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In the following days, Hammersmith Apollo put on new colours. The previous poster with Phillip in a simple Victorian get-up and a face that made him look like a twenty-year-old was gone. Instead, the picture shifted to a lovely photo of Phillip now with his famous sideburns, stage makeup, play accurate costume and some of the Doctor's animals surrounding him. That poster captured the play much better than a simple photo that could've been anyone.
A second set of posters was also made, featuring the Pushmi-Pullyu, the two-headed llama. However, the biggest gains were easily all the quotes that the new posters displayed proudly.
"DOCTOR DOLITTLE'S 'MUSICAL MENAGERIE OF MARVELS…' just as you think the show has exhausted all the visual treats, it manages to trump its own ace." — The Guardian
One of the posters quoted the article from The Guardian, which, in my opinion, wasn't all that positive. But that was how the industry worked. The Guardian was trustworthy, and they had a quotable section that sounded very positive. What was the harm in quoting that specific part?
"The multi-million-pound show features lavish sets and complicated animatronics. But it was the star, Phillip Schofield, who stole the show... THIS IS A SURE-FIRE HIT." — London Tonight, ITV
That one was quoted from TV, which I didn't think was possible before our production did it. Popular shows and popular news — their words were a bigger testimony than a dozen other newspapers or magazines that ended up writing about us. Perhaps, it was accurate then for us to quote that…
I had finally found a rerun of the BBC One documentary that Gilles had watched, this time it showed up on BBC 2. My interview was cut from the final version. That made me happy because there would be no clips of me slipping up about future information — or at least that's how I dealt with my interview being cut off. The mini-documentary did make me nostalgic for stuff that happened only few weeks ago.
Darcy had footage of us orchestrating the dance for My Friend, the Doctor. There is something really embarrassing about looking back on stuff like that. Our moves were clunky, Aletta had barely finished her choreography, and Bernadette hadn't done her magic with all the Company dancers. Every scene I saw on screen, someone would make a tiny but noticeable mistake. My grandparents did not notice that, instead they were excited about me being on TV. Never mind that I was only in a few frames.
The documentary clearly showed how much progress we made even in the few sessions Darcy and her camera crew were allowed in. It also provided insight into sessions I wasn't welcome to — the ones where Phillip, Bryan, and Sarah and their understudies remained for. They seemed to goof around a lot more than they ever did with a big cast around, their personality seemed to shine through.
Doctor Dolittle was doing great. We received at minimum two and a half thousand people during our weekday performances, including even the matinee. However, my evening shows usually had three thousand people each day. I even had my first experience of people asking for my signature at the stage door.
Funnily enough, if Phillip had gone in inside before me, no one bothered me for my signature. It made sense that no one would be interested in my signature, child actors were ten a penny on West End. Phillip's biggest fans were the New Zealand tourists that came to find the quirky guy they had last seen on Shazam!. My impression was that it was a show about music, but the Kiwis, with their funny accents, made it sound like something out of this world.
My new schedule only required four days of shows from me, with an occasional second matinee and fifth show every other week. Mondays became special to me because I could go on auditions without worry, do follow ups on Tuesday, and be back in Hammersmith by 6 PM. Then I would go to auditions on Thursday and Sunday. Some weeks I decided to take days off to do my own thing and even enjoy a day of doing nothing. But those were mostly because there weren't auditions on my off days.
One weekend I went back home to Chester; the next, I stayed home; the one after that, I spent going to Soho for music inspiration. There was a cool record store called Reckless Records in Soho that sold vinyl records and rare collectibles. Expensive, sure, but also an amazing place to jog my revelation's memory. Soho was full of wonderful stuff, but my favorite place was Dean Street — a place with music and musicians everywhere. Two recording studios were on either side of the street; one was famous enough that supposedly a lot of big names frequented the area.
I came to the place for inspiration. There were singers busking in one corner, and fifty meters away, a jam session was going on between two random people. If their session was particularly good, then those two random people would become lifelong friends. Music could be a bridge that many built a friendship on. Some of those friendships could be the next Oasis or the Beatles.
Robbie was the first friend I made in the street — an old soul who could play any genre of music on his guitar. He owned a music store with his "close friend" Archie, and he spent most days playing music on Dean Street.
Robbie's jam area was fully set up for his comfort. The grizzly white bear of a man had stands for various instruments. There were none inside any of them at the moment, for this was London and making things easy to steal was asking for it to be stolen. I walked up to the hairy man with a request to jam together. My Granddad took one of the seats for the musicians to rest his old bones.
"Hi? Mind if I join you?"
"Sure, you play anything?" Robbie asked, casual and friendly-like.
"Piano or the drums."
"You can play the drums?" Granddad asked, surprised.
"Just a bit. I'm better with the piano." For now, I silently added.
"I'd rather not whip up the drums — they're a hassle to bring out. Hey! Archie, bring up the keyboard, mate!" he shouted the last part to his music store.
Archie wore dark sunglasses that I always imagined blind people wore. His choice of clothes screamed that he liked reggae music and smoking the green. I hoped that I wasn't stereotyping him just because of the Jamaican football kit and the green, yellow, and red accessories he wore.
"Who do we have here?" Archie asked in the most posh English accent I'd heard today.
I had a theory that those who looked the most foreign often had the most English accents, and so far, I seemed to be onto something.
"I'm Wilfred Price; that's my Granddad. I've been here twice before, and I always walk past Robbie here — thought I could join him today," I explained.
"Oh, I better see this. Keyboard and guitar, I know how it goes." Archie sang the last line like a song, shaking his head.
"Can I get the microphone too? I sing," I added.
"I'll set it up so you don't trip those silly laws these council muppets keep bringing on," Archie said, disappearing into the shop before coming out holding a chrome microphone.
As he was setting up everything, I got a brief lesson in the law from him. Currently, you could set up anywhere you wanted, but the council was always talking about a law that would allow them to force a stop, impose fines, and such. Revelation told me that London would have a busking licence requirement in the future. I just had no idea when that would become a thing. For now, there was no such requirement.
Robbie started us off with a literal bang. He had brought two guitars for himself. He chose to go acoustic — a sunburnt Gibson that sounded almost as good as it looked. Robbie's fingers flew over the strings, a Western-style music so upbeat that it made you want to dance.
Immediately, I was stumped. I thought that Robbie would want us to slowly start jamming, but he went into a high-tempo piece that I found hard to play along to. Piano and guitar were both lead instruments, and with Robbie taking the lead, I thought it best to take the back seat for now.
Following the scale he played, I joined him on the same scale, higher in places, which suited the especially energetic strumming by Robbie. Of course, I added the bass accompaniment to make a fuller sound. It was a lovely dance between us — if he went down the neck on his guitar, I played the lower notes on my piano. The opposite applied if he went up the neck. Once I became more used to Robbie's lead, I started to clutter in small sounds, almost like jingles in the commercial I had blabbed about — just tiny melodies like sizzling meat or a fizzy drink.
Our music started as a Western Mexican sort of tune and turned into what I could only describe as jazz. It was not the discordant mess I usually heard, and it had a lot to do with me. I didn't like going out of the scale we were in. I didn't like that sort of music because my ears didn't like the rogue notes. Robbie tried his best at messing it up — changing time, changing keys, changing genres. I started to not enjoy the jamming session as much; it felt more like Robbie was trying to take over every all of the music for himself. I was a drowning boy gasping for breath while he breathed from my supply.
My choices disappeared one by one. I had a hard time just keeping up with all the changes he was making so suddenly that I was barely masking the notes that I had played to the previous key. My eyes had become slits as I gave the stink eye at an unaware Robbie, all the while my Granddad tapped his feet to the music. Suddenly Robbie slowed down to nothing, which I assumed meant he was finally giving me the lead to, well, lead.
My playing broke down then — I had no idea what to play, not at all sure how to follow up whatever the hell Robbie was playing. I sat there repeating the same notes like a broken record trying to come up with something. Robbie started to play again, skipping over my turn. I realized that he had stopped playing only because he was switching to an electric guitar. This time he didn't play the country-Mariachi mix; instead, he went the full jazz route.
I realized that he was playing exactly what we had played together, replicating both ours parts on his guitar. Where I had masked the notes not in key because of Robbie's constant switches, he instead played them fully. Instead of hiding the mistake, Robbie was shining a spotlight — no, he was using it as the key piece of the music. Instead of the discordant notes that made my insides turn, it popped in my ear like popping candy did in my mouth. Those always rumbled and buzzed in my jaw, which made my ear feel funny, it was almost enjoyable. Almost.
"What ya doin'?" Robbie shouted over his shoulder at me.
"You're playing nonsense!" I shouted back at him, realizing that the microphone was on.
My shout was more discordant than Robbie's chaotic playing.
"Do that riff from before!" Robbie shouted, singing the impression of a piano part I played earlier.
It was only a repeating note, finished with a full chord. I played it the way he wanted, and somehow it made his jazz piece sound fuller—less chaotic, more ordered.
"Now take it down!" Robbie instructed.
Like he had said, our playing slowed down in time, tempo and even volume. His electric guitar sounded sad, starting in B minor then shifting to an F major. It was so slow, his guitar mimicked a singer doing an emotional song. I really loved the way Robbie did that key change — it wasn't like the abrupt change from before. It was on purpose: B-flat major shifting to its minor key, then using a minor four chord it moved to a G-flat major. You need no musical knowledge to understand that if you could hear what we played — and it all came down to that special minor four chord. A chord that evoked feelings from the listener; it made you yearn for the resolution that the chord demanded, when it was played the next note had to go back to the root of the key. Only by playing that root, do you feel satisfied. At times it felt every sad song had it and in times like this, I wanted all songs to have it.
So, it was my duty to make Robbie's guitar sound appropriately sad. I played the bass notes from the chords Robbie played with my left hand. My right hand played arpeggios from F to D. Those were just chords being played out in a broken way, so instead of clicking three keys on the keyboard at the same time, I played them one by one, then went back to play the first note, coming to a full circle.
But who needs the technical explanation — all you needed to know was that I was slaying it. The guitar sang sadly in a long, drawn-out way; I was rapping along to it, quick and fast. It embellished Robbie's guitar just right, and at some moments, I even felt cheeky enough to do multiple octave arpeggios. Think of that as the piano player sliding his hands across the entire instrument. A technician would remind you that was called a glissando, but I wasn't that pretentious. Regardless, I wasn't doing a glissando — no, I was doing an arpeggio going up a few octaves, and I was very proud of how much character it added.
My Granddad was nodding his head along to the music, and for the first time, Robbie wasn't complaining or looking over his shoulder at me. We kept the pattern going until Robbie sent us home with a solo, sliding from slow blues into rock without missing a beat.
"Sing the melody!" Robbie shouted as his fingers stopped smoking from the rapid solo.
"I don't know the lyrics!" I shouted back.
"Doesn't matter, it has no lyrics! It's just notes!" Robbie laughed.
I started my piano part again, repeating it as I copied Robbie's guitar melody with my voice. Robbie was right, singers never needed lyrics; I practiced each day doing random "Ooh" and "Aah" sounds, and I just needed to do the same. I cried out the sad part going "Ooh, ooh," but then shifted to "Aah's and Eeh's" when I had to go higher. The emotion in the notes swept me by, and I suddenly started to sound like I was suffering — like I was trapped in a prison out at sea, hoping for an escape boat that was nowhere near.
I sang every other day in front of a crowd of three thousand people. I had spent so much time putting in the effort so I could project my voice and emotions out perfectly to that many. Yet, I was disappointed with Tommy's parts — there were no highs and no lows, only the cheery happy-go-around sound. Only the one dimensional cage of Tommy Stubbins.
For some reason, the notes sounded like me — Wilfred — crying out for a better role, a more meaningful job. My face contorted, my mouth opened wide while my eyes and brows drooped in sadness, combining into an awful crying expression. I even felt tears coming up. It was just like when I had practiced crying on command using Julie's methods. You make the expression, you start to cry for real. Maybe it wasn't that, and it was all real.
I had no idea.
But I rode that wave all the way until it felt like my vocal tears had dried out and there was no more sadness I could express. I went down in tempo slowly, and Robbie followed it until we were radio silent.
Cheers arose from everywhere, opening my eyes I saw that a small crowd of two dozen people had gathered to listen to us. All were seemingly tourists, but from their expressions, they understood the song completely. There were no words in that song — it was my soul crying out for escape, and they had heard it loud and clear.
"Money, where?" an Asian gentleman asked me, holding out a five-pound note.
I held up my hands in protest. "Oh? Sorry, we're not busking."
Robbie scoffed at me, "Just take it. I've got a bucket here." Robbie pointed to a red bucket in the style of his record shop.
Before my eyes, five people put in enough money for Robbie and me to have a pretty fancy dinner. I thanked them as much as I could. I hadn't asked for it, but I felt I at least had to make them feel good about giving their hard earned money.
"You sing any popular songs to make these folks happy and actually open up their purses?" Robbie asked me conspiratorially.
"I can do a good I Want You Back," I said with a smile.
"I've got no trumpets," Robbie complained.
"What happened to the guy forcing me into uncomfortable genres?" I challenged him.
Robbie opened his mouth to shoot back a banter. I had no patience for it. My fingers played all the parts of the music, leaving only the guitar part to him. I needed no trumpet — I could make do by myself. Piano was the king of instruments, and I practiced on my own by necessity.
When the crowd started to tap their feet to it, I started my vocalisation. There were no more "Ooh's" or "Aah's" needed for this song — we were going the full Yankee style.
"Uh-huh huh huh!" I sang.