The Barry Gray Archive
The Barry Gray Archive
The Barry Gray archive includes a biography of BG, summary of recording sessions, information about the archive,
An associate of the archive has written an interesting document about it here.
It was with great excitement that I came across an album of Barry Gray's soundtracks, Stand By For Adverts, soon after its release in 2011 by Trunk Records. There is more information about the content here. It was produced in association with the archive. The album has 81 tracks and I thought that surely the soundtrack to the Spooks TV advert would be one of them! It wasn't listed, however, so perhaps then it was one of the untitled tracks that are on the album? I listened to previews of those, but nothing sounded remotely spooky. I couldn't believe it - no Spooks, even though there are not one but two tracks for Quaker's short-lived Banana Mellows breakfast cereal to taunt us!
I contacted the archivist and was told that while they had some unreleased material, (BG's contribution to) the soundtrack for the TV ad was most definitely not there.
Did BG deem ads to be not worth keeping? Even if that were true for some, it was not true of all. For example, on the introduction to the BOAC ad soundtrack, BG tells us it was recorded from the optical track for the film. Clearly he cared enough to have it copied, to keep it and to record an introduction to it.
The archive website has a link to some information on BG's recording sessions, taken from his notebooks. (These include ones at his studio at home, referred to as BGS). Sadly, the TV ad is not listed there either! Some of the sessions just have names of people or agencies and could even have been for more than one company or product. Perhaps then the recording was done in one of those? Restricting our search to the 12 months before the ad was aired, there is a possible session in February 1965 at BGS, referred to as George & Fred commercials. However, there were 4 other musicians there and I suspect BG's contribution to the Spooks TV ad would have been solo. That leaves the Basil and John sessions in January and February 1965, also at BGS, when no-one else was present, as a possible recording opportunity for the Spooks TV ad.
(There is also a session he did for Erwin Wasey, the agency for the Spooks advert, but in 1961. Presumably it was for a promotional film, but I wonder if it could have included some material for the agency to use later?)
To try to consider the possible fate of his recordings, let's now just look at the recording sessions at BGS, as there the tapes would have been totally under his control.
Perhaps not all recordings BG made alone at his studio were entered into his notebooks. There are only four such sessions logged for the Anderson years. However, surely he would have been active in the studio, composing, playing, experimenting and recording on many occasions on his own? Perhaps he only logged solo recording sessions there in exceptional circumstances, such as being up against a deadline and needing to make sure that he had the place to himself, for example? If so, then his contribution to the Spooks ad may not have been logged at all.
(Note that the sound effects he made for the Dr. Who films aren't logged either!)
To get the full picture of his TV advert output, we should also look at editions of Television Mail for the period of interest, assuming that information for new TV ads is present, as it was for the Spooks ad. I'm not aware of this publication having been scanned, so I think a visit to the British Library will be necessary!
A subset of the information on the recording sessions, this time just for the years 1960 to 1974, is here, and I have used this to do some analysis as the format makes it easier to copy into a spreadsheet. I have attempted to identify recording sessions at BGS for adverts for those years and then compared those with the tracks on Stand By For Adverts. Even allowing for the slim possibility that the untitled tracks were all recorded at BGS , I reckon there are at least 10 BGS recordings from those years that are missing from the album.
There are over 600 tapes in his archive, so although the Spooks ad is not unique in its absence, it's still a mystery as to why so many should be missing when so much has survived. Perhaps if music or musical effects could be produced easily and quickly, they may not have been worth keeping. After all, we don't know what BG's archiving policy was for such work, nor how long he would have kept them. Indeed, for all recordings, it would likely have made sense to make a temporary copy anyway, as a backup just in case. Once no longer needed, then perhaps a decision was made as to whether it was worth keeping.
Recordings overlooked? Seems unlikely given the amount of material missing.
Tape damaged beyond recovery? While there was some loss where tapes were spliced together, there is nothing to suggest an entire tape was unusable.
Binned during a clear-out? If a tape box was in poor condition and the label didn't indicate it was worth keeping, then why do so?
Tape discarded by mistake? If not while stored at BGS, then perhaps when BG moved home. And if not then, perhaps during his retirement or after his death. These things happen and there was plenty of time.
Identified as a work-in-progress? As well as tapes containing the finished product, BG must have had tapes for works in progress. Assuming these were routinely recorded over or discarded, is it possible that that was also the fate of the tape containing the ad (and perhaps several ads), the label on the tape perhaps not indicating the nature of its contents?
Those Luvil TV ads, mentioned earlier, surely with music and musical effects by BG, are also absent from Stand By Adverts. There is no specific entry for Luvil in the recording sessions, but there is a probable session for Lintas, the advertising agency that the HATS website tells us was used for those ads, given as Linta L.E.A.S in Dec 1963. The date seems about right for the earliest of the Luvil ads. The fairly simple eerie effect seems to be just the Ondes Martenot being played at that point, likely just single-layered. Not worth keeping the recording then? Not so - the 'underwater army' music that just precedes it is multi-instrumented and surely would have justified keeping it.
Regardless of the reason, we can say with confidence that the album and presumably the digitized archive does not contain all of BG's work for TV adverts.