Mike Batt paid affectionate tribute to session drummer Clem Cattini, a frequent colleague, who died on November 2 at the age of 89.
Cattini’s impressive list of credits included Paul McCartney, The Kinks, Jeff Beck, Lou Reed, The Yardbirds, Roy Harper, Brian Auger, Justin Hayward and many others – but Batt, naturally, focused on his own experiences with kids’ TV stars The Wombles, which he turned into a successful 70s novelty band.
In his social media elegy Batt – composer, conductor, and also creator of Bright Eyes, a song forever associated with Art Garfunkel and 1978 film Watership Down – looked back fondly on a time when music production had different values, and hailed Cattini for rising above them. “In the days before you could dial up any one of thousands of kick-drum and snare samples, you needed a session drummer who had a solid, strong right foot, a kit tuned to perfection and inbuilt, rock steady timing,” he said.
“Enter Clem Cattini, when I was an 18-year-old singer/arranger/producer with no hits yet but lots of hopes. I’d never heard of him. After one session, I insisted for years thereafter on working only when this busiest of drummers was available. If Clem couldn’t make the session, we shifted the date until he could.”
Batt hinted at an amount of envy: “The session boys were the rich ones, doing a jingle at 8am, then three pop sessions 10-1, 2-5, 6-9, and most of what they brilliantly played on did badly-to-ok. But of course, they played on the hits too.
“We scruffy young producers would get the tube back to our bedsits while the top session guys drove home in their BMWs to their plush pads. Hard-working is what they were, the really good ones. The ones everyone wanted. A small club of elites.”
Cattini played on most of Batt’s hits, including his Wombles material, but the songwriter regreatted that the drummer had been “far too busy playing sessions to come on Top Of The Pops in the 70s – just as he’d been too busy to have lunch to be recruited as the drummer of Led Zeppelin.
“But when in later life, drum machines had been invented and there was less studio work, he did accept my invitation to join us as a Womble when we revived the band in the 90s, scoring two re-entry hits for Underground Overground and Remember You’re A Womble.”
Batt recalled: “He loved it. I can still picture him sitting in the BBC TV Centre dressing room, his Bungo head off and his Clem face sticking out, having a cup of BBC machine tea in a plastic cup while my mum fussed about, adjusting his Womble feet. Fucking funny times, they were. Excuse the word ‘funny.’”
In September, Batt defended his Wombles work against an online troll who tried to play down their success. Responding to Batt’s criticism of the Eurovision Song Contest as a “dismal clown show,” a user commented: “Dude, you wrote Remember You’re A Womble.”
Batt replied: “I did. And it’s a banger. Now fuck off.”