Way Out in Piccadilly

DD091357

Delia's experimental piece in 11/8 time, Way Out in Piccadilly, was later issued on record as Way Out. Some of her notes are on the back of an envelope dated 24th Oct 1966.

There seem to be two versions:

• Way Out produced for the BBC and
• Way Out in Piccadilly for Vin Davis/The Frankie Howerd/Cilla Black Show.

Cilla Black and Frankie Howerd in 1966

Now let us go back to the last fifties, early sixties. Dave Brubeck had done "Take Five" and in '61 he'd done "It's a Raggy Waltz" so - that was in seven time - so I thought "Fine! I'm into the numbers game. I'll do eleven time and thirteen time", continuing the series of prime numbers. But unfortunately that style, I was told, was "too sophisticated for the BBC2 audience" and so, as I was doing it, the choreographer Vin Davis happened to be walking down the corridor and his feet started tapping and he said "I want that!" and I said "No, you can't! I've done it for the BBC." And so he implored me to do something in the same style, in eleven time and thirteen time, for his dance group, which I did. In fact it was the Frankie Howerd and Cilla Black show it was originally done for, but it had to be scrapped from that because they did the stupid thing of putting this rather delicate music as an opener to the second act. [...] A friend told me that by one means or another it ended up as a backing for a deodorant commercial on television which is something of course we were absolutely forbidden to do but it was nothing of my doing. It was rejected by BBC2 and there it was on the commercial.
   -- Delia in the Radio Scotland interview

An episode of the BBC series "Cilla", entitled "Cilla Black and Frankie Howerd" was broadcast on the 31 December 1968 though some of Delia's notes for Way Out are on the back of an envelope dated over two years earlier. while the first episode of the series Cilla was broadcast on the 20th January 1968.

Papers

• DD091127 List of 18 source tapes used to construct the piece
• DD091152 Bar-by-bar plan for the piece
• DD091215 Timing plan and notes
• DD091244 Notes on the back of an envelope dated 24th Oct 1966
• DD091302 Calculations and notes
• DD091321 More notes and calculations
• DD091357 Manuscript

Spectrogram

From A(55Hz) to A(3250Hz) at 100 pixels per second.

Availability

• Released on ESL104