One of the first press reports when the project was at an early stage. The Echo’s Martin Neal was very supportive.
“I’m one step away from the shoe shine / Two steps away from the county line” – prompted the choice of The County Line: Essex Artists for BBC Children In Need. What about the song? I considered several possibilities before realising that the ultimate choice had to be the number that inspired this whole idea in the first place. It had to be ‘Heroes’, the song co-written in Berlin by Bowie and Brian Eno in 1977 – one that I’d bought as a teenager in the early autumn of that year – but with an arrangement closer to Bowie’s bouncy Live Aid version than his arty original. 6
Now, these lofty notions were all well and good but how was all this going to come together in reality? Task number one was to alert the community via the local press and thereby engage potential contributors to the record. Around nine or 10 newspapers came through with sizeable reports and the phone started ringing. The line-up began to swell within days. Little did I realise that the eventual number would total an unwieldy 70 individuals. One of those calls was from two gentlemen who turned out to fulfil an important background role in the organisation of the project: