great fun, and I joined the band for one night [in 2018], at Citadel Festival in Gunnersbury, as keyboard player.

You collaborated with a new artist, Jean-Charles Capelli, on the Croix-Noire project in 2022 – an album, a comic, and a game. Why did that appeal?

In the Q4 of my life I don’t know if I want to spend 10 years developing and touring another artist. But mutual friends put us together. Jean-Charles was a shy guy with a notebook of lyrics and thoughts, and when I caught sight of his writing, psychedelia came into my mind. After trying him out to sing – a song about his cousin Lucy, who took her own life – he clearly had talent and was filled with emotion.

As he was shy, we came up with a concept around a red light district near where he lives in France, and then built in this superhero story where he can change the emotion in a situation. He finds this sidekick, an old colonel. And in the comic, the colonel looks like me!

Variations On A Riff – Reflections On A War is out finally out, your orchestral rock album that took 50 years to emerge. How do you feel?

I’m relieved that it’s out there, warts and all. I’d spent ￡11,000 on it in 1973 and been thwarted by the symphonic version of Tommy at A&M; Purple Records were interested, but Ian Gillan wanted to rewrite it, and take vocalist Tony Rees off. Then the Womble thing happened. Variations sat in a cupboard on quarter-inch tape for decades.

I thought it deserved its day in the sun so it’s just on Spotify for now – hard rock meets my orchestration. It’s an anti- Vietnam war piece, a sentiment which is sadly still pertinent today.