January 25, 1977 Gilbert O’Sullivan: The thoughtful man behind the pop star image By Philippa Toomey "I remember this room", said Gilbert O'Sullivan, eating lunch at the Curazon House Club. They gave a party for him, it five years ago, after his first big London concert. "I remember sitting in a corner with my mother and my brothers looking at all the celebrities who had come to my party". He was in his stage clothes (at that time a cowboy shirt and jeans). Many shook him warmly by the hand without even looking at him something, which he has never forgotten, and, five years later, he finds himself inclined to judge character by the quality and directness of a handshake. Now he is at the top of his profession as a pop star, with a special ITV programme on Boxing Day, and a new LP Gilbert’s Greatest Hits, just out. It began when Gilbert, having left Art College spent three years composing songs and working during the day as salesman and, messenger. He managed to record some of his songs and sent them to Gordon Mills. Nothing like starting well-Gordon Mills is the manager of Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck. The art student had also contrived with some care a personal appearance, which at the same time original and unforgettable. "I wanted to call myself "Just Gilbert." I liked old films, particularly those of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton and the short trousers, too small jacket, cloth cap and haircut was a mixture with a touch of Just William. At lot of people write songs, but very few are prepared to go to the extreme of looking, ridiculous!" Gordon Mills had the inspired notion of renaming him Gilbert O'Sullivan. Now it seems obvious, as he was born Raymond O'Sullivan, nearly 23 year ago in Ireland. Image making, to the former art student has always been entertaining. The waif and stray look was replaced by the sweater, jeans and gymshoes look." What I appeared to be was very different from what I was. It was every important to me then to present a character appearance and it was-equally important not to be like that in real life. I look basically the same in the two worlds of private and public life." He lives a very private life indeed. "I have never given a party in my life - very party I have ever been to I have always seen people who are miserable or leave early. And I don't have any friends. "He lives alone in a house he has bought in St George's Hill, Weybride. His brother Kevin lives in a flat in the house and drives the beautiful Mercedes for him. I never learned to drive. I like walking. You see more in two, or three miles walking than you ever would from a car. I find walking clears my ideas -- I see-- through more in it 10-minute walk than I can in a day inside the house. The first time I went to California I walked about six or seven miles from Bell Air to Beverly Hills- and everyone thought I was mad. Where do the songs came from? Get Down won him the Ivor Novello Award for the best song of the year and he has two more for songwriter of the year and for the record No Matter How I Try. The ideas just come from observation. I’m always watching people. I read a lot newspapers and get ideas from them and from my observation. Very few of my songs are based on actual experience. For a writer, the state of the country at the moment is fascinating - if everything went well, it would be very boring. When things are bad, you get so much more in the way of ideas. "At the moment I am listening to a lot of light music.I have passed the stage where I listen to pop music all the time. I am listening to Sinatra - because I like the songs and I spend a lot of time on the songs of Cole Porter and the people who sang them. Possibly in the next five year it will be classical music with a touch of something else! If you are a songwriter you are constantly searching you are getting older, your musical taste change. They change every month, not only every year - my mind is always looking- for something new, some new direction musically. You need that stimulation to write new music." "It's only in the last two years that I’ve really started reading --I always found it such a boring thing to do. I would never sit still for five minutes and now I find myself getting involved in a book. I’ll read anything. I was reading Watership Down that other day, and thought that I would never have imagined myself jumping the pages just to see if this rabbit was going to die or not. For anyone else this would - seem very ordinary, but it is a new experience for me." He has always worked alone-and wishes, sometimes, that he did not. A partner or colleague would cheer him up, get him past the bad spots when the songs don't come. "If you are a good singer you don't have to write your own songs. I write my own songs, words and music, I play the piano and I also sing them, and there’s nothing to be done. I can only look in the- mirror and say: Where did I go wrong?" But he has to alone, and this his caused him to think deeply about getting married and having family Could he still produce the 10 good songs. a year required for the annual long-playing record? Would a wife and family put up with him in the throws of Song writing? It is a problem common to all writers at whatever level of creation. He stays close to his family, very close to his mother and remains a practicing member of the Roman Catholic Church of his Irish childhood. There is the pleasant soft Irish voice and the totally unassuming manner. All the nice girls sigh for Gilbert O’Sullivan it’s the Irish blue eyes and the long dark eyelashes. "I feel very close to Ireland - I was born there; but I owe everything to this country. I’ll always feel a bond with Ireland. even if I have only spent a third of my life there. When I am old and retired, the thought of ending up where I started out appeals to me. " He regards himself in the light of an entertainer. "Pop music has got so intellectual - It's just silly trying to turn it into an art form. Its just popular music, and always will be, and should never be that. Seriously. It deserves a lot of Credit for what has happened to life styles, and this will be recognized when e look back. Jazz started out as the pop music of the time and jazz is now considered only on a high intellectual - plane.- Pop music is going the same way-fur example, there is the significances read into the Beatles' music and I am sure none of it was there. I like to write clever lyrics, but I don't want people drowning inferences from them --that's all there really is." Through the title of one of his records declares, "I'm a writer not a fighter," he has a firm idea of where he is going. He has a firm idea of where he is going. The image making still amuses him. Most pop stars wear a lot of jewelry-bracelets, necklaces, rings on every finger when they are on stage He used to do this, and discovered himself putting it on before he want out - laughed at himself and now only wears a small ring forgiven to by his girlfriend. "I'd do all the dressing up again if I felt I had to. But all I am really interested in is the music."