Music is a real stress buster for a busy life (From Worcester News)

Music is a real stress buster for a busy life

12:04pm Monday 1st March 2010 in

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IF you put a very large pair of glasses on him and perhaps a funny hat and then squint your eyes, Tom Wells could pass for Elton John. Which would likely please the Lib-Dem county councillor for Powick ward no end, because the superstar formerly known as Reg Dwight is one of his heroes.

He said: “I think the first time I really became interested in pop music was after I heard Elton John singing Your Song back in 1972.”

It was a seminal moment, because it set Tom on a path that has led to some considerable fame way beyond the council chamber at County Hall. Like winning a national BBC Television Christmas song contest, writing a sell-out musical for Malvern Theatres and having his works performed by male voice choirs across the land.

But enough already. How did it all begin? Well, the young Tom Wells could certainly sing. As a nine-year-old at Somers Park Primary in Malvern, he won a choristers’ scholarship to the King’s School, Worcester, to sing in the Cathedral Choir. Which was a good omen, because in his own words: “I was not much good at work and I couldn’t play football.”

From 1965 until 1972, Tom boarded at King’s and although he didn’t enjoy the public school experience much, singing in the choir and all the musical discipline it involved was a good grounding.

However, the musical mayhem of the late Sixties largely passed him by. There were no Purple Haze moments in the dorm with Hendrix or air guitaring up the Stairway to Heaven with Led Zep and it wasn’t until Elton John meandered into the opening line “It’s a little bit funny, this feeling inside” that Tom really switched on to music outside the sacred. A university degree subsequently set him in line for a teaching career and he did indeed arrive at Hillstone School, Malvern, as history master in the early 80s. But it wasn’t long before his enthusiasm for choirs – by that time he had already established youth choirs at St Mary’s church in Sherrard’s Green, near Malvern – came to the fore and he was appointed Hillstone’s head of music. Hillstone, which in those days was a prep school for Malvern College, embraced the Wells way and a mini-recording studio was created to showcase the pupils’ talent.

Tom said there were some very special times at Hillstone but the very top of the pops, cherry on the cake, whatever, was winning the BBC television Song for Christmas competition in 1991. From more than 100 entries, the Hillstone effort was picked as one of the final four and Tom and the pupils, who had part-written their entry, went along to the Pebble Mill Studios in Birmingham for the “sing-off”.

Tom said: “I remember Alan Titchmarsh and Judy Spiers were presenting and the judges’ panel included Aled Jones and Lesley Garrett. It was a wonderful day.”

Tom left Hillstone the following year and set up as a music teacher operating from home at Callow End, near Malvern. He said: “I felt the time was right. Hillstone was becoming better known for its music than academic studies and the balance needed to be redressed.”

A couple of years later he decided to stand for Malvern Hills District Council as an independent councillor and was later elected to Worcestershire County Council. Ever since, public service has pretty much been the day job and he freely admitted: “From 1997 until 2005 I wrote very little music. There was just no room for teaching, politics and music.”

But then the composing itch returned with a vengeance and it has led to Tom’s most productive period to date.

With flavours of Vaughan Williams and Sir Edward Elgar, he has written melodic pieces for male voice choirs and has titled one project Songs for All Seasons, which effectively transfers the 1970s publishing phenomenon The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady to music.

At completely the other end of the scale, Tom wrote the musical City Kids, about evacuees during the Second World War, which played to packed houses in Powick Village Hall for three nights and later, at the invitation of chief executive Nic Lloyd, transferred to Malvern Theatres, where again it sold out and raised £3,000 for St Richard’s Hospice in the process.

He has also written a second musical Children of the Night, about the young homeless.

“Not twee or sentimental,” he stressed. Now Tom Wells is off on another musical project. He has set up a 40-strong community choir called Powick Parish Singers.

He said: “Anyone who loves singing will be made most welcome, whether they live in the parish or not. There is no voice trial and it’s not essential to be able to read music, as tuition will be given.”

He has also started to give piano lessons again.

Tom certainly hasn’t given up the day job and is as busy as ever with his council work, but said: “It’s great to be returning to my music. It’s a real stress buster at the end of a busy week. It’s like saying hello to an old friend again after all these years. It makes me feel good.”

And after all, as Elton once sang: “That’s what friends are for.”