- Place – Studio One Pye Recording Studios
- Time – 1970
- Artist – Dorothy Squires
- Engineer – Howard Barrow
A very colourful life.
Dorothy Squires was a Welsh vocalist who had several hit singles between 1953 and 1970.
Her second husband was the actor Roger Moore, he was twelve years her junior.
After they married in 1953 she whisked him off to Hollywood and introduced him to all the right people. The rest of his story is, of course, well documented.
They separated in 1961 but Squires did not grant him a divorce until 1969.
In 1971 she undertook the first of thirty court cases which would span the next fifteen years.
Squires, was awarded £4000.00 after winning her libel case against The News of the World in 1971.
In 1973 she was charged with kicking a taxi driver who tried to throw her out of his cab for being drunk.
In 1974 her mansion burned down from which she escaped with her dog and all her love letters from Roger Moore.
She then moved into a house in Bray that flooded three weeks later.
She was also one of several artists charged with allegedly trying to bribe a BBC radio producer as part of a scheme to make him play her records, the case was dropped.
By 1982 she had spent much of her fortune on legal fees.
In 1988 she lost her home in Bray following bankruptcy proceedings.
She returned to the house the following night to recover her love letters from Moore.
She was provided a home in South Wales by a life long fan.
Her turbulent life ended in 1998 after losing her battle with cancer.
A bit of a handful.
I was assigned to assist Howard Barrow on a session in Studio One. The artist was Dorothy Squires and it was a full live orchestra session with live vocals.
I think it was considered at Pye that Howard was the only engineer capable of making Miss Squires feel comfortable whilst recording, apparently she could be somewhat of a handful.
There was a row of seats at the front of the mixing desk in Studio One which looked directly down into the live room.
This seating area was occupied by some of Dorothy’s relations plus a couple of friends who had come to watch her virtuoso performance.
When the first track was finished Dorothy came back up to the control room to hear the playback.
As the song ended there was a spectacular round of applause from her guests, this was something I had never witnessed before on a recording session.
Self adulation.
As the clapping died down, I think everyone was stunned as Squires erupted into a barrage of self adulation,
“Jackie Trent, fuck Jackie Trent, she could never sing like that.
Listen to that voice, I’m the fucking best, no one sounds as good as that, Vicky Carr eat your fucking heart out.”
When Dorothy’s self worship died down she headed back down to the live room to tackle the next song, the classic My Way.
After the first couple of rehearsals, the red light went on and the tape went into record.
Towards the end of this song there is a huge crescendo at the point where the lyric goes, “The record shows, I took the blows and did it.”
The whole orchestra stopped at this point as per the arrangement, except one violinist who hung on to the last note just a fraction too long.
Dorothy, hearing this tiny error, screamed into the mic, which bellowed into the control room in a blaze of reverb, “What fucking C**T did that.”
It was known that Dorothy’s language could be a little bit colourful, but the mood around the studio especially amongst her guests was one of pure astonishment.
The finished version of the song reached 25 in the UK charts, but this particular take became a very popular outtake around the studio for many years.
Always the performer
Maybe the second craziest thing I ever got involed in.
One of the craziest things I ever got involved in
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