Murray Head

He’s perhaps best known for his 1984 worldwide smash hit One Night in Bangkok, but actor/singer/songwriter Murray Head is certainly no “one hit wonder.” In fact, this native of Scotland continues to enjoy a very active, many-faceted career based on his undeniable talent for acting and for singing and writing his own songs. With the release of Passion, a compendium of songs chosen by Murray, and largely written by him, the time has perhaps come to reassess the talents of this maverick artist.

Born in 1946, he began his performing career at age 12 with appearances in a series of radio plays. He began writing songs a year later and at 16 ran away from home to seek out a recording career in London, cutting his earliest singles under the supervision of famed producer Norrie Paramor, the London-based svengali who produced many of the British pop stars of the early 1960s, such as Cliff Richard, Frank Ifield and Billy Fury.

In 1966 Head made his acting debut in The Family Way; and the film also featured his third single "Some Day Soon," which produced by Tim Rice. Then virtually unknown, Rice and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber contacted him to sing the role of Judas on the soundtrack to their musical Jesus Christ Superstar, in which he appeared while also filming Sunday Bloody Sunday (also starring Peter Finch and Glenda Jackson). Telling the story of the last days of Christ from the point of view of Judas, the still-unmatched original cast also starred Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan as Jesus and Yvonne Elliman as Mary Magdalene. The phenomenal success of both projects launched Murray Head to mainstream attention, and in 1972 he capitalized on this newfound awareness by recording his debut solo album, Nigel Lived.

In 1975 Murray had one of his greatest successes with his A&M album Say It Ain't So, scoring an enduring cult hit with the single "Say It Ain't So, Joe," a great song (which he wrote) which was later covered by several artists, most notably The Hollies and The Who’s Roger Daltrey. Fluently bilingual, the rest of the decade saw him away from music while he focused much of his attention developing his film career in France. He came back musically in 1980 with Between Us;Voices (a very “English” album focused on gentle, intelligent acoustic pop songs, featuring members of Fairport Convention and guitar hero Jeff Beck); and How Many Ways, which followed a year later.

In 1984 Head was tapped to star in the musical Chess, which Tim Rice wrote with Abba masterminds Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus; his soundtrack performance of the song "One Night in Bangkok" was released as a single and became a major pop hit on both sides of the Atlantic. It first appeared on the UK charts on November 10, 1984 and stayed there for 13 weeks, at one point reaching the #12 spot. In the US, it jumped to #9 in April of 1985 and topped the charts in France, Australia, Belgium, Austria, South Africa, Denmark, Israel, West Germany, Switzerland, Holland and Sweden as well.

In recent years Murray Head has been focused almost exclusively on his careers as performer and writer for French film and television, and has appeared in several musicals as well. Of particular note is his role in Edouard Molinaro’s Beaumarchais, l'insolent (Beaumarchais The Scoundrel) and Michael (The Postman, 1984) Radford’s film White Mischief, the story of British expatriates drifting through their days in colonial Kenya. In 2001, Murray was seen on British television, in a supporting role in North Square, as well as episodes of Casualty and The Vice. As a writer, he recently collaborated with French director Diane Kurys on the screenplay to her film Children Of the Century, about the writer George Sand.

If this is not eclectic enough career-wise, he also hosted a French television programme watching and discussing independent documentaries on a range of subjects like the silk industry, medicinal plants, and a cave doctor! He recently performed the role of the unpleasant character “Clife Maisie”(a major part) in the french language TV series Music Hall for the Radio-Canada network, the new season of which is airing in February 2003, and he will also be starring in the upcoming Luc Plamondon stage musical Cindy, which opens in Paris at the Palais des Congrès in 2002.

Discography

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