31 Oct 2023
Alex Brown has enjoyed a remarkable career tuning the pianos of various celebrities. He speaks to Alex Assadian about his experiences…
I have the pleasure of living a few doors down from Alex in St Albans. As a fellow Scot with the same name as myself, I was probably always going to get on with him. But it quickly became transparent
that he is out of the ordinary, someone whose charms it is impossible not to succumb to. He is not only the nicest guy but has a truly remarkable life story. He is after all, ‘the piano tuner to the stars’!
Alex Brown was born in Dundee in Scotland in 1940 to a family of performers. His grandmother had a beautiful singing voice and regularly hit the stage, and his mother and father were local heroes in vaudeville – she a singer and he a comic, and both professional performers. Music was therefore in his blood.
In his early teens he taught himself guitar and with a passion for the revolution in music that was rock’n’roll in the late ‘fifties he turned to songwriting with a best pal, Pat. Even now, decades later, his excitement for this wave of avant garde music is evident. He refers to being 16 in 1956 as a blessing and recalls listening to ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’ by Gene Vincent as an awakening.
That same year, Alex started an apprenticeship as a piano technician and in turn, piano tuner with Largs & Sons. Having grown up with music on stage and in the home, and himself a natural singer and budding guitarist, he was in his element. As he says, he may have been clueless about a career path in his teenage years but for him it was all about music, and that’s where it all started from.
“Happiness is finding out what you like most and then trying to do it all the time.”
In his early 20s, he built up his level of expertise of the piano and its technicalities, and serviced pianos across the region.
He credits his level of skill to learning the hard way and from the best. Training was exacting back in the 1950s but stood him in excellent stead, although he soon outgrew Dundee.
Alex had grown up with the stage ever-present in his life and from his days as an infant, he recalls being in the wings watching his parents perform, enthralled.
As a young man and musical performer himself, it was no wonder that London and the bright lights beckoned. He even recalls that at five years old, during a visit to family in Bermondsey, he told his mother that he’d be back to live there one day. Eventually at 27 years old, he was true to his word.
After years in Dundee honing his trade as a piano technician and tuner, all the while touring local bars performing alongside his long-time pal Pat showcasing original songs, Alex landed a job with Chappells Piano in Bond Street. He moved to London in 1967 with his lovely wife Gladys and young daughter Melanie in tow, to pursue his dreams of all things music.
Chappells leased five pianos on a permanent hire basis to the BBC, so the ivories were well tinkled by a whole host of star performers.
Almost immediately Alex was out servicing the pianos of major celebrities, and one of his first call-outs was to the home of Mick Jagger.
Although at first, he felt trepidation but after being thrown in at the deep end, it was no time at all before piano-tuning for the elite became second nature.
Alex, ever the social butterfly, felt right at home and fell into his role with ease and excitement.
Given he could ‘talk music’, he was well-placed to meet with music royalty whilst working his magic with pianos in and outside of the capital.
However, although the first two years in London were thrilling they were also extremely challenging. Alex and his young family were stretched to the brink financially, facing up to London rents with a low income.
As Alex says: “My rent in Dundee was 15 shillings a week and suddenly in London it was £6 and 10 shillings. So I knew I was going to have to sing for my supper to get the rent paid!”
Alex started playing gigs straight away, and came across Steve Lowdell who was not only an incredible pianist but a jazz fanatic, although this was not Alex’s cup of tea.
On one of his first nights at the Black Horse pub in Ilford, there happened to be a large stag party in the pub who were clearly not there for a jazz-fest. Steve asked Alex to stand up and show him what he could do, and he would accompany him, as given his piano skills were so impressive, he could follow any tune.
Alex knew what the crowd needed and started to sing and play the Tom Jones hit ‘Delilah’, and it wasn’t long before the room was full of men standing on tables, singing along and chanting.
Alex thought to himself: “That’ll do for me!”
He was soon performing with Steve on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights at the Black Horse and his rent was secured.
After nine months at the Black Horse, Steve and Alex were headhunted and ended up at the Elm Park hotel in Hornchurch performing on the bill alongside comic performer and later EastEnder Mike Reid, which meant double the money!
They regularly entertained stag and hen parties and knew how to keep a somewhat raucous crowd engaged.
Life was sweet. By day, Alex was servicing pianos for the rich and famous and by evening, he was a bona fide musician.
You might be wondering when the piano tuning took precedence over his singer-songwriter aspirations. Luck played a part and the BBC somewhat landed into his lap. But also the reality of life as a gigging musician was difficult to square up family at home and a day job. Little could Alex imagine that the day job would become even more exciting than the evening gigs.
Whilst still at Chapells and after 18 months in the role, Alex’s colleague went on holiday.
This colleague had been ‘the BBC guy’ and Alex was requested to cover for him and pop over to the BBC’s White City studios to tune and service their five pianos. After a week at the studios, Alex
was smitten. Each day for the week he was thrilled to see the broadcasting corporation in full-swing and with people at the top of their game. “Everybody was having a ball!” he recalls. Six months later, his colleague went on holiday again and Alex happily went back in. It was then that he met George Gardiner.
George Gardiner worked for Challen pianos, who had held the BBC contract for 33 years and had no less than 40 pianos leased to the TV studios. Given the scale of Challen’s arrangement with the BBC, Gardiner worked full-time for them.
But by 1969, he was over 70 and had decided to retire, and informed Alex that he thought that he should be the man to replace him. Despite Alex being dazzled by the BBC and grateful for the offer, he turned him down, believing that the unorthodox hours of the BBC piano services would mean he wouldn’t be able to perform in the pubs that were so vitally lucrative for him. It was only with the sage wisdom of his wife Gladys, that he realised he’d made a terrible mistake and had turned his back on his dream role!
It was a long weekend waiting until Monday morning to call back and accept the offer. But accept he did and the rest is history. Stepping into the studios on that first day, he said he “felt the throb, the creative energy and the spirit. Here was a factory whose product was fun”. In short, he fell for it hook, line and sinker.
Alex stayed with the BBC for 43 years. He became freelance after 11 years at Challen which meant alongside his BBC call-outs, he could take on any number of concerts or personal celebrity bookings.
During that time he’s met A-listers galore, from John Wayne to Rod Stewart, Sir Paul McCartney to Johnny Cash. He has tuned the piano on over 300 Parkinson shows and has met and chatted with Parky’s superstar interviewees.
He was the regular tuner to Jools Holland, looking after the pianos on set on dozens upon dozens of his musical showcases for 23 years as well as to him personally at his home. He tuned the piano for Sir Elton John the night before his world-famous performance of ‘Candle in the Wind’ at Princess Diana’s funeral.
He’s done Children in Need, Live 8, the Nelson Mandela Concert in 1996, tuned for Beyonce at Wembley and hung around with Brad Pitt on the set of the movie Fury.
He sold his collection of over 800 personalised autographs including the likes of Charlie Chaplin, The Who, Dolly Parton and Fred Astaire, to secure future financial stability for he and his wife.
He has been nose-to-nose with Raquel Welch, lunched with Vanessa Redgrave, guided Buzz Aldrin to the toilet, tuned the piano for a singing dog on ‘That’s Life’ and took care of the piano tuning for the rehearsals of Abba’s ‘Mamma Mia’ musical. All in a day’s work.
What Alex takes away from it all is: “Really truly great stars are big on the inside in spite of their fame. Those individuals who are in a position of power, but refuse to abuse it. THAT is class.”
He clearly loves people. His journey has proven to him that for the most part, there are exceptional individuals out there with talent to the core, but they’re humble and genuine. His encounters with the most remarkable of them still fill him with glee and gratitude to this day.
His mantra in life has been to ‘expand into the vacuum’. Or as Captain Kirk would put it: ”To boldly go where no man has gone before.” And he has done so with dedication and passion.
He has, even at 83, clearly got a lust for life. He’s immensely proud of his second daughter Kelly who is a professional singer (she sung with the Urban Voices choir at the 2012 Olympics in London). He’s extremely grateful to his wife Gladys and to and for, both his daughters.
He is stoic about lost opportunities, philosophical about former career paths that didn’t quite work out (his songwriting, music performing and script writing escapades are an article in themselves) and accepting of the lessons learned from hardships including poverty and a burn-out.
He still works today and tunes pianos for a select few. Until Covid reared its ugly head, he was working five days a week. He’s now written a book of his life story, ‘The Man with the Three Hats’, which he hopes will soon see the light of day with a publisher. I’ve been lucky enough to read it, and it’s moving, funny and surprising all in equal measure.
Alex doesn’t end his book with the demise of his BBC career as a punch line.
He mentions the day he went in to do the dress run for Jools Holland’s Annual Hootenanny in 2013 shortly before the White City studios closed their doors, and what a sad and anti-climactic ending it was to stroll out of there without a send off. The perils of being a freelancer. Instead he delights in regaling us of the tale of rushing onto the stage at the end of the ‘Party at the Palace’ concert in 2002, with a plethora of household names alongside him, as Sir Paul McCartney led the anthem ‘Hey Jude’ to an audience of over 12,000 people at Buckingham Palace.
This is Alex all over. No regrets – just clear unadulterated joy in the moment. It spills from the pages of his book, and he can’t hold it back in person. It is infectious and uplifting. What a story to tell, and what a storyteller.
