Northampton musician releases NHS ballad to raise funds amid coronavirus pandemic

A musician from Northampton who 'owes his life to the NHS' has written and produced a song to help raise funds for the health service amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Brendan Read-Jones, who was born the same year that the NHS launched, has teamed up with a London-based music producer to release Our Blue Army.

“I think we all know someone who has been impacted by Covid-19 in some way or another, so I wanted to do something positive during my lockdown, which is when I got the idea to write this song," he said.

Brendan developed asthma in the early 1950s resulting in asthma attacks and many stays in hospital but he is now virtually free of the illness thanks to treatment from the NHS.

With health workers putting themselves in harm's way every day during the coronavirus crisis, Brendan was inspired to pay tribute to them with his song.

"Without the care and dedication of the NHS I may not be here today, and I feel like I owe my life to the health service," he said.

"Our nurses and doctors are giving everything to help save as many people as they can, I felt compelled to try to raise money for them. It’s my way of saying thank you to them.”

Once composed, Brendan enlisted the help of his long-time friend and fellow musician, Rick Cassman, to add his own riffs to the track.

Having met in the late 60s at the Ealing School of Art where they mixed with the likes of Freddy Mercury, the musical duo have collaborated on a number of projects over the years.

Rick said: “We have different styles but a lot of common ground. The original version was typical Brendan – a big scale ballad with lots of orchestral parts.

"The strings and brass are from his original, but I felt it needed something else.”

Rick added guitars and a new drum part, before asking Brendan to add some new vocals, before they both created the video, which is based on black and white wartime clips.

Brendan said: “I’ve always considered my generation to be the lucky ones, the baby boomers who never really knew about war, so I based the narrative on the war time experience of my grandparent and parents.”

Rick added: “The fact that we don’t appear in the video is deliberate. This is about the NHS, not us.

"We hope that people like the song enough to buy it, as every single penny will be donated to the health service to help them purchase the PPE equipment they so desperately need right now.”

Charitable donations for the single can be made here