There's no denying that Orson Welles was a genius. He was the man behind Citizen Kane (quite simply one of the finest and most influential movies of all time), Touch of Evil and a handful of other unmissable films; the man who portrayed Harry Lime in the Third Man and the man who scared the US senseless with his radio broadcast of War of the Worlds.
He lived one hell of a life but, with a plethora of unfinished projects and half-realised films we'll probably never know just how great he could have been. The flashes of brilliance are there, but the canon is chock-a-block with the puerile and pointless too: he 'played' the voice of Robin Masters in Magnum PI, and was involved in endless adverts for wine, sherry and 'probably the best lager in the world'.
But we've not come here to go over the great man's many achievements, nor his cinematic shortfalls. No today, dear readers, I bring you a touch of Wellesian magic - his one foray into the business we call pop. have a listen to his 1984 single I Know What is is to be Young (But You Don't Know What it is to be Old).
Released just a year before the great one snuffed it (on the same day, incidentally, as Yul Brynner), the recording must have taken so much effort that he couldn't be bothered to perform on the B-side. Recorded with the Ray Charles singers and the Nick Perito Orchestra, and released on the long-defunct Splash Records in the UK, it's a slice of ham more suited to Mr Brynner himself, or that other well-known baldie Telly Savalas.
Never mind. His final act may have been to inflict this atrocity on the world but, in 2002, Welles was voted as the greatest film director of all time in a British Film Institute poll of the Top Ten Directors. His light still shines bright.
You can read more about his illustrious career at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Welles
I remember when it came out! I actually quite like it. Different strokes for different folks I guess!
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