News - UK: Bill Martin tells of his Eurovision experiences | Eurovision Song Contest News - 2009 Moscow, Russia 

Bill Martin, the man behind two Eurovision Song Contest winners, Puppet on a string for the UK in 1967 and All kinds of everything for Ireland in 1970 was one of the guest panel members at the recent OGAE UK fan club Euro Bash in Birmingham. Scottish Mr. Martin also composed Congratulations for Cliff Richard in 1968, which famously lost narrowly to the Spanish entry.

Mr. Martin speaks in a very deadpan tone and entertained the fans in Birmingham with his witty remarks on the Eurovision Song Contest. Bill Martin founded one of the most successful songwriting partnerships with Nothern Irish Phil Coulter, who wrote the melodies. Winning Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna launched them on a career of dozens of UK and international hits for the likes of the Bay City Rollers, Slik and Cilla Black.

Bill Martin says he was inspired to write Puppet on a string by the old Eurovision favourite Volare, and they both start with a similar long note. This note was however not heard in Vienna, when Sandie Shaw’s microphone failed on the first performance of the song. It did win however and gave the songwriter a number one hit. It was not all celebrations in Vienna however, when the BBC bosses refused the winning songwriters entry to the winners’ party. This obviously sowed the seed of discontentment towards the British broadcaster in Bill Martin’s mind. The following year he wrote Congratulations for Cliff Richard and even if everybody were certain of Cliff’s victory, he lost out to Massiel, a late replacement to the original Spanish artists, Joan Manuel Serrat, who insisted to sing in his own language, Catalan. Franco’s government would not have that and Massiel eventually took to the stage in London. Earlier this year some allegations surfaced, that the Spanish broadcaster had on General Franco’s instruction negotiated a good score for the Spanish entry in return for TV programme buys. Bill Martin seemed to support this view by mentioning Massiel’s prominent visibility on German TV around Eurovision, and spoke about the German jury awarding their highest score to Spain, thus sealing the UK’s fate as the runner-up. Another long running topic within Eurovision circles was talked about by Bill Martin. He drew parallels with Puppet on a string winning Eurovision and the famous Summer of love in San Francisco in 1967, where the term gay (good as you) entered a wider vocabulary. Supposedly Mr. Martin wanted to say that gays and Eurovision are by no means a new phenomenon, but has been known since the early days.

The BBC hosted the contest in 1968 and broadcast it for the first time in colour and to a remarkable cost of several millions pounds. According to Bill Martin their song for Lulu in 1969 was rejected by the BBC as they did not want to carry the cost of another final. This is why Martin and Coulter founded their music publishing company and went to the neighbouring Ireland. He says that the rules of the day, where songwriters had be citizens of the country, were avoided by putting himself and Phil Coulter as producers and naming Irish citizens as songwriters on the credits and he so achieved his second Eurovision Song Contest victory with All kinds of everything, sang by Dana in 1970. Bill Martin called this as his revenge to the BBC, who not only had snubbed him at the 1967 winners’ party but also in writing a song in 1969. Bill Martin was saying how all great songwriters, apart from Lennon and McCartney and the Rolling Stones were interested in Eurovision and wanted to be part of it in the 60s. He could also point out that the Beatles did follow Eurovision, after they had used his Congratulations on George Harrison’s birthday. This has prompted John Lennon to comment that he did not know he had written his mother’s favourite Eurovision song.

Martin and Coulter made the Eurovision Song Contest final once more for Luxembourg in 1975 with Toi. Apparently the successful partnership came to an end after Martin insulted Coulter by calling the artist Geraldine an expensive Farrah Fawcett wannabe without knowing she was to be Phil Coulter’s future wife. They did however have one last try at Song for Europe in 1978.

On the state of Eurovision today, Bill Martin put a lot of blame on Terry Wogan, who according to him has derided the contest for far too long in the UK for anybody to take the contest seriously. Bill Martin also thinks the BBC and the other Big 4 or 5 should put their foot down and demand that more emphasis would be put on the songs again instead of the dancing visual extravaganza it has now become.

As a reply to an audience question he also advised any budding songwriters not to bother to send their work to record companies. According to him the industry has changed so much that nobody is going to listen to these unsolicited demos and music sent to the companies. This is part owing to all court cases on plagiarism, where unknown songwriters have taken big music business names to court for allegedly stealing their work that they had sent to them.

Bill Martin showed himself to be a through and through professional from a time when Eurovision was taken seriously even by the UK music industry. We thank him for talking to the fans of the contest in the Birmingham Euro Bash.