Don Black (lyricist)

He began his music industry career as an office boy with a music publishing firm, and later worked as a song-plugger. He also had a brief spell as a comic.[2][10]

He was personal manager to the singer Matt Monro for many years and also provided songs for him (usually writing English language lyrics to continental songs).[11] These included "Walk Away" and "If I Never Sing Another Song" (music: Udo Jürgens) and "For Mamma" (music: Charles Aznavour).[5]

Black's first film work was the lyrics for the theme of the James Bond entry Thunderball (1965).[11] His association with the Bond series continued over several decades, with Diamonds Are Forever and The Man with the Golden Gun, in collaboration with John Barry, and Surrender for Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough, in collaboration with David Arnold.[11]

Black's film work culminated when he collaborated with Barry on the title song of 1966's Born Free, which won the Oscar for Best Song and provided a hit for Matt Monro.[5] Pianist Roger Williams made the US Top 40 with an instrumental version. The song was nominated for Song of the Year at the 1967 Grammy Awards. The movie's producer, Sam Jaffe, was not impressed with the song, fearing that Black had made too much of a political comment in the lyric, and initially had the film printed without it on the soundtrack. When it became a US hit, he relented and had the film reprinted, commenting to Black, "It grows on you," after the song won the Oscar.

Black later collaborated with Barry on The Tamarind Seed, Out of Africa, Dances with Wolves, and an ill-fated Broadway musical, The Little Prince and the Aviator. In 1967, Lulu took the Black-Mark London title song of the film To Sir, with Love to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.[2] Black received his second Oscar nomination for Best Song with the title theme, written with Elmer Bernstein, of the 1969 John Wayne western, True Grit. That same year, he partnered with Quincy Jones for the theme song of the Michael Caine film, The Italian Job, "On Days Like These". He received a third Oscar nomination for the title song of the 1972 film Ben, a US No. 1 hit for Michael Jackson, which Black had written with Walter Scharf.[5] Further Oscar nominations came for "Wherever Love Takes Me" (music: Elmer Bernstein), from 1974 film Gold, and "Come to Me" (music: Henry Mancini) from 1976's The Pink Panther Strikes Again.

In addition, Black teamed with Charles Strouse on the songs "Growing Up Isn't Easy" and "Anything Can Happen on Halloween" for the 1986 HBO film The Worst Witch, based on the children's book by Jill Murphy. Walt Disney commissioned him to write songs for the direct-to-video film Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas.

In July 2023, it was announced that Black would collaborate with film composer David Arnold and singer-songwriter Sophie Ellis-Bextor for the track to Channel 4 and Universal Pictures film, "Mog's Christmas", based upon the children's book series by Judith Kerr. The track, titled "As Long As I Belong", is about "the importance of belonging".[12]

Black's stage credits include the musicals Billy (music: John Barry), Bar Mitzvah Boy (music: Jule Styne), Dear Anyone (music: Geoff Stephens), Budgie (music: Mort Shuman) and several Andrew Lloyd Webber shows: the 1979 song-cycle, Tell Me on a Sunday, which was performed by Marti Webb (whom Black also managed for a time); Aspects of Love, which propelled Michael Ball to stardom; and, together with Christopher Hampton, the musical adaptation of the Billy Wilder film Sunset Boulevard.[5] The latter brought Black and Hampton a Tony Award for Best Book.

Tell Me on a Sunday was incorporated into Song and Dance.[5] This was later adapted for a Broadway production starring Bernadette Peters, for which she won a Tony award as Best Actress in a Musical. Sarah Brightman performed for a video recording of the show at the end of its West End run and also released "Unexpected Song", from that musical, as a single.

With Geoff Stephens he produced a concept album of a "revuesical" entitled Off The Wall.[13]

In 2002, he worked with the Indian composer A. R. Rahman on the musical Bombay Dreams.[5] In 2004, Black's second musical collaboration with Hampton, Frank Wildhorn's Dracula, the Musical, debuted on Broadway. He also collaborated with John Barry once more, on the musical Brighton Rock. Based on the Graham Greene novel, it debuted at the Almeida Theatre, London, in 2004. In 2006, Black created the lyrics for the musical adaptation of the book Feather Boy, for the National Theatre in London.

In 2011, Black wrote the lyrics alongside composer Frank Wildhorn for the 2011 Broadway production of Bonnie & Clyde, which premiered at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on 22 November 2011 and closed four weeks later due to poor ticket sales, despite the general public giving the show high praise for its score and the lead actors Jeremy Jordan (as Clyde Barrow) and Laura Osnes (as Bonnie Parker). The cast recording, however, became one of Wildhorn and Black's most successful musical scores.

In 2013, he again worked with Christopher Hampton and Andrew Lloyd Webber on Stephen Ward the Musical.[14] In 2015, he wrote the lyrics for Mrs Henderson Presents,[15] with George Fenton and Simon Chamberlin composing the music.[16] In 2019, he collaborated with David Arnold on the music for a television version of The Tiger Who Came to Tea.[17]

In 2020, he was reported to be working on a musical version of The Third Man, and reworking the show Feather Boy.[18]

Black presented a Sunday night show on BBC Radio 2 from 2013 to 2020, which featured classic songs and songwriters of the 20th century, paid a weekly tribute to Matt Monro, whom he managed, and included many of his showbiz encounter stories. He took over this slot from David Jacobs.[19]