Warlock

Bournemouth always had a healthy music scene, and at secondary school we were all much more concerned with unveiling an album we’d found that nobody had heard of or looking forward to the next disco at the girl’s school than getting stuck into Latin. Luckily as well as musicians there were kids into equipment too, so when we formed Warlock, we had musicians, Fergie with equipment and Dave with lights.

We entered the Bournemouth Beat Contest (part of the annual regatta), but when it came to our turn it was still light so we couldn’t use our lights, so we didn’t play and were disqualified. However, the previous year’s winners didn’t turn up, so we said that we were Sweet Dreams, played, and won the contest!

We also caused local newspaper headlines when we played Pokesdown Youth Club with the heading “Rock Blast Riot in the Still of the Night”. There was no riot, of course, and it can’t have been ugh after 11: someone had complained about the noise and the police had come.

I’d had piano lessons from an early age and started writing music at about 11, and I was fortunate with instruments, starting with a Gem organ of Fergie’s with which I duetted with a sax player called Mark Gibson. My parents bought me a Hohner Pianet N and I began to write left field compositions such as “Foot”. I got to know a studio in Pokesdown and was able to record some ideas.

Click here for some cuttings on Warlock...

One member of the band came from outside our school: I had got to know guitarist and singer Ritchie Smith somehow, and we’d spend hours together drinking coffee, smoking, listening to music and writing. Our paths would cross again years later when he had become Richard Mazda.

Howzat

I became fed up with school soon after I started 6th form: nothing had changed. So I left and planned to go to FE college to study music A level. However, I'd got know a talented songwriter and guitarist called Robert Luther-Smith at school, and he was putting together a band to play the US bases in Germany through a classic music agent called Harry Goldbladt.

So myself, Luther, Steve Simmons (drums) and Izzy Bekir (bass) met Harry at San Remo Towers on Boscombe cliffs, who made arrangements. We had to include a female singer called Stella and also had to go under the name "Stella Mack and Take Four". I was still 17, so strictly not legal, but who cared?

We piled into Izzy's Commer van with our gear and drove to Augsbourg to a bizarre guest house run by this scary couple (one day they had to leave early so left us breakfast on a tray, four half litre bottles of beer and four large sausages). We met Stella for the first time at the base, and it was obvious there would be punch-ups between her and Luther (there was one big one - the GIs nearly intervened). We had to play 5 x 40 minute sets. We'd play soul classics with Stella (and her frizzy wig) such as Knock on Wood, Higher and Higher and River Deep, and a mixture of Beatles (such as Drive My Car), pop and Luther's songs. I didn't know any of these, so I started off with my keyboard turned right down until i figured out what to play.

We played for a month in Augsbourg and got to know a few hash cake GIs, and quite enjoyed getting decent food on the base. We were then moved on to Hanau (horrid place) where our digs were above a strip club (nasty), and finally to Kitzingen. The final straw was when we had to spend a freezing night in the van, to discover the floor was rusted through in places. We headed for home, but the van ground to a halt near Koln: me & Steve headed back whilst the others awaited cash from Luther's mum.

We made a go of it after that, doing a few gigs in Bournemouth, and then moved to London. We started out above Izzy's uncle's chip shop in Bermondsey, a ghastly smelly place with a Polish truck driver sharing the first floor with us. After two weeks another of Izzy's uncles offered us a 2 bedroom place at 1 Pellatt Road, East Dulwich. We all got jobs in the same place doing the same thing: bingo profit and loss sheets for Mecca Ltd, Southwark Street. (We eventually all got sacked for timekeeping 9 months later, just before the Xmas bonus.)

We played some London gigs, and rehearsed a couple of songs all night in a crap studio in Kings X waiting for an A&R man from BASF records to show up: he never did. Luther also signed a publishing deal with ex-Radio Luxembourg DJ Chris Denning for 5p: we all went to his big house in Weybridge where a boy in a dressing gown answered the door. Rip-off merchant Denning was later jailed twice for under-age sex. I moved to Norwood Junction with Steve and got a cat, but we soon decided it was time to quit and head back to Bournemouth.

The following September I enrolled at Poole Technical College to do A levels, followed by a degree at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, where I formed "Private Language" (see menu). From that point on, I began to learn how to use twin cassette decks to bounce tracks whilst recording to achieve very hissy multitrack compositions. When the 4-track Portastudio came out, it was a revelation. It was a precursor of cheaper multitrack machines and eventually computer music. I'd bought a Korg MS10 mono synth in Norwich, and I added other keyboards to that: a Roland Juno 60 polysynth, a Yamaha DX7 polysynth, followed by MIDI equipment such as a Roland digital piano and AKAI S900 sampler, eventually incorporating my Commodore Amiga with KCS Dr T music software.

Other Collaborations

I always felt mine and my brother's friend Clive Dixon wrote fantastic folk songs, and i recorded some of his work, including You Really Gone and Done It. Grae's friend Tom Fagin had some good songs, and I wrote the keyboard part for his song Said You'd Never Leave Me. A friend of mine worked on the show That's Life, and when we went to see it I got to know one of the presenterd Jo Monroe, who introduced me to actor Tony Head: we recorded a song called Love is the Same. Working with the band Binary, the track White Line was produced.

Soon after I arrived in London after university in Norwich, I began to build up some solo gigs, playing a mixture of jazz, blues, standards an my own compositions. Through friends, I met the landlord of the Prospect of Whitby - a historic Wapping pub on the river where Judge Jeffries hung members of the Monmouth Rebellion - and, with a grand piano in the centre of the pub, I became a regular there.

I ended up working a lot in Covent Garden: a year teaching in a language school and working as a freelance IT person for Jazz Services. A friend from Norwich ran a wine bar called Blakes, and I ended up playing a lot there, with quite a lot of support from friends of an evening. This led to a number of other wine bars taking me on around central and Greater London.