The Pop Corporation

Time to don the tinfoil hat, take a big toke on a bag of spice, and start joining up the dots that may not be there. Strap in. It’ll be fun, we promise.

We were watching the incredibly affable Charles Cornell on YouTube dissecting ‘how hard’ the Thomas The Tank Engine theme goes, and pulling it to piece with music theory and showing what a great piece of music it is. He does this a lot and they’re always superb videos.

We were reminded of something that was sat dormant in our brain. That is our nagging feeling that Paul McCartney kinda wrote the Thomas The Tank Engine theme.

We need to wade through some stuff first, for dramatic tension. First, some gorgeous psychedelic music.

‘Reflections of My Life’ was hit back in ’69 by Marmalade. Written by the insanely talented Junior Campbell, Marmalade had a handful of killer psych tracks and were a favourite of Jimi Hendrix. They played with Pink Floyd, Joe Cocker, The Who, Traffic, and Graham Nash even sat in on one of their sessions.

They were a hot ticket, no mistake. They employed backward guitar and were ambitious, even if they were having hit after hit. In fact, one of their hits was a cover version of The Beatles’ ‘Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da’. Interesting. Anyway, Junior Campbell would eventually leave the group to attend the Royal College of Music to study orchestration and composition.

Across town, Mike O’Donnell was working at the Fabs’ Apple Studios, helping to record Apple-signed artists, and himself, a bass player and vocalist.

He’d cut his teeth playing in R&B groups in the famous Cavern, but moved to London in ’69 while Marmalade were having a hit with their Beatle cover. Working from Shepperton Studios, Mike made his way into TV and movie music.

Of course, ’69 saw the end of The Beatles, and Paul McCartney would release a solo LP before forming Wings, hitting the road and churning out a dizzying amount of hits and killer LPs.

Time would pass and McCartney’s career would touch many bases, and in 1978, following the uber-hit ‘Mull of Kintyre’, McCartney regrouped and got down to making the ‘London Town’ LP. ‘With A Little Luck’ would be the album’s hit, topping the charts Stateside.

Now, we know what people are like. No-one clicked the video above because you either know it, are pretending you know it, or just don’t like playing audio while scrolling on your phone.

If you did, the whole hook of this article was found from the 4 minute mark. Did you hear it? A small motif played on a synthesiser that is the opening chimes of the Thomas The Tank Engine theme.

If you didn’t clock it from the off, you ought to now. It’s right there. Unmistakeable.

Fast-forward a few short years, and we’re in 1984. The Rev W. Awdry’s books about a mischievous bunch of trains are turned into one of the most popular television shows of all-time. You have to say that, in part, that is thanks to a theme tune that bangs.

Who wrote the theme? Well, we didn’t mention Junior Campbell and Mike O’Donnell for no reason.

After studying the formal aspect of music, Campbell worked in television with The Two Ronnies, contributing music to fantasy films and BBC dramas, and O’Donnell working with jingles, scores and television himself. Tasked with writing a theme tune for Thomas and his friends, Junior Campbell is on record as saying that he wanted something that sounded like Mean Mr Mustard.

A huge Beatle nut, and into lesser known cuts like Mr Mustard (well, as lesser known as a Beatle song can be), it’s not a huge stretch of the imagination to think that Campbell and O’Donnell had a copy of ‘London Town’ next to the record player at home, is it?

To complete the Beatle link, who narrated those glorious first shows of Thomas The Tank Engine? None other than Ringo Starr himself. And never released, there was apparently a full Ringo vocal version of the theme, which obviously, we’d love to hear.