(c’63-?) Barry Stuart Stoller (guitar, bass, and drums)
Born as Barry Stuart Stoller in Camberley in ’45, Stoller was best known for his soundtrack work, especially for creating the iconic “Match of the Day” TV theme in 1970, But he also went by many aliases over the years: Adam Best, Hugh Cortley, Meatball, and Rhet Stoller.
He had been surrounded by music from an early age – as a four-year-old he memorised Tchaikovsky ballets from his parents’ record collection – but, it was the guitar that really got a 16-year-old Stoller started. As ‘Rhet Stoller’ he was the lead guitarist of the Nu-Notes in the early 60’s, the band lead by front man Russ Sainty. Some early covers led to a chart single, ‘Chariot’, for Rhet, which reached number 26 in ’61, marking his only UK charting single.
Having studied electronics at college and music at the Royal Academy, Stoller ended up playing in number of pop groups before, at the age of 22 and encouraged by music director and publisher Harold Geller, he stopped playing in public to focus on his own projects in ‘electronic music’. Scuttling off to a North London coal cellar he built his own electronic music equipment and set about creating the soundscape that would be grabbed by Philips Records for their Fontana label.
In ’70, as Adam Best, Stoller released 12 jazz / funk / soul tracks as the Wall of Sound LP on Fontana [SFL 13209 & 6433 001] as part of the Fontana Special series; notably the cover erroneously lists Side-A as Side-B and vice versa. This layered Stoller’s ‘solid rhythmic foundation’ with ‘section work by electronics’. That same year, Stoller would also compose, in partnership with Musi Silvio, eight of the tracks: Tamala Junction, Run Around, Pitch, Take Off, Pictures of You, The Affair, Rumble Tumble, and Say Your Peace; on the Double Cross album; released on the Conroy [BMLP 078] labels Conroy Recorded Music Library series, the other six tracks being composed by Christian Bellest.
The next year, and on the Dutch Music De Wolfe label, Stoller released Atomic Butterfly under the Meatball alias.
The Match of the Day Theme was composed in 1970 for the BBC’s long-running football highlights show, chosen out of half-a-dozen submissions to be the show’s new theme. The theme is a brass fanfare with offbeat percussion, rhythm and bass guitars, banjo, and clavioline keyboard, recorded in non-football fan Stoller’s his East London basement. Stoller’s Match of the Day fanfare premiered on 15 August ’70. In May 2010, British copyright collective PRS for music, revealed that the Match of the Day tune was the most recognisable TV theme in the UK.
In addition to “Match of the Day”, he has also worked on numerous television soundtracks, including The Sweeney (1975) and Ripping Yarns (1976) and contributed music to shows such as The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard (2009), The Adventures of Picasso (1978), Tiswas (1975), and Minder.
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