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Christopher Cerf has been composing songs for Sesame Street for twenty-five years. His large Manhattan townhouse is full of Sesame Street memorabilia – photographs of Christopher with his arm around Big Bird, etc. ‘Well, it’s certainly not what I expected when I wrote them,’ Christopher said. ‘I have to admit, my first reaction was, “Oh my gosh, is my music really that terrible?” ’ I laughed. ‘I once wrote a song for Bert and Ernie called “Put Down The Ducky”,’ he said, ‘which might be useful for interrogating members of the Ba’ath Party.’ ‘That’s very good,’ I said. ‘This interview,’ Christopher said, ‘has been brought to you by the letters W, M and D.’ ‘That’s very good,’ I said. We both laughed. I paused. ‘And do you think that the Iraqi prisoners, as well as giving away vital information, are learning new letters and numbers?’ I said. ‘Well, wouldn’t that be an incredible double win?’ said Christopher. Christopher took me upstairs to his studio to play me one of his Sesame Street compositions, called ‘Ya! Ya! Das Is a Mountain!’ ‘The way we do Sesame Street,’ he explained, ‘is that we have educational researchers who test whether these songs are working, whether the kids are learning. And one year they asked me to write a song to explain what a mountain is, and I wrote a silly yodelling song about what a mountain was.’ Christopher sang me a little of the song: Oompah-pah! Oompah-pah! Ya! Ya! Das is a mountain! Part of zee ground zat sticks way up high! ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘forty per cent of the kids had known what a mountain was before they heard the song, and after they heard the song, only about twenty-six per cent knew what a mountain was. That’s all they needed. You don’t know what a mountain is now, right? It’s gone! So I figure if I have the power to suck information out of people’s brains by writing these songs, maybe that’s something that could be useful to the CIA for brainwashing techniques.’ Just then, Christopher’s phone rang. It was a lawyer from his music publishers, BMI. I listened into Christopher’s side of the conversation: ‘Oh really?’ he said. ‘I see . . . Well, theoretically they have to log that and I should be getting a few cents for every prisoner, right? Okay. Bye, bye . . .’ ‘What was that about?’ I asked Christopher. ‘Whether I’m due some money for the performance royalties,’ he explained. ‘Why not? It’s an American thing to do. If I have the knack of writing songs that can drive people crazy sooner and more effectively than others, why shouldn’t I profit from that?’ This is why, later that day, Christopher asked Danny Epstein – who has been the music supervisor of Sesame Street since the very first programme was broadcast in July 1969 – to come to his house. It would be Danny’s responsibility to collect the royalties from the military if they proved negligent in filing a music-cue sheet.
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