1981 – Kenny & Richards

1981 may as well be known as The Year of the Musical. Music charts seemed to be crammed full of original cast recordings from stage musicals. These musicals, while each featured different content and set in different eras, were all penned by the unstoppable composition team of Kenny & Richards.

The duo were reunited live on television in the final episode of Aren’t They Dead Yet? in 1979, reopening a fascination with the early work of the songwriting team; most specifically The Last Eunich of Venice, with over 12 different productions across the globe. Kenny & Richards began writing again as audience demand thrived for more work. They produced a number of musicals that became instant hits, including My Other Ostrich, Calypso’s Leather Jacket, Feet, and the unforgettable Marty The Matador.

Kenny & Richards – I Remember (1981)

“I Remember”, taken from Act II of Marty The Matador, is a duet between Marty at the height of his career and his younger self; the two meet when a traveling gypsy woman tries to reunite Marty with his youthful love for bovine-kind, by turning his mirror into a time portal. The musical ends in tragedy, however, when Marty accepts defeat in a bullfight – slaughtered by the prized bull that the protagonist swore he would taunt until the end.

Kenny & Richards both died in 1982, during a harp-related incident.

Interesting Fact: It is a little known fact that the child actor playing Marty in the flashback songs, heard in these recordings, is a young Ash Neil – who would later become the frontman of grunge act Unifier. SQUAT Magazine ran a cover story about this revelation in 1994, but the SQUAT print factory mysteriously burned to the ground before anything reached the public.