Alan Shelley
Alan Shelley | |
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| Born | Amjasluwoh Uktotor 2 February 1926 |
| Died | 11 December 2019 (aged 93) |
| Spouse(s) | Susan Shelley (m. 1948; died 2016) |
| Children |
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Amjasluwoh Uktotor (Gylic transcription: Amiasluyó Uktotor; 2 February 1926 – 11 December 2019), commonly known as Alan Shelley (Gylic transcription: Alən Şeli), was the husband of Susan Shelley, considered one of Gylias' greatest record producers, arrangers, and composers. Alan and Susan were famed for their successful marriage, which lasted for life, and their happy family life.
Alan served as Susan's closest confidant, financial adviser, and "unofficial manager". Happy to present himself as a "househusband" who let his wife take the spotlight exclusively, biographers have credited Alan with a significant role in securing Susan's wealth and building up her illustrious reputation. Susan herself quipped that "dear old Alan is the mastermind behind the business of Susan Shelley."
Early life
Amjasluwoh Uktotor was born on 2 February 1926 in the Northern States. His father worked as an architect and his mother worked as a secretary in a bank. His family was financially secure and his childhood was happy. He had two younger brothers.
His parents were devout practitioners of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊, and transferred this to their son. Amjasluwoh was a lifelong practitioner of its rites as well, and read the Book of Holy Hymns regularly. As an adult, he expressed fascination with religion as "a process that raises us above our shortcomings and keeps us on the path of goodness".
Music was an important part of family life: Amjasluwoh's mother was a pianist, and his father was enthusiastic about singing, often leading family sing-alongs. He began taking piano lessons from his mother at age 4. He was a shy child who spent much of his time after school practicing the piano or nurturing an interest in mathematics, in contrast to his athletically-inclined brothers. He was not a gifted student and received average to low grades in school. According to his teachers, this was not from a lack of intelligence, but due to being creative and having a tendency to daydream.
He attended the Royal Northian Conservatory of Music from 1944 to 1948. There, he learned to play the piano, trumpet, timpani, and percussion. He also took singing lessons and wrote poetry in his spare time.
At the conservatory, he met fellow student Susan Shelley. She came from the prestigious and affluent Shelley family, and had moved with her family to the Northern States to escape the Liberation War. The two became close friends, then lovers. Amjasluwoh recalled fondly his introduction of Susan to his parents: Susan had already developed her distinctive outfit, and his parents were amazed by Susan's elegance, charm, and maturity. After Susan left for the night, Amjasluwoh's father took him aside and quipped, "Son, if you don't marry that girl, don't bother showing your face around here again!".
Amjasluwoh's relationship with Susan fostered a "startling personal reinvention", as witnessed by his brother: "He started dressing more natty, paying attention to his manners, talking more fancy. By the time they married, you'd swear he was an aristocrat! He made himself a gentleman to match the lady."
Career
Amjasluwoh and Susan graduated from the Royal Northian Conservatory of Music in 1948, and married shortly afterwards. Amjasluwoh developed a strong Anglophilia out of admiration for his wife's background: he began using the English name "Alan" and speaking English more often. This inspired Susan's favourite pet name for him, "dear old Alan".
Northern States
Both Amjasluwoh and Susan entered the music industry after their graduation. He began to work for a music publisher as a clerk and accountant, while she was an audio engineer for a classical music label and published her own classical works, with little success.
By the 1950s, the couple had achieved respectable success. They led a comfortable lifestyle, had good jobs and a nice home, were happily married, and had adopted four children. Nevertheless, Susan was dissatisfied with her career's path. Amjasluwoh recalled following news of the Liberation War with his wife. He sensed she wished to return to her homeland after the war, and found the prospect appealing as well: "We could either be satisfied nobodies in the Northern States, or we could dare for immortality in Gylias", as he later told Raşa Edau, author of the biography Gylias' First Family.
Move to Gylias
Amjasluwoh, Susan, and their children moved to the Free Territories near the end of the war. After the move, he began going by "Alan Shelley" customarily, although his legal name remained "Amjasluwoh Uktotor". He found "Alan Shelley" to be easier to pronounce and remember for Gylians than his real name.
The couple had some difficulties adjusting to the Free Territories, although the move greatly benefited Susan's career. After being discouraged by attempts to find similar publishing work in the Free Territories, the couple made an agreement: "I asked Susan, why don't you go win the bread, and I'll stay and take care of the home?", Alan recalled. "I didn't know the place as well as she did, so I had more trouble finding work."
Alan spent several years as a self-described "househusband". He cooked meals, handled the cleaning and laundry, and looked after their children, spending time with them and enrolling them in secondary education. Susan remained the head of the household, and Alan said that "she ran it like a very tight ship". Under her influence, he adopted her well-organised lifestyle, and they raised their children to be similarly well-organised and help around the house from an early age.
Alan recalled that his "househusband" years made him respected at parent–teacher conferences and in the neighbourhood: "I heard so many parents telling me, 'Oh, you're the perfect couple! You look so fabulous and your children are so well-behaved'. We taught our children to be proud that they never missed a day of school or were late for a class." He also used his previous experience to assist his wife's career, keeping track of her appointments and scheduling.
Susan's career took off starting in 1962, when she began producing the Beaties. Their lifelong collaboration led to enormous critical and commercial success, and a monumental impact on the development of popular music. Susan's status as the "fifth Beatie" made her in great demand, and she was accepted as Gylias' greatest producer, arranger, and composer of art music. Throughout her life, Alan played a key role in building and maintaining Susan's "godlike reputation", as Gylias Review described it in 2006.
Financial planner and adviser
Alan discovered he had a head for business during his "househusband" period, and this became his main role in the family. He was the financial adviser of the family, both handling household budgets and hiring financial planners. His role quickly expanded as Susan's career went from strength to strength, and he became her "unofficial manager", concentrating his efforts on promoting his wife's spotless reputation and securing her income.
He enjoyed several in-built advantages on the economic side thanks to Gylias' cultural and economic practices. Susan already owned the intellectual rights to her works through the Creative Rights Organisation, as well as her publishing rights through Sound Records.
For her production work, Alan had Susan agree to a reduced royalty rate of 1%. This ensured that most of the royalty payments went to the artists, giving Susan an invaluable reputation for being principled and fair, while Susan's extraordinary prolific streak guaranteed an ever-growing stream of royalties from both her composing and her producing.
Alan carefully studied the Gylian taxation system, and discovered several beneficial methods as part of Gylias' conscription of wealth system, which he applied extensively to Susan's career. He helped her establish the Susan Shelley Foundation, a charitable trust to give away her wealth.
He earmarked all her earnings above the maximum wage as donations and gifts, reducing her taxable income. He encouraged Susan to extreme largesse once her income was assured. In addition to generous donations and vast philanthropic activities, Susan had Château Shelley built for her family and acquired a gigantic list of possessions, aiding Alan's efforts to raise their expenses to match their income.
By routing most of Susan's income to the Susan Shelley Foundation and donations, Alan ensured that she kept much more of her wealth on hand than would've been by incurring the maximum wage on it all.
He oversaw business ventures capitalising on public interest in Susan, including various promotional activities, collaborations with clothesmaking companies through Shelley Clothing to offer reproductions of her trademark outfit, and widely distributing her signature for free to avoid being hounded for autographs.
Additionally, he helped organise her photo shoots and interviews, and kept them meticulously recorded in logbooks. Thanks to his careful record-keeping, she easily collected and uploaded all of her photographs and portraits onto ArtNet in the 1990s, making her one of the most popular members of the site.
Alan's efforts resulted in an "exemplary Gylian success story". Susan became the the richest Gylian during her life, with an estimated net worth of Ŧ100 billion as late as 2006, and far more donated to charities and individuals. She was celebrated in Gylias and respected as a symbol of success. She was esteemed by the public for gaining her wealth through "honest work", upholding a spotless reputation, and maintaining a levelheaded and serene personality. While on paper she had a vast fortune at her disposal, in reality her access to it was controlled, and most of it was tied up in philanthropy. Silhouette wrote in 1996 that Susan's wealth was "measured in freedom and comfort" rather than money:
"Ms. Shelley makes the music she wants, when she wants, where she wants, with who she wants. She does it for free because she doesn't need the money, and pays for sessions and salaries herself. She has nothing left to prove and no one left to prove it to. And far from resting on her laurels, she continues to work at a staggering pace and add to a body of work unmatched in critical acclaim or distribution figures."
Personal life
Marriage
Alan and Susan married in 1948. They remained married for 68 years until her death in 2016. They adopted four children — Alex, Paul, Lucy, and George —, all of whom followed her mother into careers in music.
Alan and Susan loved each other deeply and were devoted to each other. They were openly affectionate, and were inseparable in public, almost always holding hands. Neither was shy about their mutual love and equal respect. When out in public, they caused amusement by their contrasting personalities, with Alan being "an enthusiastic and irrepressible chatterbox", while Susan was "peaceful and warm", sometimes mainly communicating non-verbally by embracing him, holding hands, or kissing him.
Both praised each other's talents as lovers, and they had sex as often as possible. Haruka Morishima remarked that they were "newlyweds from their wedding day until their death". As she grew older, Susan talked more frequently in interviews and documentaries about her sex life and frequency of sex, in order to combat ageism and provide a positive model for aging gracefully.
In a 2011 interview, Susan said: "We're really very proud of our marriage. It's the first for both of us. And the last."
Parenthood
Alan was a devoted and loving father to his children, and followed Susan's lead in emphasising a sense of responsibility and tidiness. The couple raised their children from an early age to be organised, take part in household chores, and be attentive with their appearance.
The director Rasa Ḑeşéy commented that in public, they "were the perfect family, in a pleasantly old-fashioned sort of way. They were always dressed to the nines, they were always polite, and they were surrounded by this air of love and comfort. They seemed to have stepped out of a fabulous fairytale."
Alan acknowledged Susan as the "engine" of the family, with her taking the initiative to schedule in advance family outings and leisure activities. His devotion to his wife drove his work as "unofficial manager". He attributed their success to the fact that they worked as a team, and said: "Susan's role is to be a legend. My role is to help her along the way so we may all bask in the glow."
By the 2000s, Alan had become a great-grandfather, as his children had grandchildren, and those in turn had great-grandchildren. He and his wife taught their children to do as they had done: to adopt instead of giving birth.
Shelley family
After their marriage, Alan was careful to get into the good graces of the Shelley family. He would remark later in life that one of his proudest achievements was being close with all of Susan's relatives.
Alan ingratiated himself particularly with Susan's sister Irene. Their families regularly socialised at each other's houses. Alan and Susan were an adored uncle and aunt to Irene's children, much as Irene and her husband were for theirs. Irene especially admired Susan's modesty and Alan's devotion, and was not shy about expressing her admiration, to which Alan and Susan would modestly voice equal admiration of Irene's marriage.
He was often a guest of honour at Shelley family marriages with his wife. Where Susan would jovially congratulate the newlyweds and welcome them into the family after the ceremony, Alan would reassure the new family member and provide advice for how to fit in.
Alan remained close to his parents and brothers throughout his life. His parents adored Susan as a daughter-in-law.
Religion
He was mainly a practitioner of Fonδaiš Wīštā̊. His practices influenced Susan's regular practice of meditation and her daily yoga exercises.
Public image
Alan generally kept a low profile after marriage, and concentrated on magnifying his wife's glory instead. He rarely gave interviews, and only with his wife or children, never by himself. Nevertheless, his part in their loving marriage was just as important, and it garnered him recognition. He was happy to introduce himself as "Susan Shelley's husband", and was acknowledged by the public as a perfect partner for Susan.
Alan occasionally visited Susan in the studio. He brought their children when they were young, allowing them to see their mother at work, which inspired them to later follow her into careers in music. He was fondly regarded by Making Records staff; Mary Willett described him as "handsome, courteous, elegant, the perfect gentleman".
He interacted rarely with the Beaties, but made a good impression on them. Tsukasa Morishima jokingly nicknamed him "Mr. Responsible", in reference to his part in a happy marriage. He considered it one of the best compliments he received, and even Susan and his relatives picked it up and used it affectionately.
Alan absorbed his wife's philosophy that "fancy dress is not a costume, it's a way of life". He dressed stylishly, generally prefering three-piece suits and ties, which complemented Susan's glamour. He wore these both in public and at home, following her example. He was fastidious about his appearance and frequently used makeup.
When they first met, Susan impressed Alan by "carrying herself with a maturity, grace, and worldliness beyond her years." He picked up on her habit of play-acting being a "wise and sweet old lady", and thus came to associate aging with "elegance, wisdom, and love" long before real old age set in.
Northern States
Alan's Northian ethnicity and successful marriage to Susan attracted attention in his native Northern States. The connection aided Susan's popularity in the Northern States, where her albums of instrumental arrangements of Beaties songs as "Susan Shelley and Her Orchestra" actually outsold the Beaties' albums, much to her amusement.
Final years
Alan was the last person to see Susan alive before she died in her sleep on 16 December 2016, and her last words were "Goodnight darling, and farewell." This and some of her other behaviours that day led him to speculate that she had a "premonition" of her death.
He discovered her unresponsive the following morning, and said she looked as if she'd gone to sleep: "She was smiling, and her hands were crossed over her body — even in death, she was dignified and peaceful." He delivered a eulogy at her state memorial service, and helped with the administration of her estate after death and executing her testament.
A widower, he retreated from public life and continued to live at the Château Shelley with his family.
In his last interview, he commented on being a widower:
"Losing Susan was like losing blood. I miss her every day she's gone. However, I'm grateful that we lived this wonderful life together, and that she faced death with a smile. She left us as peacefully and painlessly as possible. Her example inspires me ever since. She wouldn't want me to waste my life sulking. I feel like she managed to make it easy for both herself and for ourselves. It didn't hit us like the brutal blow it could've been. We had the good cry we needed, we celebrated her life, and then carried on, as she would've wanted. Now, whatever I do, I do it for her. I do it to make her proud."
He said he wished both he and Susan could've been centenarians together, and that he regretted that Susan had died before their 70th wedding anniversary.
Death
Alan died of natural causes on 11 December 2019, a few days before the 3rd anniversary of Susan's death.
He was with his son George at the time, who said: "He was lying in bed with his eyes wide open, talking with me. Then he closed his eyes and stopped breathing."
In line with his wishes to preserve Château Shelley as the home of the family, Alan was cremated and his ashes were returned to his family in the Northern States, where he was buried.