Edwin Astley - Career

Career

In the early 1950s Astley was arranging for Geraldo, and his song "I Never Could Tell" was recorded by both Vera Lynn and Richard Tauber. His own band, the Ted Astley Orchestra, became well known in the north of England, and he wrote songs for performers such as Anne Shelton.

He wrote music for many British television series of the 1950s and 1960s, including incidental music for The Champions, and the title music to The Adventures of Robin Hood (but not the famous closing theme song), Danger Man (known as Secret Agent in the USA, where his theme music was removed in favour of a theme with lyrics), Department S, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), The Saint, Gideon's Way and The Baron. Most of these programmes were part of Lew Grade's showbiz empire of ATV and ITC Entertainment. These TV themes are noted for their rich melodies and lively arrangements.

Astley also wrote the turbo-charged orchestral and "opera" score for the Hammer Films production (1962) of The Phantom Of The Opera. It is a film score where he brings in his orchestral mastery blended with his emotionally powerful themes and dramatic musical gestures. While Astley may not have received great recognition for his efforts, this film music does reflect his genius and a great creative quality. His score possesses a remarkable blend of classic orchestral writing with the emotional power of pop culture. (L.M.)

Astley wrote two arrangements of his own theme for The Saint, a slow version used in the black and white episodes and a more up-tempo arrangement of the same theme for the colour episodes. He then wrote a second theme, used in the second season of the colour episodes, based around Leslie Charteris' own theme music, which had previously been used in films and on radio. Charteris' theme would also open the theme to Return of the Saint and would close the theme to the TV movies of The Saint which starred Simon Dutton (neither of which were composed by Astley); however, Astley's original Saint theme was chosen for the film of the same name.

Astley also wrote two themes for Danger Man — one for the 30-minute series entitled "The Danger Man Theme", and a new theme for the 60 minute series entitled "High Wire". Astley was asked to write music for The Prisoner, seen as a sequel of sorts to Danger Man, but had to withdraw because he felt that he would be unable to create Patrick McGoohan's vision for the score — due to McGoohan being too busy to hold meetings with him.

However, Astley showed his diversity by writing the music for Sir Kenneth Clark's celebrated 1969 BBC documentary series Civilisation, and scoring several British Transport Films including Diesel Train Ride (1959), Broad Waterways (1959/60) and The Signal Engineers (1962).

In 1997 Astley found himself at number five on the pop charts as composer of "The Saint", 33 years after he wrote it, which had been revived by Orbital for the new Saint movie. His last work was a 1998 symphonic interpretation of Who music called Who's Serious: The Symphonic Music of the Who, which followed 1995's Symphonic Music of the Rolling Stones.