Soundtrack Of My Life: Richard Hammond

16 February, 2024

Richard Hammond

The first song I remember hearing

The Beatles – ‘Love Me Do’

“I was about five or six and I had these instructions for ‘how to make a record player’ out of a piece of cardboard. You folded it and then you folded again and I borrowed a pin from my mum and put a bit of sellotape into the corner. Depending upon the speed at which you rotated it [you could play a record]… I didn’t know exactly how to replicate 45 RPM… so [the record] didn’t last that long. I wasn’t entirely popular when my dad saw me with [their Beatles vinyl]…”

The first album I bought

Adam And The Ants – ‘Kings Of The Wild Frontier’

“This is back in the day when Woolworths would sell [records]. I loved Adam And The Ants because they were sort of punk but also romantic with the way they dressed. I was living in suburban Birmingham at the time, 1980, and they were like nothing else. Nobody dressed like that. Nobody acted like that. It was incredible.”

The first gig I went to

B.B. King at Leeds University, 1987

“In a sense, I was always around live music. My parents are folk singers. And we used to sing in a little band together. Later, I was in bands with my brothers too. We would gig every week in pubs and clubs. But the first proper gig I went to was B.B. King. It was the first time I’d seen a music god come out on stage. It was dazzling.”

The song that reminds me of home

ZZ Top – ‘La Grange’

“it centres me and gives me a sense of longevity. I’d saved up enough money when I was about 14 or 15 to buy a second-hand cassette player from a shop called Loot, down the road on the High Street in Shirley… I had recorded [ZZ Top‘s 1973 album] ‘Tres Hombres’ and I took it with me on a family camping holiday in France. I think it was the first time the Hammond family went abroad. And I remember listening to [that album] on my little cassette player in the back of the car. When I listen to any song from that album, but particularly ‘La Grange’, I go back to that wonderful age when you feel quite grown-up, but not really grown-up yet.”

The song I can’t get out of my head right now

Black Grape – ‘Pimp Wars’

“I just can’t get rid of it. It’s superb. I’ve been hearing Shaun Ryder a lot over the last week and he’s like a different man [Ryder has suffered several bouts of ill health over the past few years]. He’s changed his story about five times in 12 months. That’s what all the best artists do – and that’s when you know they’re really artists.”

The song I can no longer listen to

‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’

“I’m embarrassed because it makes me sound really woke and right on – I’m 54 for Christ’s sake – but I can’t listen to this because it’s horrible. It’s bloody predatory. I hate it.”

The song that makes me want to dance

Wild Cherry – ‘Play That Funky Music’

“The dad dancing that then unfolds is just horrific. It’s awful, really, really bad, but I can’t resist it. And nobody wants to see that, least of all my daughters.”

The song that makes me cry

‘Dido’s Lament’ from Henry Purcell’s ‘Dido And Aeneas’

“My goldfish died once, years ago when I was living in Cheltenham in a beautiful flat. As it was clearly dying, I got a book of nature and I put a photograph of some tropical fish next to the tank so it could see it and I played [this track].”

The song I want played at my funeral

J.J. Cale – ‘Call Me The Breeze’

“I’m not, by nature… I don’t want to be loud. I learned to be because I’m small and my job rewarded it, but it’s not how and who I am. I’d far rather just drift through – and that’s kind of what the song’s about. And I would offer that at my funeral, because I want my wife and my daughters to hear that I’m content. I’m happy. I’m just a breeze. I came along, existed and carried on. I’m happy to leave on that.”