John Otway

John Otway (born 2 October 1952) is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter with two hit records - 1977's Really Free with Wild Willy Barrett and the 2002 disco pastiche Bunsen Burner. He has performed over 5,000 gigs and in 2022 received an honorary doctorate from Oxford Brookes University He has built a sizeable cult audience through extensive touring, a surreal sense of humour and self-deprecating underdog persona.

Biography Early life Otway was born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. From the age of nine, he wanted to be a pop star. But even at that tender age, having listened to his sister's Beatles and Stones records, he knew he would never be able to do that. However, when his sister got the latest Bob Dylan album, he knew there was a place for him and he set about learning how to play guitar.

1970s and 1980s After teaming up with Wild Willy Barrett, the duo recorded their debut double A side single Gypsy and Misty Mountain in 1972 at County Recording Service - a custom recording company based in Bracknell, Berkshire. The single would be become the first of many flops, but despite this, it founds it way to The Who guitarist Pete Townshend who, impressed with the songs, asked Otway and Barrett along to his house and offered to produce some tracks for the duo's first album.

Otway had to wait until 1977 and the rise of punk before his dream of fame and fortune would finally become a reality. Having caught the eye of the producers of the BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test, Otway's performance on that show would grab the attention of the watching audience. Otway, ever the showman, decided to jump on the amplifier of his colleague during a performance of Bob Lind's Cheryl's Going Home. (Un)fortunately for Otway, he misjudged his leap and sent Wild Willy Barrett's amplifier tumbling as he crashed down straddling the box under the amp. The full force of the impact was absorbed by the most tender of his body parts, but in doing this one simple act of recklessness and his wanton disregard for his own safety, Otway was the talk of everyone who watched that evening's programme.

The Hit Not only did he see a surge in his audiences at gigs, sales of Otway's sixth single, the half-spoken love song Really Free released by Polydor Records increased dramatically and reached number 27 in the UK Singles Chart. An appearance on the BBC's flagship music programme Top of the Pops, where Otway and Barrett were introduced by Elton John later, Otway was finally a star. It would however, be his greatest success for quite some time.

His follow-up single Geneve was released without Wild Willy causing a rift between the two. The two artists went their separate ways both recording solo albums for Polydor in 1979. Otway's Where Did I Got Right? was produced by Monty Python collaborator and The Rutles main songwriter Neil Innes and whilst Polydor tried hard to market the album, it failed to live up to expectation and divided opinion. After this and several more failures in the singles market, Otway and Barrett re-united in 1980 to record the Way and Bar album. To support the album's release, Polydor released the single DK 50/80 which became a minor hit reaching number 45 in the UK Singles Chart. The album however failed to bother the UK Album Chart and would prove to be their final release on Polydor leading to another split which would last almost ten years.

Otway went solo, and in the mid-1980s, he often appeared on Vivian and Ki Longfellow-Stanshall's showboat, the Old Profanity Showboat, in Bristol's Floating Harbour. He also appeared as the musical guest in the final episode of the British sitcom The Young Ones.

At this point, Otway also embarked on a career in acting - appearing in TV shows such as Super Gran, Forever Green, William Tell and Heartbeat. He also appeared in several television commercials including ones for Irn Bru and R Whites Lemonade. At the same time, he co-wrote with Paul Bradley the stage play Verbal Diary which, with support from Rik Mayall, they performed at the Edinburgh Fringe.

1990s and 2000s In 1990, Otway wrote the autobiography Cor Baby, That's Really Me: Rock and Roll's Greatest Failure. and his touring continued to sustain him. He also teamed up with Attila the Stockbroker performing as Headbutts and Halibuts at the 1990 Edinburgh Fringe They followed this a year later, with a rock opera based around Otway's version of Bob Lind's Cheryl's Going Home simply entitled Cheryl.

Through Atilla, Otway met Richard Holgarth a guitarist from Harlow, Essex. Otway instructed Holgarth to put a band together for him for his 2,000th gig at the London Astoria in 1993. Holgarth recruited musicians Murray Torkildsen guitar, Seymour Fluids (bass), and drummer Adam Batterbee from his hometown and following an extensive tour, over 2,500 fans crammed into the London Astoria. Otway then followed this with a headline, sellout gig at the Royal Albert Hall in 1998.

In 1999, with the help of his fans, a grassroots campaign saw his song Beware of the Flowers Cause I'm Sure They're Going To Get You, Yeah - the B-side to his first hit - voted the seventh greatest lyric of all-time in a BBC Poll.

Buoyed by this success, and with his 50th birthday coming in 2002, when asked what he wanted for the occasion, Otway requested "a second hit". A concerted drive and fan-led campaign, including a poll (scrutinised by the Electoral Reform Society) to select the track, saw Bunsen Burner - with music sampled from The Trammps song Disco Inferno and lyrics devised to help his daughter with her chemistry homework - reach number nine in the UK Singles Chart on 6 October, earning Otway an appearance back on Top of the Pops. To encourage his fans to buy more than one copy of each single, he released three different versions. The B-side of Bunsen Burner - The Hit Mix was a cover of The House of the Rising Sun, recorded at Abbey Road Studios and featuring over 900 of his fans on backing vocals, each of whom were credited by name on the single's sleeve. A video for this version was recorded with another sellout crowd at London Astoria. Otway's chart success caused major problems for the High Street retail chain Woolworths who, despite the single's success steadfastly refused to stock or indeed acknowledge Otway's chart position.

Inevitably, in true Otway style, the success was short-lived, and a planned world tour in October 2006, with Otway proposing to hire his own jet to take his band and 300 of his fans to iconic venues such as Carnegie Hall and Sydney Opera House collapsed due to spiralling costs.

2010s and 2020s By 2010, Otway had re-united with Wild Willy Barrett for a UK tour, with the duo regularly performing together since. They recorded a new album 40-Odd Years of Otway and Barrett in 2011. It consisted of re-workings of old songs and a new, previously unrecorded track The Snowflake Effect. Otway also continues to tour with his band and perform solo with his roadie Deadly.

During this time, Otway also hosted occasional lectures on the theme Making Success Out of Failure and published the sequel to his autobiography entitled I Did It Otway: Regrets I've Had a Few in May 2010.

In October 2012, to celebrate his 60th birthday, Otway booked the Odeon Leicester Square to show a documentary of his life titled Rock and Roll's Greatest Failure: Otway the Movie. The film was funded by fans becoming producers who were all individually created in the movie credits. The film is also notable for the final scenes being filmed and cut into the screening as it was being shown on the day. Following the success of the producers' premeiere, 2013 saw Otway take the completed movie to the Cannes Film Festival. Otway and 100 of his fans (who donned Otway masks and dressed up in his traditional black jeans and white shirt) travelled down the Promenade de la Croisette to the red carpet. The film also had its theatrical release at Glastonbury Festival in June 2013, before going on a national cinema tour in the summer. It was subsequently voted one of the best movies of the year by readers of The Guardian - coming second to Gravity.

In 2016, Otway set up an online Kickstarter campaign for A New Album of Otway Songs. The campaign was successful, raising £38,916 from a total of 838 individual backers. The resulting album and DVD, Montserrat was recorded at Olverston House, Montserrat in September 2016 and released in March 2017, to those who had supported the Kickstarter campaign, followed by a general release with a launch gig at The Bear, Oxford on 1 May 2017 as part of the city's May Morning celebrations.

During the lockdown in the UK in 2020, Otway recorded a popular series of Facebook Live shows which had a regular audience of 10,000 viewers (or two and a half Royal Albert Halls using Otway's preferred numbering system).

The constant gigging over the years meant that on 2 April 2022, Otway celebrated his 5,000th career gig. Held at the O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire as a milestone event, he played the first set with long-time musical partner Wild Willy Barrett and a second set with his band. Later that year, in recognition of his international and musical contribution over five decades, Otway received an Honorary PhD in Music presented by Oxford Brookes University.

In March 2023, Otway performed at the Adelaide Fringe in Australia after an abortive tour of New Zealand (due to Cyclone Gabrielle hitting the day he arrived). In typical Otway fashion, he would return to both countries later that same year to fulfill the gigs he had missed and to finally perform in Sydney.

In 2026, Otway, in order to celebrate over 33 years of his band, launched another Kickstarter campaign to help raise money to finally take his band around the world (20 years after his aborted world tour) and to record a new album. He subsequently flew his band (no private jet this time) around the world taking in stops in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Japan.

Discography

Albums Date Title With 1977 John Otway & Wild Willy Barrett Wild Willy Barrett 1978 Deep & Meaningless Wild Willy Barrett 1979 Where Did I Go Right? 1980 Way & Bar Wild Willy Barrett 1982 All Balls & No Willy 1989 The Wimp & The Wild Wild Willy Barrett 1991 Cheryl, a Rock Opera Attila the Stockbroker 1992 Under the Covers and Over the Top 1993 Live The Big Band 1995 Premature Adulation 2000 The Set Remains The Same The Big Band 2004 OT-AIR 2006 Bunsen Burner – The Album 2011 40 Odd Years Wild Willy Barrett 2014 The Rest of Otway & Barrett Wild Willy Barrett 2017 Montserrat The Big Band 2019 John Otway & Wild Willy Barrett (Live to Disc) Wild Willy Barrett 2024 The Set Remains The Same (Live) The Big Band 2026 Cheryl: A Rock Opera 35th Anniversary (Remastered) Attila the Stockbroker Singles/EPs