Jackie Trent (born September
6, 1940) is
an English
singer, songwriter,
and occasional actress.
Born Yvonne Burgess in Newcastle-under-Lyme,
Trent's first stage appearance was as a ten-year-old ingenue in the
pantomime Babes In The Wood, but her primary
interest was a career in pop music. Her first single, "Pick Up the
Pieces," was released in 1962, but it wasn't until two record labels and
three years later that she scored her first hit, "Where Are You Now?"
by Tony
Hatch, who at that time was involved in a highly successful
professional collaboration with Petula Clark.
Clark disliked Trent, who clearly had romantic designs on the
married Hatch, so when the duo began co-writing material for her they
initially credited the work to Hatch alone. With "I Couldn't Live
Without Your Love", (1966),
inspired by their affair, they went public with their relationship. A
year later, they were married in Kensington, London.
Although she recorded numerous singles and albums, both as a
solo artist and in tandem with her husband, Trent was clearly a better
songwriter than singer. (Her cover versions of several of Clark's
recordings indicate she had no distinct style or sound to set her apart
from the crowd). In addition to their compositions for Clark, over the
years she and Hatch wrote a wealth of material for other artists,
including Frank Sinatra, Nancy
Wilson, Des
O'Connor, Shirley Bassey, Vikki
Carr, and Dean
Martin.
In the late 1960s,
Trent returned to the stage with a UK
tour of the musical Nell with Hermione
Baddeley.
The 1970s
saw Hatch and Trent diversify into the world of musical
theatre. The first of their projects, The
Card, based on Arnold
Bennett's novel, with book by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall,
ran in London's West End with Jim
Dale and Millicent Martin in the
starring roles. (Coincidentally, Clark had starred in the 1952 film version with
Alec
Guinness.) An original cast album was released in 1975. A rewritten
version of the show, starring Peter Duncan and Hayley
Mills, played the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in the 1990s
and spawned a new cast album. The second Hatch/Trent musical was Rock
Nativity, with book and lyrics by David Wood. Initiated and
produced by Cameron Mackintosh, it first
played in Newcastle upon Tyne. An updated
version of the show toured nationally in 1976 and was broadcast nationally by Scottish
TV. A full-length concert version was also recorded at the Cork
Opera House for transmission by RTE.
In 1978,
the couple left the UK for a four-year residency in Dublin, where they
hosted their own TV series Words And Music and It's
A Musical World, before moving to Australia in
1982. It was
while down under that the couple wrote what might be their most famous
composition, the theme song for the TV soap opera Neighbours.
They separated in 1995,
and divorced in 2002.
Following the couple's initial separation, Trent made a hugely
successful return to the British stage, touring the country in the
musical High Society.
After spending several years in semi-retirement, she toured Australia
with a series of concerts in April and May 2004.
On November 24, 2005, Trent married Colin Gregory.
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