Alone Again (Naturally)

You know, Zoo Freaks, spinning "Alone Again (Naturally)" by Gilbert O'Sullivan off that record skip-alone again gilbert osullivan album always brings a hush to the room here at THE ZOO. That piano and the soft guitar just settle in like an old friend who knows when to stay quiet. Gilbert has talked plenty about how the song came together, and it is not the usual hit story. He wrote it when he was around 21 or 22, right after he quit his job as a postal clerk in London. Gordon Mills, the fellow who managed Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck, signed him and stuck him in a bungalow on his place so he could write all day instead of just in the evenings. He has said he was happy with the tune but did not see it as anything special compared to the other songs he had going at the time.

One of the wild bits is that nobody thought it should be the single. They recorded it in the same session with another track called "Out of the Question," and the people in the room figured that one was the commercial choice. Alone Again was good, they said, but maybe not the obvious hit. By the end of the evening Gordon Mills decided to go with it anyway because it was the better song. Gilbert has mentioned that the last word, "naturally," just showed up one day while he was walking up to his manager's house. He had "alone again" for days but could not land the finish until that moment. Session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan laid down that distinctive solo, and rhythm came from Vic Flick, the same guy who played on the James Bond theme.

Folks who meet Gilbert often tell him they figured the lyrics came straight from his own life, with the jilted-at-the-altar part and the parents dying. He has said over and over in interviews that it was not autobiographical. He never got stood up at a church, never tried to end things that way, and his mother was still alive when he wrote it. His own father had passed when Gilbert was about 11, but he has explained he did not know the man well and did not cry the way the song describes. He calls it a character song, something he could understand and write about without having lived every detail. That is what makes a good lyricist, he reckons, getting inside the subject even when it is heavy. He has been protective of the track ever since, turning down requests to use it in commercials or anything comical. When Biz Markie sampled the intro without asking back in the early nineties, Gilbert took it to court and won. That case set a big precedent so samples had to be cleared from then on. He said the song means too much to people for someone to turn it into a joke.

A review at the time called it another nice little ditty that might be a hit, which shows how little anyone can predict. It ended up number one in the States for six weeks and sold a couple million copies. Gilbert still talks about how proud he is of the reaction he gets when people tell him what the song has meant to them over the years. He has re-recorded a stripped-down version for his Songbook album, just him and a guitar player, and that one keeps the same quiet heart.

As for how Gilbert got started, he was born Raymond Edward O'Sullivan in Waterford, Ireland, in 1946. The family moved to Swindon in England when he was seven. They had a piano in the house the way a lot of working families did, hoping one of the kids might pick up a few pounds playing in a pub someday. He was the one who took to it. The Beatles hit and that changed everything for him. They wrote their own songs and could not read music, so he figured maybe he could do the same. He played drums in local bands like the Doodles and the Prefects, and later in Rick's Blues with a fellow named Rick Davies who went on to Supertramp. Davies showed him some piano. After art college in Swindon, where he studied graphic design, he headed to London in 1967 with the idea of making a go of music. He took a job at a department store and got a publishing deal, then a couple of singles that did not do much. He cooked up that early look with the flat cap, short trousers, and bowl haircut, inspired by silent films, to stand out. His manager did not love the image at first, but he loved the songs. That first MAM single, "Nothing Rhymed," cracked the UK top ten in 1970, and things took off from there. You can dig into more of his story and the new work over at the official Gilbert O'Sullivan website.

He keeps fans in the loop on the official Facebook page, shares photos and bits on Instagram, and posts updates on X. There is also a long-running fan page at Gilbert FC Info that has been welcoming folks since 2008. The man is still out there writing and touring, and that song still lands the same way it did when it first hit the airwaves.