I was youngest singer to have a UK No.1 album... and Hitler's pianist was my music teacher!
SOURCE:Daily Mail
Ever since a worldwide hit single propelled him to fame, former child star Neil Reid has cherished fond memories of the quiet old man who taught him to play the piano.
Ever since a worldwide hit single propelled him to global fame, former child star Neil Reid has cherished fond memories of the quiet old man who taught him to play the piano.
It was 1971 and the 12-year-old Scots schoolboy was on the cusp of stardom – winning the TV talent show Opportunity Knocks and releasing the multimillion-selling ballad Mother of Mine.
At the time, the young lad with the voice of an angel was dimly aware from playground rumours that his music teacher, Walter Hambock, had suffered horribly at the hands of the Nazis during the war.
But it is only decades later, that Neil – now aged 66 – has finally learned the astonishing secrets of the elderly tutor who sat beside him at the piano keyboard during their weekly lessons.
For Walter Hambock – known to Neil as an unassuming, quietly-spoken elderly gentleman wrapped in a cardigan – had previously had the dubious honour of being personal pianist to the most reviled figure in modern history: Adolf Hitler.
And, shockingly, although the role had brought him prestige in 1930s Germany, it also almost cost him his life.
After playing at a concert with a Jewish conductor in defiance of the Führer’s poisonous anti- Semitic dogma, the musician was arrested and spent five years enduring the hell of a Nazi concentration camp.
The dramatic details have only recently emerged after the discovery of Walter’s soon-to-be published memoirs, which lay for years gathering dust in a relative’s attic.
12-year-old Scots schoolboy Neil Reid was on the cusp of stardom in 1971 – winning the TV talent show Opportunity Knocks and releasing the multimillion-selling ballad Mother of Mine
Neil has spoken about the unexpected overlap between his former teacher’s stranger-than-fiction life story and his own remarkable early years
Walter Hambock was appointed Hitler's pianist in 1936
Now Neil has spoken about the unexpected overlap between his former teacher’s stranger-than-fiction life story and his own remarkable early years as a pre-teen celebrity.
Having won Opportunity Knocks – which in the early 1970s was watched by more than 20 million people every week – Neil, while still receiving piano lessons from Walter, released a single that reached No2 in the charts and went on to sell more than 4.5 million copies.
After appearing on Top Of The Pops and performing around the world, he released a self- titled LP. To this day, he remains the youngest person ever – at just 12 years and nine months – to have a UK No 1 album.
Speaking to The Scottish Mail on Sunday, he said: ‘It’s astonishing to think I was playing the piano, sitting on a stool beside Walter – but if we’d rewound maybe 30 years, he would have been sitting in exactly the same position, playing piano and sharing the stool with Adolf Hitler.
‘There were rumours around the school that he had been imprisoned in a camp during the war. But I couldn’t ever have guessed the full details of his life.
‘Even knowing what I do now, I still struggle to properly grasp the enormity of everything he went through.’
Born in Vienna in 1909, Walter – like the young Neil many years later – was a child prodigy who quickly won international acclaim. In 1936, after playing in front of Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring, two of the most feared figures in the Nazi party, Walter was appointed as Hitler’s pianist.
In his memoirs, he later wrote: ‘I played often in Hitler’s company. Although Hitler was a self-taught person without any professional musical training, he seemed to enjoy my playing. He enjoyed the classics, particularly Beethoven.’
Neil (pictured) took weekly lessons with Walter for 18 months, before the demands of his showbiz career saw him move to a London stage school
Hitler was so impressed that he gifted Walter a signed copy of his manifesto, Mein Kampf, with the dedication: ‘To my young pianist friend.’
But when he performed at a concert in Holland in 1940 under a Jewish conductor, his life was turned upside down.
After Walter was arrested on the train home, Martin Bormann, one of Hitler’s most feared henchmen, screamed at him: ‘You play for our Führer and then you play for a Jew!’ The musician then spent five years in a labour camp near Flossenbürg, Bavaria – where an estimated 30,000 prisoners were either executed or died from malnutrition and overwork.
In April 1945, as the war was ending, the order was given to shoot all prisoners.
Amazingly, Walter only survived because the camp commander – a fellow music lover – secretly handed him an SS officer’s uniform and allowed him to walk out through the main gates.
Years later, Walter was introduced in Berlin to a Scots teacher called Helen Weir.
After wooing her with his piano playing, they married in 1962 and started a new life in Strichen, Aberdeenshire, where Walter took a job as the church organist and began compiling his memoirs.
The couple later moved to Lanarkshire where he worked as a piano tutor and met his soon-to-be superstar pupil. In 1971, Neil was in his first year at Coltness High School, Wishaw.
Neil's album Smile, which was released in 1972
He said: ‘Walter’s wife Helen taught French and German there. I was interested in learning the piano. She said her husband gave lessons and would be happy to meet me.
‘I went to their family home and played on a baby grand in the front room. I remember him as a very quiet man. He wasn’t ill as such, but his health always seemed delicate.
‘It was rumoured around the school that he had been in a camp.
‘There was one wild rumour that the Nazis had smashed his fingers to stop him playing – but I knew that wasn’t true, because he continued to play so well.’
Neil took weekly lessons with Walter for around 18 months, before the demands of his burgeoning showbiz career saw him take a place at a stage school in London.
In addition to writing his memoirs, Walter also kept scrapbooks.
Along with concert programmes and mementoes from his own career, he proudly kept newspaper cuttings about Neil’s success on Opportunity Knocks and also a Christmas card from him.
Neil said: ‘I regarded Walter with great fondness. He was absolutely lovely. But I had no idea I’d earned a place in his scrapbook.
‘He was always keen to see me flourish musically at the piano – which, sadly, I never did!’
Walter died in 1979, aged 70, and was buried in Airdrie. To his dying day, he insisted he had been right to play under a Jewish conductor, even though it resulted in him being sent to Flossenbürg.
He wrote: ‘My love of music blinded me to any danger.
‘I did not debate, for a minute, if the conductor were Jewish and, even if I had known that such was the case, I would still have gone. I had the chance to play at a good concert, and always as an artiste, a musician first and foremost, I simply went off and played.’
After his early hits, Neil continued to pursue a career in music but never managed to repeat the commercial success of his first single and album after his voice broke.
He stopped performing in his early 30s and switched to a career in finance, later establishing a successful management consultancy business in Blackpool, where he now lives with his wife Elaine.
Several years ago he set up a charity food bank, which grew to become the Blackpool Big Food Project. It now provides free meals for 18,000 people a week.
Reflecting on his days as a child star, he said: ‘I had a great time and I don’t regret any of it, but that part of my life is over.
‘There’s a danger of ego when you’ve done something, particularly in showbusiness, where you are the product. You can live off that and constantly try to bask in the dimming glory of those days.
‘But that’s something I never wanted to do. Now I have a completely different life.’
His one regret, however, is that he never took the opportunity at the time to find out more about the man who taught him piano.
He said: ‘We never really spoke about his background. He was very quiet and didn’t volunteer much about himself or his past. I remember being vaguely aware of his background but I never initiated a conversation about it. I was fairly confident as a young person and I could speak to people quite easily. But we never discussed it.
‘Looking back, I can hardly begin to imagine the horrors that he saw and what he went through.
‘It’s humbling to consider. He lived a really extraordinary life.’