YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael Ball

lines on the record: 64
first: 2008-03-02
most recent: 2008-03-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“No, no, no, I want weeping wailing, gnashing of teeth. And there's Mahalia Jackson singing this song. And to actually watch the woman singing and just this inner belief and sincerity, a natural and extraordinary instrument of her voice.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this one is for Gran. She always used to tell me the greatest singer in her opinion was Mahalia Jackson. And I remember being finally convinced that she was the greatest ever female vocalist, watching a film called Imitation of Life with Larna Turner, which is one of these big, epic melodramatic cinemascope vast things, and one of the final scenes is Larna Turner's best friend and maid dying, the black woman. And there's this extraordinary scene where they're having her funeral. And there's a huge funeral cortege and black horse. It's my funeral, basically, what I want. And there's Mahalia Jackson.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The saddest thing she gave me certainly a love of great music and great singers, a new good singing when she heard it. So when I went into the music business, she was as proud as anybody could be, thought it was absolutely the only thing I could do. And I remember she died a week before coming to see me in the big job I'd landed, the Pirates of Penzance, which was just devastating. All the reviews had come out. She hadn't been ill or anything. All the reviews had come back. She'd been to everybody's house in the town probably, showing them these incredible reviews. Just drop down dead far too young of a heart attack.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My Welsh grandmother, my mum's. She was extraordinary woman. She was a Welsh matriarch. She was fiercely proud and protective, loved us grandkids to distraction, and made us feel we could do anything”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is just not a real job, is it? But as it was, Dad went off and did his own thing was very successful in the business world. And you grow up.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My mum is Welsh and my grandfather was a minor. My dad was, he wanted to be an actor and his parents wouldn't let him. He went to him and became an Austin apprentice up in Longbridge. But what did they feel?”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was born in Bromsgrove, which is just outside Birmingham, but moved away when we were three, and we moved to Dartmoor. And it was brilliant. What a great playground for a kid, very close family.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know, it fills your heart with the belief that maybe there's something else out there and it's an extraordinary piece of music.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's Saint-Son, Symphony number three in C minor. I've dreaded doing this. Not for you, but it's an impossibility. Well, it isn't. You know, I've changed my mind sat here five times as to what to bring. So I thought this one piece of classical music would work for me and we're going to listen to the end movement, which is just so stirring and it's got a great big church organ and it just...”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I did, I did. I was, when I went to drama school, one of the girls there, she and I discovered this underpass and we were in Guildford between Debonhams and the High Street. And we would bus every Saturday and make a tidy little bit, you know, that would help his party for the weekend. And it was fun and people liked it and people liked us doing it, I think. So I always felt that there was a place for me. And if someone would recognize what I could do, that I'd be all right, that I could do very well.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That moment when you were just taken off. And you know that whatever you're doing, you can make an entire crowd of three, four thousand, say, in the theatre, laugh and then turn it on the sixpence and absolutely make them still and cry. And it's intoxicating power.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Literally a moment where you think I've got them. Yeah, absolutely. And you quite often don't know why. The stars are lining for some reason. The sound is absolutely right. The atmosphere is right. You don't have to worry about what sound is coming out. And you're part of the roller coaster as much as the audience then. You just ride it. Those occasions are really rare. But when they happen, it's super sexual. It's fantastic. It's extraordinary.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so because you're being a character then. You're hiding behind something. You're not being yourself. You want a reaction, an acknowledgement from the audience, but when you're being just yourself, absolutely you just want a Niagara of unqualified praise in it. When we explore.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Certainly, when you're doing solo things, when you're doing solo concerts, yeah, that's why I think anybody is performing. They want approval and appreciation from an audience.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source