Haircut 100

At university, I formed the band Private Language with Phil Smith (sax) and Marc Fox (percussion), as well as Jon Franks (drums) and Ron (bass). After university, Phil and Marc got together with three school mates from Croydon to form Haircut 100 and did really well with their first album. Leader Nick Hayward wasn’t interested in a keyboard player until the B side of their last 12-inch. Graham, Blair, Les, Marc, Phil at Radio City, NY When he left, Marc became the singer, and with some compositions (including one of mine - Where Do You Run To Now) worked on in rehearsal, a second album Paint and Paint was released and we toured in the UK, Israel and the UK. The album and tour featured Marc Fox (vocals and percussion), Graham Jones (guitar), Les Nemes (bass), Phil Smith (sax), Blair Cunningham (drums - later of The Pretenders), Guy Barker (trumpet) and Pete Beachil (trombone). The album bombed (it didn’t even get a CD release later on), even though I still think it’s a good album. I was very privileged to work with such a great bunch of musicians.

There are You Tube clips of Haircut 100 at the Marquee for the LWT TV programme Live In London: Too Up Too Down, Infatuation and Hidden Years. It has to be said that Marc was not a great singer, and the vocals were particularly bad that night due to the onstage sound, so we went to a studio the following day to edit the mix and patch the lead vocal channel on the film, which was then rushed to the TV company. But, for whatever reason, they broadcast the original, and to my mind this was the kiss of death to what was a really great line-up with as good an album as anyone else around at the time.

Paint and PaintClick on the image to listen to my composition "Where Do You Run To Now?", verse lyrics by Marc Fox.

Marc later worked in A&R and I did a little work with him; Phil did a variety of work, and we worked together again with an artist called Owen Paul who was championed by the Radio 1 DJ Peter Powell (unofficially): again, he had a minor hit but no more than that.

Sadly I haven’t seen Phil or Marc for many years: Phil was great at doing brass arrangements, and I have Marc to thank for introducing me to Latin musicians such as Airto, Sergio Mendez as well as Can’s Holger Czukay.

With French and Regal, I later worked again with the extremely talented bass player Les Nemes.

Gigs - Haircut 100