John Cameron

John Cameron (born 20 March 1944) is a British composer, arranger, conductor and musician. He is well known for his many film, TV and stage credits, and for his contributions to pop recordings, notably those by Donovan, Cilla Black and the group Hot Chocolate. Cameron's instrumental version of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love", became a hit for his group CCS and, for many years, a version of Cameron's arrangement was used as the theme music for the BBC TV show Top of the Pops.

Biography Cameron was born in Woodford, Essex, England. By the age of 12, he had started performing in talent shows, and at 14 played jazz piano in pubs in Croydon. He was educated at Wallington County Grammar School and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he was a contemporary of Daryl Runswick. Aside from performing on the local jazz scene, Cameron also became Vice-President of the Cambridge Footlights comedy club, where he collaborated on lyrics and performed with Eric Idle.

From mid-1966, with the lawsuit resolved, Cameron began touring and recording regularly with Donovan, and he arranged and played on many of his hit singles "Jennifer Juniper" and "Epistle to Dippy", the albums Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow, as well as Donovan's music for the 1967 Ken Loach film, Poor Cow.

Cameron also began working in television; one of his first major credits in this area was as music director and arranger for three seasons of the TV variety series Once More with Felix with folk-singer Julie Felix (1967–69), The Bobbie Gentry Show and numerous episodes of Stanley Dorfman's In Concert series for the BBC, which featured artists including James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman.

Cameron's first venture in film composition was for director Ken Loach, who asked him to compose the score for Kes (1969). This led to further commissions, including The Ruling Class (1972) with Peter O'Toole, Night Watch (1973) with Elizabeth Taylor, and A Touch of Class (1973) with Glenda Jackson and George Segal, for which Cameron was nominated for an Academy Award.

In the late 1970s, Cameron was approached by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg to arrange and conduct a concept album based on Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. Initially staged in Paris, France, by Robert Hossein, it was then produced in the UK by Cameron Mackintosh and the Royal Shakespeare Company, directed by Trevor Nunn and John Caird. Les Misérables became one of the most successful musicals of all time, winning Cameron the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Orchestrations and a National Broadway Theatre Award.

The song "Paper Habits" by Jet Life (Currensy's rap group), sampled Cameron's "Liquid Sunshine", and is from the group's collaboration album Jet World Order (2011).

Filmography

Kes (1969) Every Home Should Have One (1970) The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970) The Strange Vengeance of Rosalie (1972) Made (1972) The Ruling Class (1972) Night Watch (1973) A Touch of Class (1973) Psychomania (1973) Charley One-Eye (1973) Scalawag (1973) Moments (1974) Who? (1974) Out of Season (1975) Whiffs (1975) I Will, I Will... for Now (1976) Guardian of the Wilderness (1976) Pure as a Lily (1976) The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday (1976) Nasty Habits (1977) Spectre (1977) The Thief of Baghdad (1978) Lost and Found (1979) The London Connection (1979) Sunburn (1979) The Mirror Crack'd (1980) Jimmy the Kid (1982) Witness for the Prosecution (1982) The Jigsaw Man (1984) The Secret Garden (1987) Mister Corbett's Ghost (1987) Jack the Ripper (1988) Frankenstein (1992) To End All Wars (2001) After... (2006)

Selected discography Jazzrock, KPM 1097 (1972) Afro Rock, KPM 1130 (1973) (with Alan Parker) Voices in Harmony, KPM 1125 (1973) (with Keith Mansfield) The Protectors (CD, Networkonair. Original incidental music from the 1972-3 series, released in 2009) Folk, Funk and Beyond: the arrangements of John Cameron. Ace Records CDTOP 1631 (2023)