He’s written songs with everyone from Quincy Jones to John Barry – though his musical about premature ejaculation was a flop. ‘Everyone’s the same when they sit at the piano,’ he reveals
For a man who recently suffered from
Coronavirus and had a lengthy stay in hospital, Don Black sounds surprisingly hale and hearty. He can even find a positive about his brush with Covid-19. The NHS staff were fantastic, he says. Moreover, they found out who he was during his stay – he’d been booked in under his real name, Donald Blackstone – and, when he left the hospital, not only lined up to applaud him, but serenaded him with an impromptu version of Born Free, the Oscar-winning song that Black co-wrote in 1965. “Isn’t that wonderful?” he marvels.
Black’s book The Sanest Guy in the Room is full of anecdotes a bit like that. Somewhere between a memoir and an extended love letter to his late wife, Shirley – who died in 2018, after a marriage that lasted 60 years – it details his remarkable career as a songwriter. He is “the Pele of lyricists”, as Robbie Williams put it, who’s variously turned his hand to Bond themes, Broadway and pop songs – Black has done the lot.