Throughout her career, Caroline Munro repeatedly tried to break into the
music business. In actual fact, prior to ever getting into modelling or acting
and while still at school at the age of 16, she recorded a cover version of
Tar and Cement together with Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce of
Cream and Steve Howes of Yes as backing musicians. For a good while that single
has been something of a Holy Grail for Munro Collectors as it was quite
difficult to trace and also proved expensive enough due to her now famous fellow
musicians involved in it at the start of their own career, though an MP3 versions
of the song can now be downloaded
online. It’s quite a cheerful ditty tune that will
keep you humming throughout the day.
In the subsequent years she became quite successful as a model and
poster girl for Lamb’s Navy Rum and also started a promising acting
career. Though she did not actually record any songs during the 70s, she
did appear as the cover girl on some albums. In 1972 e.g. she appeared as
an archer in Robin Hood gear on the front and back cover of Hot Hits 11.
She also appeared on the cover of a Top of the Pops sleeve. Those records
are sometimes available via Beanos, a very reputable London record dealer.
Caroline’s most famous recording was Gary Numan’s production Pump Me
Up. The single was released in 1984 and also featured Numan on
keyboards and backing vocals. It’s recorded in typical Numan style, i.e.
her voice is completely drowned in some monotonous synthesiser sounds and
it's hard to understand what she's singing. For those of you in the same
predicament, here are the lyrics (thanks to Simon Abinnett):
send in someone else
i'm tired of romance
they call me the game
and anyone can play
won't you come in and play with me
they call this the house
we have need without feeling
do you want the shame
i can't escape the sound
won't you come in and play with me
my heart beats slowly
i'll tear your heart to pieces
i'm the face of love
and this love burns cold
won't you come in and play with me
The
B-Side, The Picture, is actually much better. In that song she
sounds very much Blondie’ish.
Caroline was so serious about trying to get a break as a pop star that she
even accepted a singing cameo in Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas in 1984 and
co-wrote the song Warrior of Love. Little did she know that her one-day
shot was turned into a "starring" role for her on the film’s posters thanks to
the producers’ savvy business tactics.
Over the next couple of years, Caroline made only a handful of films
and concentrated more on her family and raising her young kids. In the
second half of the 1990s she rekindled her career by starting to run her
own fan club. Again very keen on making it as a singer, she produced a
private tape with excerpts of Warrior of Love, the very Country
& Westernish Everything I Need and Numan’s Pump Me Up.
On that tape she also spoke and introduced the songs and excerpts. The
tape was distributed around "The Monster Model Fest ‘96" in Framingham,
Massachusetts.
Shortly later she teamed up with fellow musician Gary Wilson and –
under the name of Wilson Munro – recorded a CD with cover versions of
Let It Be Me, Everlasting Love and
Cruisin’, a tune written by Wilson's cousin Clive Wilson and Brian
Hodgson, two long standing session musicians. Clive played the guitars on
that CD as well and was also involved in Christopher Lee's recordings of
It's Now Or Never and Wanderin' Star. The tunes on the Wilson
Munro CD are easy enough to listen to, but unfortunately
Wilson’s voice is stronger than Caroline’s and she often comes across as
little less than a prominent backing musician. The CD was sold via her
Official Fan Club.
Her most successful recording was actually not a musical tune, but
rather an audio CD for Big Finish’s Dr Who Adventure Omega,
released in 2003! Though at times hard to follow for someone not too
familiar with the good Doctor, this CD is nonetheless a Must for Caroline
Munro Fans as this is by far the best acting she ever did. It’s hard to
believe that this is the lady who was dubbed in most of her important
roles. Caroline really takes very well to the audio medium and I would
sure love to hear more from her in that kind of production. Her voice is
amazing: soothing, sexy, ironic, stern, whatever it needs to be. And to
think that she was worried about the production because of her dyslexia is
unbelievable. Her performance is nothing short but a revelation. The CD is
still available from Amazon UK.
Hopefully Big Finish (or any other company) will keep her in mind for future
CDs. Now that Dr Who is likely to see a revival on TV it of course would also be
great if Munro herself would be approached for possible acting parts in
these.
Addendum, August 11, 2005:
Over the last couple of weeks I have been in touch with Karl Sherlock from the
Numa
Records: The Formative Years website, dedicated to all things related
to Gary Numan. One sizable chunk of this web site is dedicated to
Caroline Munro's records: You will find the most extensive analysis of her
songs on this site as well as a bunch of audio samples. Do yourself a favour and
run, don't walk to check out his pages!!!! This one is a Must!
Addendum, May 07, 2007: Caroline Munro has not only just appeared on record, but in actual fact was
the subject of a song herself! For his first solo album "One Year" Colin
Blunstone, lead singer of The Zombies, wrote a song called Caroline
Goodbye about the breakup of their relationship. The lyrics can be found here
and the album is available from both
Amazon UK and as an import from
Amazon US.
