Saul Rose: 'Firing the War Horse band was shit. They shouldn't have done it'

Saul Rose knows a thing or two about War Horse. He played Songman in the West End show for a year starting in 2011, which was the year it came out as a movie. But more than that... As a folk musician he's known and much loved as one-third of Faustus, for Whapweasel, as Eliza Carthy's musical foil in the Kings of Calicutt and now as James Delarre's other half, kind of.

For ages I thought he was in Bellowhead because the first time I saw them live he was depping for John Spiers.

"He was off being a daddy," nods Rose, referring to Spiers' paternity leave.

It's a Tube-stricken evening in Camden and Rose & Delarre are playing at The Green Note to a handful of delighted diehards who are blase about their chances of getting home. What I want to know is what Rose thinks about events at the National Theatre, whose management recently, somewhat thuggishly, sacked the entire band from War Horse? 

"I think the problem ultimately was that they were musicians, rather than actors," said Rose. "They have the Musicians Union and their pay scale is different. When War Horse was originally commissioned it was only supposed to run for a short while. But then it went to the West End and is still running six or seven years later.

"The cast's deal was worked out on the basis that it was a three month run. But the same five musicians are still there after all that time later and their wages... It's why I'm a member of the Musicians' Union and not Equity."

When Rose was in War Horse he was a member of the cast who played music, rather than a member of the band. Do you have any idea how the musicians are, I ask?

"I should think they are feeling ever so slightly relieved," he said thoughtfully. "I'm just saying it's possible... because to play the same thing eight times a week for seven years takes some doing. I couldn't do it.

"What really appalls me, though, is that" whatever that judge said "those musicians are an integral part of the play. I sometimes worry about the idea of authenticity, but they had been in the show from the beginning and there was an authenticity to that. Audiences that see it with recorded music are being short changed and I think the play will suffer as a result...

"I'm not expecting to go back into War Horse," he grinned.

Probably just as well...

"I did a year and that's fine for me, that's plenty. It's not because I wouldn't do theatre again. I might. But I really had to put everything on hold as a musician for that year and it was hard.

"Maybe the audience numbers are dwindling now, finally?" he suggested

Well, it doesn't really matter, does it? War Horse has been the biggest financial success the National Theatre has ever had. There can't be any excuse for this kind of behaviour over money, can there? So what was it like, being in that show?

"It was amazing. One of the best years of my life. You know when you get a group of ten people there is always likely to be someone who is idiot?"

OK.

"Well, we had a cast of 35 and everyone was amazing. No idiots. They were all so generous to me, as someone who didn't really know anything about acting. I got to dress up as a colonel in one of the roles they had me play, and bark orders. And there was one scene"...

There may have been some ordnance going off like nostalgia at the back of Rose's mind...

"... where every time I did a back flip Malcolm, one of the other guys in the cast, would give me a fiver. I tell you what I missed though... There are certain parts of that show when the Songman is allowed to interact with the audience. And in that role you get to do it more than anyone else. But even so... it wasn't much. It was like there was a wall up between the actors and audience most of the time."

And I guess having recorded music can only exacerbate that. What about John Tams (who wrote the original music for War Horse)? I tried to get in touch with him about this business with the band and the union but he appears, uncharacteristically and despite his apparent political views, to have gone to ground on the subject. He didn't return my messages.

"Ah, Tams... Being the Songman in War Horse was a little bit like depping for him on a permanent basis. Ordinarily I like to mould a song to my way of speaking but Tams came in one day to the theatre and told me 'They've been through enough sieves already'."

That made me laugh because it reminded me very much of the story Tams tells about Richard Curtis on the set of War Horse. It's true, then, that what goes around comes around...

There was a bit more chatter. Rose and Delarre's CD wasn't out in time for their tour, which is a shame though you can pre-order one here. As well as the Tube strike they were also in competition that evening with an album launch at Cecil Sharp House, although judging by the tide of people sweeping down Parkway at 9.25pm (the strike was due to start at 9.30) they weren't quite so blase about getting home. Rose and Delarre had the cooler audience. Just saying... The gig was fantastic. And apparently they haven't got much lined up festival-wise this summer, so are open to suggestions.

At the end of the evening Rose had had a good long time to think about the subject under discussion, and summed it up thus: "Firing the War Horse band was shit. They shouldn't have done it."

There is a Musicians Union petition here that you can sign if you agree with him, asking for the musicians to be reinstated. There are about 6,500 signatures so far.

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The Delarre brothers' audience survives Folk on the Pier this time

As well as hovering over several hundred feet of choppy water, Cromer's Folk on the Pier festival had a marquee this year that was not on the pier. This was *a good thing* because sitting in a darkened auditorium when the weather was as fine as it was on Saturday would have been against nature's order.

One of the best things about it all was that as you sat inside, sunlight streaming through the tent flaps and a gentle breeze playing on the side of your face, listening perhaps to Katriona Gilmour and Jamie Roberts, or Harvey Andrews (who sings a song about driving in the middle lane that didn't seem to be a metaphor for anything), you would occasionally see the silhouettes of birds - swifts and the like - flying lengthways along the tent towards the cliff, like a particularly summery lantern show. I like Cromer.

One of the many reasons for this is that at the moment a friend of mine is its mayor (though only for two more weeks). His name is Greg Hayman and he recently "came out" in a radio interview as a Marxist. I assumed at first that he was messing around - I was in a Marxist politics department at Leeds University a long time ago and take everything to do with Marxism with a fistful of salt - but it turns out no... And this in turn endeared him to John Tams on Sunday evening when he greeted the People's Republic of Cromer from the stage during the Home Service set, asked whether its Marxist mayor was in the audience - he was - and then approved of the fact that he refuses to wear a chain of office, unless you include the one that Greg has fashioned from plastic crabs for special occasions. As I say, I like Cromer.

The Delarre Brothers, David and James, appeared in the marquee on Saturday, without a set list and slightly frayed after a long drive from Liverpool, where they'd played with Mawkin the night before.

They said that they're always pleasantly surprised when they get invited back to Cromer. "The first time we played here, about seven years ago, we killed one of the audience," said David.

Eh?

"Someone unfortunately had a heart attack while we were playing and, um, they didn't survive," he elucidated.

"The paramedics cracked open his chest as I was packing away my fiddle," added James. "And a few weeks later we got a letter from his widow, saying that she'd been enjoying the gig until her husband died. It was good that she didn't blame us."

Why on earth would she have blamed you?

"We were playing a fast one."

Btw I know for a fact that the box office at Cromer's Pavilion Theatre, at the end of the pier, has been trying quite hard to get through to Bellowhead's booking agent recently without much success. If anyone knows them perhaps they could give them a nudge? The venue sold £14,000 worth of tickets for next year's folk festival on Sunday alone, so there's evidently an appetite for this kind of thing in North Norfolk.

* If you'd like to receive posts from this blog directly into your Facebook newsfeed, you could *like* its Facebook page and then use the drop-down menu to indicate that it's one of your "interests". This will enhance the possibility that you'll get them. You could also follow me on Twitter @emma1hartley