Anthony Head Credits

In 1982, Anthony Head performed background vocals on Chris de Burgh's album The Getaway, (which was produced by Rupert Hine, who also produced Murray Head's album Between Us). This included a background reading on the song Don't Pay the Ferryman.

This was a selection from Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V, Scene 1.

Boatswain:
We were dead of sleep,
And--how we know not--all clapp'd under hatches;
Where but even now with strange and several noises
Of roaring, shrieking, howling, jingling chains,
And more diversity of sounds, all horrible,
We were awaked; straightway, at liberty;
Where we, in all her trim, freshly beheld
Our royal, good and gallant ship

Chris de Burgh discusses this in a Q&A on his official website.

Chris de Burgh: In the album version of “Don’t Pay The Ferryman” from the album “The Getaway” (1982) I asked an actor called Anthony Head to read out the lines from a Shakespeare play called “The Tempest”. I think it started “We were all at sea”, it describes part of the tempest. I wanted this vocal rendering to sound sort of odd and in the background, not really sure what’s going on. The reason it’s not on the video is because we tightened up the song for a single. That video was shot in a church on the River Thames on the South bank near Battersea Park. When I stay at the Conrad Hotel in London, Chelsea, I look across and I can see the same church across the other side of the river. I’m afraid you are going to have to go and have a read of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and have another listen to the lyrics that we used in “Don’t Pay The Ferryman” to find out exactly what it was, because I can’t point you at it anymore. I can’t remember which particular act it came from, but it is the description of the storm.