News:
A new page has been added to the site, featuring some of Noel's performances on the American music show, Hullabaloo.
Videos on the page include Noel singing his singles A Young Girl and (It's All Over Now) Baby Blue, as well as duets with Dionne Warwick and Petula Clarke.
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News:
During a live interview with BBC Radio Devon on Monday May 11, 2009, Noel talked about everything from beekeeping and Steve McQueen to the new album he's working on and his life as a celebrity in the 1960s.
He also performed his new song, The Wind Blows Up My Trousers, and was interviewed for a separate article on the BBC's website, which can be found here.
To listen to the radio interview, click on the gadget below or if that's running a bit slowly, go here to download the complete audio file (scroll to the bottom right of the pop-up page and wait about 50 seconds before clicking "download").
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News:
Noel has announced a few new live dates for June and July 2009. Go to the live dates page for the full run-down. The dates were announced by Noel on his official site.
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News:
Noel Harrison performed a live session on the Devon radio station, Soundart Radio on March 18, 2009. During the show, which was hosted by Noel fan Merlin, Noel revealed he is working on a new album. He also played a new song which he only wrote a few months ago and sung the classic track, The Windmills of Your Mind.
To listen to the 50 minute show, click on the gadget below or if that's running a bit slowly, go here to download the complete audio file (scroll to the bottom right of the pop-up page and wait about 50 seconds before clicking "download").
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News:
Noel Harrison has released his first single since 1970. The song Avalon, which is taken from the album Hold Back Time, was released as a digital download on the Amazon website on March 4, 2009. It is available to buy here.The cover for the single was designed by American artist Jay Nungesser. He said: "I was asked to do the cover for an upcoming single by Noel Harrison. He requested a phoenix rising from the cinders of a heart burnt to ash, with a vision of Avalon seen from behind the phoenix. His response to this design: "Glorious! Now I'll have to write 11 more tunes and make an album of it..."
Noel's last single was Another Virgin Spring, which came out in 1970, although several re-releases of The Windmills of Your Mind were put out in the 1980s.
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News:
Noel Harrison's most famous track, The Windmills of Your Mind, is included on the new compilation, 'The Very Best of Music to Watch Girls By'. The CD collection is a round-up of the best tracks from the easy-listing-inspired 'Music to Watch Girls By' series. Windmills had previously appeared on 'More Music To Watch Girls By' in 2002.
Other highlights on the new CD include songs by Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley.
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News:
Noel Harrison is Where the Girls Are, a 1963 television show hosted by Noel, has been given its own dedicated page on the site.
The one-off American TV special featured a number of musical performances from Noel as well as guests Cher and The Byrds. Go to the programme's page to see rare film from the show, including Noel's duet with Cher and his version of the classic song Gentle on My Mind.
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News:
Details of Noel Harrison's first ever recording, the San Francisco Bay Blues EP, are now available on the site. The record was put out by EMI in 1958, a full decade before The Windmills of Your Mind was recorded. Go to the EP's own page for details.
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News:
A series of videos from Noel Harrison's live performance at East Budleigh, Devon in November 2008 have been put on the site.
Tracks featured include The Windmills of Your Mind, Suzanne and Bob Dylan's Just Like a Woman.
Watch The Windmills of Your Mind
More videos can be found at the Live dates section of the site as well as the Collage, Mount Hanley Song, Live from Boulevard Music and Hold Back Time pages.
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News:
The film which Noel was making when Windmills of Your Mind received its Oscar has finally been released on DVD.
Noel was working with Oliver Reed and Hayley Mills on Take a Girl Like You when the Oscar was announced. Because of filming commitments, he could not go to the ceremony so the song was instead performed by Jose Feliciano.
Until now, the film has only been available on long-since deleted VHS tapes. It was released on DVD on Monday November 24, 2008 through the website moviemail-online.
The advert for the film says: "Jonathan Miller adapts Kingsley Amis's 1960 novel about Jennifer Bunn, a pretty, 20-year-old schoolteacher who is determined to remain a virgin until her marriage - much to the frustration of Patrick (Oliver Reed), who falls for her and pursues her."
The DVD costs £11.99. For more details on the film, go to the film and TV page.
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News:
A record containing a series of radio adverts put together by Reprise Records to promote the album Santa Monica Pier in America has surfaced.
The adverts were probably intended to boost Noel's popularity following the success of Windmills of Your Mind, which was released just after Santa Monica Pier.
The adverts all use lengthy clips from songs on the album, but bizarrely, the best track, I Shall Remember, was not used.
One of the four adverts was included as the bonus track on the compilation Life is a Dream, but the others have not been heard widely for the past 40 years. Click the links below to hear them now.
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News:
Noel Harrison's signature tune, The Windmills of Your Mind, is used as the theme tune in the 2008 advert for Channel Five's 'Five on Demand' service in the UK. The music is used quite well, click below to watch.
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Review:
(Noel has asked us to put up an alternative review of Life is a Dream to the one we had here from the Independent, which he didn't really like. This one is instead taken from the All Music Guide. But whoever reviews it, it's still a great album! )
Life is A Dream
Noel Harrison
Because he's far better known in the U.S. as an actor than a singer, some might be disposed to view this 26-track compilation of Harrison's 1967-1970 recordings as celebrity vocal kitsch.
It's not brilliant stuff, no, but it's far worthier (or at least more inoffensive) than many might suspect.
First, Harrison did start off as a singer/guitarist long before making his name as an actor, so he did know something about singing a tune and facing the right way into a microphone. Second, he had decent taste in cover material, usually going for folk-rock singer/songwriters like Leonard Cohen (who had yet to record when Harrison covered "Suzanne" for a small hit in 1967), Donovan, Arlo Guthrie, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, David Cohen (aka David Blue, whose "In Your Childhood" included here, was never released by Cohen/Blue himself), Bob Lind and Tom Paxton.
And he was supported on this light pop-folk-rock by many of the best Hollywood session musicians of the time, including James Burton, Joe Osborn, Carol Kaye, Hal Blaine, Jim Gordon, Earl Palmer, Larry Knechtel, and Bruce Langhorne.
He had an ingratiating if modest, slight way with a tune (albeit with a touch of British theatricality and a thin voice that strained to keep level on the high notes), also writing a few songs of his own, sometimes in a style heavily influenced by Donovan (as on "Santa Monica Pier" and "Leitch on the Beach").
Standing a bit above the breezy, mild norm of his Reprise work were "Sign of the Queen" a cover of a Brewer & Shipley composition with psychedelic sitar and reversed
cymbal; his self-penned, little-noticed contribution to the late-'60s back-to-basics movement sweeping through folk-rock, "The Great Electric Experiment Is Over" and what must have been the only cover of Joni Mitchell 's "Nathan La Franeer" from that time period.Drawing from his Collage, Santa Monica Pier and The Great Electric Experiment Is Over LPs, this disc also adds four songs from non-LP singles, the U.K. 1969 single "Sparrow"/"California Weekend" and previously un-issued covers of Lightfoot 's "Mountains and Marianne" and Baker Knight's "Another Virgin Spring" (A radio promo ad for Santa Monica Pier and music hall-ish outtake Let’s Not also play as unlisted bonus tracks.)
His own likable, non-self-aggrandizing liner notes, complete with comments on every song, form another plus.
Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide.