Doctor Who

(First published in Issue 120 of Electronic Sound magazine, December 2024)

TIME MACHINE

Having left the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1973, Brian Hodgson formed a prog-tinged synth duo with classically-trained Canadian composer John Lewis. Their name? Wavemaker. And their two 1970s albums are underappreciated gems

Words: Bob Fischer

“I first met John Lewis at a party given by a painter friend who lived in Shaftesbury Avenue,” remembers Brian Hodgson. “I’d soundtracked a couple of ballets for Ballet Rambert, and John was one of the conductors for their orchestra. I fancied him rotten – this was before I met my partner, Richard – and I think John slightly fancied me as well. But we never did anything about it, because that night he had to finish writing a ballet for Rambert! We got on really well though, and became good mates.”

It was 1974. After a decade at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Brian had departed to found his own Covent Garden studio, Electrophon. The intention was to collaborate on electronic film, theatre and ballet scores with former BBC colleague Delia Derbyshire, but the partnership was short-lived.

“Delia pissed off to the north of England,” recalls Brian, with a wry smile. “But one day, John said ‘Would you come with me to a synthesizer shop? I’d like to buy one’. We went to a shop on Tottenham Court Road, but it was fairly obvious the salesman hadn’t got a clue what a synthesizer even was. So we came back to Covent Garden, and I said ‘Well, Delia has gone… instead of buying a synthesizer yourself, why don’t you join me at Electrophon?

“So he did. Electrophon had a contract with Polydor to make five albums, and we started by recording Where Are We Captain?.”

Calling themselves Wavemaker, and naming the album after their initial lack of direction (“We were in No Man’s Land,” says Brian), the duo nevertheless created a joyously melodic collection of synth-led instrumentals. Brian happily admits he doesn’t particularly consider himself a musician, so what was the division of labour during the recording process?

“I programmed all the sounds and did the engineering,” says Brian. “And John was a brilliant musician. He’d just sit down, and that was it. He’d come into the studio with an idea, and we’d make sounds using a combination of a Synthi Sequencer 256 and the EMS VCS3 that Roger’s Studio Equipment modified for me when I founded the company. Have you seen the photos of us?”

Hell, yes. On the back of their second album, there’s a sensational mid-1970s publicity shot of Brian and John together. Bare-shouldered and in tasteful soft focus, both are sporting extravagant 1970s perms.

“Oh, that one is dreadful!” he laughs. “A good friend of mine, Iain Macmillan, had taken a photograph of a sculpture – a face, cast in a gelatine mould. It was strange and wonderful, and that was the kind of image we wanted. What we got was a sort of homoerotic fantasy jerk-off piece! We got some very rude comments from friends of ours…”

Brian, of course, had already spent a decade as producer of ‘Special Sound’ for Doctor Who, creating the childhood-defining sounds of TARDIS flight and Dalek voices alike. So it’s perhaps no surprise that both Where Are We Captain? and the duo’s equally enjoyable 1977 follow-up, New Atlantis, have something of a science fiction feel. The epic conclusion to the former album is the intriguingly-titled ‘Enter The Eldil’. The latter album, meanwhile, shares its title with Francis Bacon’s utopian 1628 novel – a book equally admired by Radiophonic Workshop founder, Daphne Oram.

“‘Enter The Eldil’ came from me, it’s from a CS Lewis book,” explains Brian. “John played a phrase, and I said ‘That reminds me of the Eldils, from Out of the Silent Planet – they’re like angels. I used to read a lot of science fiction in my teens. Although I’d never heard of New Atlantis until Daphne found it! She had one particular section put up on the wall. ‘We have also sound-houses, where we practice and demonstrate all sounds and their generation…’”

He admits he was disappointed by Polydor’s lackadaisical attitude to promoting both Wavemaker albums.

“They were completely apathetic,” he sighs. “Any publicity we got, we generated ourselves. We launched Where Are We Captain? with a big party in the studio. I had a friend who was a florist from a very traditional Covent Garden family, and she hung wreaths from all the rafters. We put strawberries and cream into a vast bowl for everyone to help themselves, and bought lots of cheap booze – I think Oddbins had opened their first shop in the next street! Everybody invited everybody, and I’d also become quite friendly with Annie Nightingale. She came because she liked the album, and she played tracks from it on her Radio 1 show.”

Any plans to record a third Wavemaker album, however, were abandoned when Brian accepted a 1977 invitation from the BBC to return to the Radiophonic Workshop as the department’s Organiser.

“I don’t know whether we were ever really intending to make one,” he admits. “I told the BBC that if I got the job, I couldn’t start for three months because I’d have to teach John how to operate the studio himself. And they were happy with that. So I went back to the BBC, and John took over Electrophon. And had a hit single…”

Oh yeah – wasn’t he part of ‘Pop Muzik’ by M?

“Yes! That was John with Robin Scott, another friend. It enabled John to buy a Fairlight…”

Brian and John’s partnership wasn’t quite over, though. On Brian’s recommendation, John started work on a score for the 1985 Doctor Who story ‘Mark of the Rani’. Tragically, it was to be his final composition.

“In 1984, [Doctor Who producer] John Nathan-Turner said ‘I’d like to bring in outside composers. Do you know anyone who can do electronic stuff?’ I said ‘What about John Lewis?’ But what we didn’t know was that John had developed AIDS. He was able to score the first episode, but then the world went pear-shaped. John died in hospital. And he’d been talking about Doctor Who to one of the nurses – who informed the press, and I suddenly I had the News of the World on the phone. It was sheer hell.

“It was a great tragedy, when you think of all that John had done. And all he could have done. But I have such lovely memories of him as a person and as a musician.”

Electronic Sound – “the house magazine for plugged in people everywhere” – is published monthly, and available here:
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