Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Just now on Desert Island Discs, I heard Charles Hazlewood say he’d been to CH, where he says the rudeness saw themselves as a bunch of misfits. Hmmm! Possibly a good description!

Did anyone know him?

This looks like the Charles M E Hazlewood listed in the 1997 Who's Blue. BB/LB/MaA 1978-85. Organ scholar Keble College Oxford and subsequent distinguished musical career largely as conductor/music director. After my time I'm afraid, but he ought to have quite a wide network outside and inside the OBs and maybe some of them will see your post here and comment.

There were a number of very talented music scholars at that time.
Chris Tambling, Charles, Adrian Bawtree.
But the most talented was Piers Maxim, whom you have probably never heard of.
His interest was and remains church music, so was never going to be mainstream.
On my final day, Jeffers told the house "I guarantee in years to come you will read about Piers in the newspapers"
Charles has done remarkably well.
A very brave man.

Excerpts from The Times. Several other papers cover the disclosure. He says that his family helped him to deal with the abuse

The conductor Charles Hazlewood reveals today that he had been a victim of sexual abuse “through most of my childhood” b

Charles Hazlewood paid tribute to his family for helping him to deal with the abuse

You can hear the Charles Hazlewood Desert Island Disc programme here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jfnv

I was in Charles Hazlewood's year, never in his house and I think I only shared one class with him, iirc Willie Lough OBE's LE German. My only interaction with Charles in 7 years was, iirc, being on the receiving end of a minor gratuitous insult whilst waiting outside Willie Lough's classroom, waiting to practice our Zombie impressions and mispronouncing 'die', so I can't claim to have known him. I was a friend of his A--level music class mate (there were only 2 in the class) and I understand that they were badly let down by not having been taught the full syllabus over 2 years and only finding out about a month before the exams, the reasons for the situation were opaque, the teacher was Malcolm McKelvey (sp.?), who had proclaimed himself to us in Chapel practice as reportedly the 8th Best Organist in the World. What I do recall about Charles was that his reputation for musical talent even then was formidable, it was what everyone 'knew' about him. It is to the credit of the School that the culture was to recognise and respect excellence, and he has amply demonstrated his talent. I fear that he was another one let down by the Foundation, or should it be 'the Ruin'?

Charles did a TV programme about opera about 17 years ago, (the year is hazy). I caught the programme but not his name at the start and I didn't recognise him until his name came up in subtitles halfway through the programme, he was actually recognisable from his young self, I just hadn't made the connection.

I love everything Charles Hazlewood is involved with. Here he is explaining what was behind the success of the ABBA breakthrough song, SOS. (They had a long period after Waterloo when no-one wanted to know them.) It's one of my top 5 ABBA songs even though it only made no. 6 in the UK charts.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=yo ... ORM=VDQVAP
On a trip to the Berwyns in the 1980s I had a discussion wth another member of staff about who would be the most famous pupil on his year. We narrowed it down to two people - one of who was Charles. I chose the wrong one.

Golfer wrote: ↑Thu Feb 18, 2021 2:25 pm I love everything Charles Hazlewood is involved with. Here he is explaining what was behind the success of the ABBA breakthrough song, SOS. (They had a long period after Waterloo when no-one wanted to know them.) It's one of my top 5 ABBA songs even though it only made no. 6 in the UK charts.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=yo ... ORM=VDQVAP

Sorry Tim. Yes, there is a lot about Hazlewood at the lower half of that but it is Josh, not Charles who does not explain anything. (I also liked ABBA

Algorithms - dontcha just luv em - Seem to have corrupted my link to Charles Hazlewood on Abba - to just Abba. Sorry about that. It was a virtuoso performance by Charles. You will just have to take my word for it. Sorry also, for the adverts. Courtesy of CH Unofficial Forum? Pete Townsend thought SOS was the best pop song ever and John Lennon admired it.

I'll try again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4pWXKX-1xM
Charles Hazlewood is between 27.35 and 29.50 minutes.

How can anyone like Abba? What's your name? Priscilla Queen of the Desert?

rockfreak wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 7:45 pm How can anyone like Abba? What's your name? Priscilla Queen of the Desert?

How can anyone like ...........? I happen to like Sven Ingvars and Roberto do Recife.

Who the he>> are they? 1). Look at my nom de plume and 2) sometimes known as George Martin (as in Beatles)

You don't have to like them

One of the odd things about being a retired music journo is noticing how things go in circles. When I was active in this field there were various acts that were considered deeply unhip. Abba was one, but also Queen, The Carpenters, Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey. Yet all these have made comebacks of a sort. I suppose that in the end hummable pop tunes will always grab people by the earlobes. And why not. And divas like Bassey will always appeal to gay men because of their potential for imitation by drag queens. In 1977 the NME was offered an interview with Queen. Initially no-one wanted to do it. Punk was reigning supreme, and pomp rock, stadium rock etc was considered the kiss of death. When Sid Vicious bumped into Freddie Mercury he sneered: "Are you still bringing ballet to the masses?" In the end the NME staffer Tony Stewart offered to do it, having interviewed Freddie Mercury once before. He was rewarded for his pains by Mercury asking him why he wasn't editor of The Times yet.

One of the strange phenomena of pop is how heavy metal manages to hang on. I always thought that Cream and Hendrix were the inventors and the best at it and that everyone since has been struggling in their wake. I know that it's animal and some people like to bang their heads on the front of the stage and shake dandruff, but one of the things I discovered early is that there's a strange inverse law going on in which the musical ability of these monstrous aggregations is completely unrelated to their popularity. I was at the rockface when bands like Black Sabbath and Uriah Heap had their day and I have a mild case of tinnitus today as pay-off.

rockfreak, I'm pretty ecclectic in my taste in music. I've always liked ABBA, rock, classical music and reggae (a relative basically created the reggae scene in Western Australia). It feels strange in the 21st century to be insuted so absolutely about ABBA. Almost like you are stuck in the 1980s. For those (the majority?) on the forum who neither like ABBA nor Heavy Metal here is a combination of two of the four organists mentioned by AMP in a post above. Piers Maxim playing the late Chris Tambling's composition "Aus der Tiefe" (Out of the Depths). Just beautiful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgPUA1l ... OQiG4_QNG4