Dear everyone,

As all those of you in the UK will know by now, the "Money For Nothing" hits album entered the charts here last week at No. 1! (and it's still there this week). It had the biggest pre-release orders ever in this country - nearly a million - and has now gone triple platinum! I don't yet have sales figures for other countries, but hopefully it's doing well everywhere. I do know that in Australia, the album had sufficient pre-release orders to give it double-platinum status before it was even out!

As you will see from the sleeve, the band dedicated the album to Peter Granger, the sound engineer who worked with us from the very beginning until he was tragically killed by a hit-and-run driver in October 1986.

I must admit I haven't been playing the album very much, mainly because I am constantly listening to the Randy Newman album "Land of Dreams", which is now out in all countries. As you know, Mark produced seven tracks on this and he and Guy are also playing on it. It's a really great album - do try and get it!

Mark and Alan have finished their USA dates with Eric Clapton's band and I hope those of you who attended shows had a good time. They are now in Japan, where they are doing shows in Nagoya, Tokyo and Osaka. However, as you may have heard, Emperor Hirohito of Japan is seriously ill and possibly close to death - and apparently if he dies, the whole of Japan goes into mourning for a week or two, which means no entertainment of any sort is allowed there, so in that case the shows would be cancelled and Eric + band would have to come home again... Alan returns to the UK after the Japanese dates, and Mark will be going to New York to be with Lourdes, Benji and Joseph - the twins are just coming up to their first birthday. They can now say their first word (dadda!). A short while before Lourdes took them to New York, they visited us here in the office, and were crawling all over the place, so needless to say, not much work got done that morning. Benji has a toy guitar, and he spent half the morning waving it about and shrieking "dadda" at the top of his voice (obviously a guitar player of the future...) The other half of the morning he spent climbing all over me and giving me kisses - he is now known as "Liz's toy-boy"...

Whilst on the subject of babies, John and his girlfriend Tracey are now the proud parents of a little girl - Jessica - born on September 21st. They brought her to the office the other day, but she obviously wasn't impressed, she stayed asleep the whole time... Jack's twin girls are also doing well, and the family are currently on vacation and don't get back to Santa Barbara [t]ill next week - this means I STILL don't have Jack's questionnaire to put in here. A lot of you wrote and said I should also fill in a questionnaire, and sent questions in for me to answer, so I'll put mine in this newsletter.

Most of you who ordered photo-sets and/or Nelson Mandela t-shirts should by now have received them, or will be getting them very shortly. Sorry for the delay, but the postal strike in the UK meant that I didn't get any orders in for ages, and the day the strike finished, I went away! That meant when I returned there was a huge, huge backlog of mail - it took me four days just to open the envelopes! The competition draw date was also delayed because of this, but we eventually did the draw a couple of weeks ago, and the prizewinners should have received their prizes by now. The answers were: a) drums - Jamie Oldaker, b) bass - Carl Radle, c) keyboards - Dick Sims.

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OTHER NEWS
Mark will be spending a week or two at home in New York after he finishes in Japan, and is then starting on another soundtrack album for a film called "Last Exit To Brooklyn" (based on the book of the same name by Hubert Selby Jr., published by Paladin Books). We do have the book in the office, but I haven't had time to read it yet, so I can't tell you what it's about! This soundtrack will probably be recorded in the UK, and Mark's due to finish it at the end of February. The film and the soundtrack album are scheduled for release in the Autumn of 1989. Guy will also be working on this project, although at the moment he is working with Brendan Croker, doing some music for a TV series. The series, which is being made by Granada Television, is about last year's British expedition to climb the north face of Everest, and will be shown on the ITV network in the UK in six parts, the first of which will go out on November15th. The series is called "On The Big Hill". Hopefully, it may be shown in other countries later, but I have no confirmation yet. I just spoke to Guy, and he tells me that if at all possible, he and Brendan will try and get the music for the series recorded as an album, probably also to be called "On the Big Hill", and released within a month. He says they will record it in his bedroom! If this happens, I will let you know how you can get hold of the record in the next newsletter...

Terry has just returned from New York where he was working on the Dion album, to be released on Arista Records. The Dave Edmunds album he was to have been working on after that has now been postponed. Instead, Terry and Dave are joining up with Pay Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Bo Diddley + a number of others, for a rock 'n' roll extravaganza in Italy. After a few days of rehearsals, they are doing a big TV show which is likely to be shown throughout Europe, and it is being recorded on or about November 17th in Rome (Terry was a bit vague about this). I don't know if it is going out live, or whether it will be shown at a later date, you'll have to check in your newspaper's TV pages. Incidentally, Terry passed his driving test a few weeks back (better late than never!). He has already crashed his wife's car, but not seriously, and he says he is more confident now, and is even thinking of attempting the M4 motorway and coming to visit us in the office (help!). By the way, to those of you who asked, no - I never got my car back, so I have had to get another one with the insurance money.

Guy, who is getting nearly as keen as Mark on car-racing, competed in the Cellnet pro-celebrity superprix race at Brands Hatch three weeks ago, driving a Ford Escort XR3i. He came 2nd (from starting 12th on the grid) and would probably have won the race, except that the celebrity drivers were supposed to do 5 laps before handing over [to] the pro driver, and Guy went and did 6 laps by mistake!! His pro partner was David Hunt (brother of racing driver James Hunt).

Chris, who played on Chris de Burgh's "Flying Colours" album during the summer, has been doing a couple of UK TV dates with him over the past couple of weeks (some UK fans may have spotted him on the "Live At The Palladium" show last Sunday). In December, Chris will be rehearsing his own songs with his own seven-piece band (who haven't yet got a name - suggestions welcome!), and in January, he is off to Japan to do about six concerts with guitarist Hugh Burns (ex-Wham!) - so Japanese fans - try and get to one of the shows.

NEWS JUST IN
It looks very much like Randy Newman will be doing a few TV appearances to promote the "Land Of Dreams" album. He is scheduled to do the "Wogan" show in the UK (which is also seen in several European countries) on November 21st, and Mark, Guy and Brendan will be in his band for the show. It is also possible, and this depends on whether or not the single "It's Money That Matters" charts in the UK, that they will be doing "Top Of The Pops" that week! So - if you want to see them on the show, you know what to do - go and buy stacks of Randy Newman singles!!! November 24th and 25th are currently being held for them to do a Dutch television show, maybe recorded in London, maybe in Hilversum. This will hopefully be shown throughout Europe and may well be a half-hour "Special" which would then be sold to other TV networks and shown worldwide... don't know yet! Apart from that, no other news at the moment. As you can probably tell from reading all of the above, there aren't any DS dates lined up in the for[e]seeable future...

Next newsletter is the Christmas one,

Bye for now,

PS. Just got confirmation - the "Wogan" appearance referred to above is definitely ON.

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