News

McCartney Reject Gets Writing Recognition 30 Years On

• 1st Jul 2011

A song entered for a talent contest run by Sir Paul McCartney over 30 years ago has finally won first place in a competition for the musical Dreamboats and Petticoats.

The song – entitled “It's Cryin' Time Again” – is to debut on stage in the West End production on July 4th at the London Playhouse, as well as across the UK during the rock'n'roll musical's third sell-out tour.

Semi-retired musicians Larry Rushton – 60, and Arthur John Williams – 71, coined the winning song in the competition that was judged by Neil Sedake, Don Black and Graham Gouldman.

Rushton was surprised as anyone when it won, commenting: “I didn’t even know the old song had been entered… my step daughter Gemma saw the show last year and loved it, then saw Don Black on the telly announcing they were looking for a new song to use for the show and wanted to do a national talent search, which is part of the story of the musical.
 
“We originally wrote the song for a competition run by Paul McCartney in 1981. He’d just bought the Buddy Holly back catalogue and wanted a song to mark the occasion.”

The song came second in the original competition and was forgotten for 30 years.

Commenting on the song, Neil Sedaka said: “'It's Cryin' Time Again' is a very simple, catchy, sing-able song and should work very well in the show. I'm happy for the writers. Keep writing!”

You can hear the song in the embed above. More information about Dreamboats and Petticoats can be found by following this link.

MSD