Bands and stuff - an autobiography of sorts
Link to my page at Discogs
Early Days 71 - 75
Folk singer
This lasted about 18 months. Covering Cohen, Harper, Dylan etc Did a few gigs around Liverpool before I realised I wasn't very good at playing guitar or singing.
Strange Band 1975 - 1976
This was the first serious gigging band. Originally, a 3 piece with guitar, drum and keys (I played bass pedals). Doing covers and gigging around Birkenhead and Liverpool. Playing venues like the Moonstone and the Sportsman in the precinct in Liverpool
Anecdote: The last gig we played as a 3 piece was at Eric's because in the middle of Sylvia by Focus I completely forgot the bass part. We added Geoff Kelly on bass shortly after.
Next 1977 - 1979
I left Strange Band and packed in playing to study for the A levels I flunked years earlier. So I stopped playing and started studying. This pattern of leaving bands when I got fed up was to be repeated many times,
Anecdote: in the summer of 77 I was living in London, sofa surfing, working in the computer department at St Marys Hospital Paddington and waiting to start a degree in Environmental Science at Sussex Uni. Knock at the door! Who's there? Geoff, Ron and the rest of the band. "We have just got a massive record deal and we need a keyboard player". I packed my bag and jumped in the van and went back to Liverpool with them.
The record deal of £500,000, was the largest any UK band had ever been offered, tt even made the tabloids. We were signed to Epic Records - the UK subsidiary of CBS.
Next - Next 1978
CBS/Epic, Produced by Rupert Hine (Farmyard, The Manor, Trident 1978)
Footnote - Next were essentially a rock band but with considerable prog elements. Imagine the music scene in 1977? We played Reading the following year and still got bottled by a few punks. I remember a bottle opener whizzing past my head! Next died a death. I struggled to move the band towards a more New Wave sound viz. Vibrators, Stranglers. Phil did come up with a lot of interesting material and I still have the demos - we should have hunkered down and waited a few years like Marillion.
Moving to Chester and working with Geoff(Liverpool) and Phil(Birkenhead) was never going to work so when I got a call from Roger Eagle about doing a tour and an album with Pink Military I accepted. I remember meeting Geoff and Phil in a pub near Sefton Park to explain it would only be for a while but sadly Phil wasn't interested - all or nothing. Managed by Colson Afraid of Mice went on to make several albums with Tony Visconti but neither had much success.
Afraid of Mice 1979
With the demise of Next I started to get more interested in synths - I already had an Oberheim FVS and had recently bought a MultiMoog. So Next split up and we formed Afraid of Mice with Phil and Geoff. Afraid of Mice was a song Phil had written in the latter days of Next and it was adopted as the band's name. We did some demos at Amazon - I can remember Phil had written a song "Zone Ticket for the C5 Zone" which sounded pretty modern. At this stage Phil was managed by Gail Colson of Charisma Records so there was scope for development and another deal. But then I left Birkenhead for a cottage near Chester.
Anecdote: Next
had a roadie called Ray (he had previously worked for Patrick Moraz
later of Yes fame) who was always turning up with new equipment. The
first synth he got me was a Yamaha CS80 (that cost as much as a house). Then a few months later he took that away and left me with
an Oberheim FVS. I think he was on the make - Epic/CBS had so much
money and so little grip I think Ray was just able to pop in to Argents
in Denmark Street and put it on the 'tab'. I'm pretty sure he sold this
stuff on. I remember he had a red Range Rover! The last
time I saw Phil was to drop off a brand new Wurlitzer EP200a that Ray had given me. Seemed a nice thing to do given the circumstances - not sure Phil felt the same way.
Anecdote: Meadow Cottage in Dodleston near Chester became the subject of a book - The Vertical Plane. Towards the end of summer 1980 I asked Ken Webster if he would like to take the cottage over. Andy Dodd had already left to work for Jazz Centre North at Band on the Wall in Manchester earlier that year and Janet (my better half) was off to Manchester Poly. So Ken moved in and I moved out and headed to Manchester. Over the next few years Ken claims there was massive poltergeist activity and time slips - past and future. He described these events in the Vertical Plane which was published in 1989. It's still a mystery why Ken never mentioned any of this when he came to visit us in Manchester.
Y Brodyr 1979 (1984)
I met Dave, Phil and Huw when I was living in the cottage. It was the early days Y Brodyr but were getting gigs in Wales and because it was a Welsh language thing they got a couple of TV spots on Harlech and S4C. Later on when they got a deal with SAIN I played on the sessions for Lleisiau.
Pink Military 1979-1980
Despite PM being based in Liverpool we actually rehearsed in the village hall in Dodleston a couple of times. It made some sense because we had got Dave Baynton-Power in on drums and he only lived up the road. In February 1980 we went into Cargo in Rochdale on the night shift to record Do Animals Believe in God. Annoyingly Dave was replaced with Chris Joyce because Chris was in the same band as Tony Bowers and Bob Harding - that was the Mothmen. They went on join Hucknall in Simply Red. PM promoted the album with a tour and we did a Peel Session too. I think Dave was on drums again.
Pink Military - Do Animals Believe in God?
Erics Records, Produced by Bob Harding & Tony Bowers (Cargo, Amazon 1980)
Anecdote: We were supporting Killing Joke at the Lyceum in London but as we were about to play the first song I got a massive electric shock off the Oberheim. My left hand went numb and ended up stomping around shaking my arms like some madman. Everyone thought it was part of the act! I spent the rest of the gig avoiding any metal parts on the synth. There is another electric shock anecdote later on.
Club 204, Epping Walk: The Hulme Years 1980 - 1983
Club 204 was the name of the studio at the flat in Epping Walk. It was also the name I went under for live performances. This was where I built the Digisound 80 and made many modifications to the FVS. I also built several Powertran Delay units for various people.
Anecdote 1: Mike Pickering brought his Seqeuntial Pro One for me to fix. I can't remember what was wrong with it but it must have been OK because he never came back!
Anecdote 2: I used to get up and go to the bathroom for a pee first thing but as soon as i touched the flush on the toilet I would get this massive stabbing pain. It only happened when I was in bare feet and I gradually realised it was an electric shock! There was only bare chipboard on the floor which was nailed down. So i got my meter out and found that one of the nails was live. A week or so later the council came around and lifted the floor - the nail had gone straight through the 30 amp mains wire.
Footnote: This was around the time Mick Hucknall was coming round to record vocals for me. He's lucky to be alive because I was using the bathroom as a vocal booth!!!
The Mothmen 1981 - 1983
The Mothmen - One Black Dot
Do It Records, Produced by Hugh Jones (Rockfield, Sarm 1982
Cover - designed (?) on my first computer, an Acorn Atom. Photographed and colourised by Paul Ridout. The cover of In Rainbows always reminds me of this.
Anecdote: The ghoulish photo was
taken by Andy Dodd. He wasn't credited, perhaps in retrospect it was
probably for the best ;) However, I was blamed for the omission but it was the record company's responsibility to check the credits.
Band on the Wall and Jazz Centre North 1981 -1983
Andy Dodd left Chester and started working at JCN. This was located in offices above Band on the Wall and they also ran gigs at BOTW. Andy did a good job of promoting BOTW which I think might have been struggling at the time. He designed the iconic logo which I think is based on Dizzy Gillespie.
I did everything from putting up posters to tour managing. It was a great time for European Jazz and the ECM label. So Jazz Centre were able to promote artists like Eberhard Weber and Jan Garbareck. I was also lucky enough to get down to Bracknell and see Pat Metheney amongst others. I also did some tour manger duties driving Johnny Dyani with Dudu Pukwana as well as the legendary Phil Woods around the UK.
If only we'd had Wikipedia in those days - I had no idea....
his best known recorded work as a sideman is a pop piece, his alto sax solo on Billy Joel's 1977 "Just the Way You Are".[1] He also played the alto sax solo on Steely Dan's "Doctor Wu" from their 1975 album Katy Lied,[5] as well as Paul Simon's "Have a Good Time" from the 1975 album Still Crazy After All These Years.[6]
Anecdote: One dark and rainy autumn evening I loaded my Yamaha CP70 piano into a van and drove to a pub in Sheffield. They held a jazz night every month in a room upstairs - so we dragged the piano up a couple of flights of stairs and there was Stan Tracey. I sat a few feet from him while he played a solo set. Wasn't impressed with the piano but just got on with it. Unforgettable.
The Mighty Wah! 1983 - 1884
The Mighty Wah! - A Word to the Wise Guy
Eternal, Produced by Mike Hedges & Pete Wylie (Yellow, Eel Pie / Battery 1984)
Anecdote: Story of the Blues got to No3 in the UK charts and had got there thanks to an appearance on TOTP the week before. You never did consecutive appearances on TOTP but the show would have normally played the video instead.. That would have pretty much guaranteed a number 1 spot! The song was pulled from the show because someone called the BBC to say the tapes had been swapped. Let me explain:
You would get to the studio on the Wednesday morning and spend a whole 3 hours re-recording the track you had previously spent days recording and mixing with your producer! I think an MU official was supposed to be there too ensure there was no tape swapping. The original single had strings on it so I had to show the hired string players the parts. At the end of the session the tape was discretely swapped for a copy of the original single. And that should have been that. Off to the TOTP studios in the afternoon to film the show.
When we appeared on TOTP we were miming to the original single - unfortunately, one of the string players who played on the original sessions saw the show and knew the tapes had been swapped. Wylie and his manager Pete Fulwell should have seen this coming and could have averted the crisis if they had invited them to appear on TOTP. It wasn't helped by the demeaning credit on the LP which states the strings were played by "some girls". Not surprising then that one them decided to ring up the BBC and blow the whistle that the tapes has been swapped.
The BBC pulled the song from the show the following week and Story of the Blues stalled at No3. All bands did it but Wah! got caught out - karma?
Simply Red 1984 - 1985
I was originally hired as a keyboard techie for Fritz but I was upgraded to second keyboards to cover some of the additional parts. I did one UK tour to promote the first single while Picture Book was being recorded. Did some radio as well. I still think that some of the parts I played live were 'borrowed' for the album. Later when I worked with Colin working up songs and ideas for Black's 2nd album I felt the same thing happened then.The Rhythm Sisters 1985-1986
Not much to report apart from playing Womad in 1986 and seeing The Bhundu Boys, The House Martins and Soiusie and the Banshees (I think?)
Anecdote: Bill Byford nearly killed us on the way back from Womad when he drove into the back of a lorry on the M5. He was a proper brat. The police arrived and he showed them his licence and pointed out he was Sir Lawrence Byford's son - he just happened to be the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police. On your way son nothing to see here - apart from the fact he was still drunk from the night before.
Black 1987 - 88
Black - Live at the Tokyo Power Station
A&M , Produced by Jon Lemon, Dave Dix Tokyo Power Station1988
Anecdote 1: we were at the Diamond Awards do in Antwerp and Barry White was there. He put his arm around Colin and with a big smile said "Black and White". I took a picture but later that night my coat and camera were nicked from the hotel bar. I wonder if anyone ever developed it?
Anecdote 2: Stuart James was our sound man on the last European tour and he knew a bit about contemporary music. We arrived in Utrecht the day before our gig and Stuart spotted that Philip Glass was doing a performance of that evening at the same venue. Don't know who he spoke to but he got our names on the door, watched the show and then went back stage. Special!
James 1989
Although I worked for Martine McDonagh Management from 1990 - 92 where I was looking after the money, particlularly touring, merchandise and the fan club, I did actually do a live TV session with James for the Other Side of Midnight presented by Tony WIlson.
Anecdote: before we started recording for the show Tim Booth asked me to remove my glasses because Elliot Rashman, their manager at the time, thought too many of the band wore glasses.
and another: I was working in the Simply Red office when Dodd & Rashman were helping Martine with James stuff. The drummer, Gavin Whelan, had just had a massive bust up on stage with Tim and had left the band. I suggested to Andy Dodd that Dave Baynton-Power would be and excellent replacement. I'd played with Dave in Chester with Y Brodyr and subsequently in Pink Military and I thought he would be a perfect fit. Andy contacted Dave to ask him to come for an audition. Dave's initial reply was he didn't have transport so couldn't make it. So Andy had to arrange car/van hire for him so he could get to Manchester. Dave if you ever read this you really do owe me one.
Gary Boyle Band - Gil Evans Hendrix Tribute 1990 - 1991
Live at Holmfirth (unreleased)
Little Chief 1991 - 1994
Little Chief - Spirit
Fut Gut, Produced by Will Jackson & Little Chief (Blue Strike1993)
Jo Lemaire - Liverpool 1994
Play That Beat, Produced by Carmel McCourt (Pink Museum Studio1994)
Pepperjam 2008 - 2011
Pepperjam - Taxi to Whitby
Distilled Records , Produced by Hugh Dowling and Pepperjam (Unit 7 Studios 2010)
Anecdote: we recorded the beds at Highfield Studios at the college where I worked. I used a Nord Stage for the organ parts. We continued to work on the overdubs in various locations and I replaced the organ parts at home with my Hammond M102 and leslie. When the album was released the partner of one of the singers who came to the original sessions commented that although he thought organ parts sounded OK a real Hammond would have sounded better!
Pepperjam - Under the Radar
Distilled Records , Produced by Hugh Dowling and Pepperjam ((Unit 7 Studios 2012)
The Fevertrees 2011 - 2015
The Fevertrees - Underground
Produced by Tim Malster and the Fevertrees 2011
Fez 2014 - 2021
Fez - Napoleon
Produced by Fez
Zef'r Band 2015 - 2017
After The Fevertrees ended Fevertrio continued but a new band was created out of members of T-Bone. I was involved with T-Bone for a few years but it got messy as more musicians were invited to play. At the last count there were 8 in the band. Less money and less musical space to play. I left. the Zef'r band was basically Fez (Zef) fronted with a female vocalist Ruth (r) - hence the name.I got fed up with the rubbish gigs and the set - I left!
Horsfly and Kuschty Rye 2025 -2026
Decided to come out of 'retirement' to do a few gigs with Des Horsfall and Martin Davies - 2 musicians I have always had a lot of respect for.
Des invited me to do a few Kuschty Rye gigs as well but it was the straw that broke the camel's back I guess.
I have produced a lot of material over the years - mostly instrumental and ambient. I have uploaded a selection to Bandcamp including Postcards which was a full album but sadly never released.
