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80: NOEL HARRISON
The Windmills Of Your Mind/Leitch On The Beach
(Reprise, 1968)

AS A kid in the 1960s, I was constantly so excited that I just didn't know where to look.

Most days were dressing-up days of one kind or another - usually involving a Frankenstinian combination of my big brother's Beatle boots, a Batman cape, plastic "hypno" glasses and one of my dad's skinny Crimplene ties to make me feel like either Napoleon Solo or Ilya Kuryakin in The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

As if this series wasn't unbearably thrilling and groovy enough, along came The Girl From U.N.C.L.E in 1966 with Stefanie Powers as April Dancer - the ultimate modette in white boots and beret - and her fellow agent Mark Slate, played by the subject of today's homily, Noel Harrison.

Noel, son of Rex, was in the right place at the right time. California in the mid-60s was Mecca for photogenic youths with a pronounced English accent, and Noel was already involved in a singing career when U.N.C.L.E called.

Now, I've heard a lot of his solo material, and while much of it has a charming period feel it rapidly becomes apparent that his abilities as a singer were somewhat limited.

Give him the right song, though, and a peculiar magic happens - which is exactly the case regarding Windmills Of Your Mind, a typically luscious, doomily romantic Michel Legrand composition for the 1968 film The Thomas Crown Affair.

The quickest way to my heart is to confront me with a vertiginous chord sequence, a masterful string arrangement or a set of lyrics making inadvisedly free use of would-be mystical psychedelic codswallop imagery. Put all of these elements together and it's a done deal; but Windmills Of Your Mind is so much more than the sum of its parts.

What really makes it is the combination of Legrand's soaring, soul-baring melody and Harrison's clipped, reserved, awkwardly phrased and thoroughly English vocals. He sounds absolutely stricken and bereft, but far too thoroughly decent and buttoned-up to say as much.

The sort of stalwart bloke who would say "no no, it's... nothing" while turning to face the horizon and discreetly wiping away a solitary but extraordinarily meaningful tear.

Just imagine the song if it had been given a histrionic, Shirley Bassey-style reading: it wouldn't have worked at all, would it? Harrison's version hurts all over the place, brilliantly.

11:38am Friday 1st August 2008

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