![]() ![]() He also wrote two songs recorded by Rod Stewart on Immediate Records: "Little Miss Understood" and "So Much to Say (So Little Time)". He composed and produced Chris Farlowe's " Handbags and Gladrags", a hit single (which was also notably recorded by Rod Stewart and Stereophonics and subsequently became the theme music to the BBC television show The Office) and "The Last Goodbye". All of the UK Fontana and US Mercury releases featured d'Abo. D'Abo then helped record Manfred Mann's As Is album (with the attaching single of the Bob Dylan-penned " Just Like a Woman"). It was nearly recorded with "Mr Jones" in the title before it occurred to the group that it might be interpreted as a reference to Paul Jones. ![]() "We really do have an enormously wide range of musical tastes among us."ĭ'Abo's first big hit with Manfred Mann was "Semi-Detached Suburban Mr James". "I enjoy being with the group," he told Pete Goodman. Comparisons between d'Abo and Jones (whom d'Abo physically resembled) became a media preoccupation at the time of the switch, but d'Abo wasted little time dwelling upon it. In July 1966, after leaving A Band of Angels, D’Abo joined Manfred Mann, an established chart-topping group, as a replacement for lead singer Paul Jones, who was leaving to start a solo career. It is just lucky that fashion now agrees with me" ( Rave, November 1966). I knew I looked wrong but I didn't want to change, I looked like me and what I am. Also we looked old-fashioned when we started. They didn't want me to be too outstanding, a thing that happens naturally in most groups. A Band of Angels did not make the big time and d'Abo later reflected on what had gone wrong for them: "We weren't right for each other. He had minor success with a group of Old Harrovians, A Band of Angels, that had their own comic strip in a UK pop music weekly, Fab 208. His musical career began while he was still at Harrow School. He switched to economics, also unsuccessfully, and left Cambridge with "a first class jazz collection" but without completing his studies. D'Abo's original intention at Cambridge was to read theology and become a priest but, faced with "everything to learn" (not least Classical Greek and Hebrew), and a disconnect between the "strange, impractical philosophy" he was being taught and his idealism about "bringing comfort to people" and spreading "understanding in the world," he "became wholly disillusioned" ( Rave, November 1966). He is 5 ft 11 in (1.80 m), and has eyes "that honestly seem to change from blue to brown to green, depending on the light" (Pete Goodman, music journalist). He was educated at Wellesley House Prep School in Kent, then at Harrow School and Selwyn College, Cambridge. His d'Abo heritage is via the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies his maternal line includes Edward Harbord, 3rd Baron Suffield (1781–1835). Early years ĭ'Abo was born in Betchworth, Surrey, the son of Dorothy Primrose (née Harbord) and Edward Nassau Nicolai d'Abo, a London stockbroker. James", " Ha! Ha! Said the Clown" and the chart topper " Mighty Quinn". With Manfred Mann, d'Abo achieved six top twenty hits on the UK Singles Chart including " Semi-Detached, Suburban Mr. Michael David d'Abo (born 1 March 1944) is an English singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist of Manfred Mann from 1966 to their dissolution in 1969, and as the composer of the songs " Handbags and Gladrags" and " Build Me Up Buttercup", the latter of which was a hit for The Foundations. ![]()
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