I started playing guitar in the early 1960s but didn’t join a ‘proper’ band until I went to work in Hong Kong. There I joined Eric and the Typhoons, who were a well-known expat band, and played with them from 1983 to 1988.
After a short spell with another expat band in Jakarta I returned to the UK where I have played with a number of other 60s bands before forming Retro-5.
Drummers mainly emanate from Pluto and are not generally known to be musical. They just hang around with musicians and can count up to four…
Aberystwyth, a small market town just past the back of beyond, in 1959 founded a number of bands – for me it was the Nightriders – brought up on Shadows music, nearly all of them (Tony Meehan is my favourite drummer). Within a short time this was reformed with different members to become the Xenons, still going today.
There were no such things as drum tutors in those days, so all techniques were learned by watching other gig band drummers. We were then a support band for the Saturday night dances, where more famous bands played: the Rolling Stones (before they were famous), Barron Nights, Tommy Bruce, the Overlanders, the Undertakers, etc.
University and career created a 14-year gap until 1978 when ex-Xenon members, all now living in the South of England, reformed. A move to a local six-piece band, Merlin, in 2000, later to become a five-piece band renamed the Alison Howe Band. Currently with them and Retro-5, giving a wide spread of genres.
I’ve loved music all my life – a mum who sang while cleaning and a dad who crooned at family parties were a big influence. At 13 or 14 I recorded songs I’d written on a friend’s cheap tape recorder. Sadly, the recordings are no longer around, though the lyrics and chords remain. Over the years I’ve written over 150 songs – some are classics; others should be in Room 101.
Being a child of the 60s, I was a Cliff fan, then the Beatles, Byrds and many others. Being a melancholic Scorpio, I loved sad songs and still do. One of my favourites was Traffic’s No Face, No Name, No Number. When feeling down at uni, I’d put on a Leonard Cohen album and my blues would be lifted. Still love his stuff, and Tom Petty’s. Sad they’re no longer with us.
I sang in my first band, Ebenezer, at uni; later, around 1982, I formed a band in Yorkshire called Double Vision. Both were short-lived but great fun. I’ve sung in various settings – studios, colleges, schools, church, rock choirs – and, since moving to the south coast I’ve become a member of Retro-5.
I started singing with my first band, the Bunch of Fives, in the early 1960s. The line-up featured guitarist Mick Wayne (later to join David Bowie’s backing group) and bassist Richard Dalling, who played on Bowie’s Space Oddity. For a while, the group was joined on drums by ex-Pretty Things wild man Viv Prince, who sometimes brought his flatmate Jet Harris along to gigs.
The line-up persisted through a couple of name changes – we were the Tickle and, later, Junior’s Eyes – and shared a stage with the Moody Blues, the Zombies, David Bowie and Pink Floyd among others on the club circuits in London and Paris.
The group recorded with producer Tony Visconti and released several singles, including Subway (Smokey Pokey World) and Mr Golden Trumpet Player, which still appear on compilation CDs of 1960s psychedelia. Subway was included in the 2005 Record Collector publication, 100 Greatest Psychedelic Records.
I spent most of the 1970s in the record industry in Canada. I returned to the UK to work as a photographer and sub-editor on various publications until I retired in 1996 to spend more time with my guitar.
I started playing guitar at 10 but my first public performance, as a teenager at the youth club, was playing drums. After the first phase of playing Shadows tunes (like we all did) I was then influenced by drummer Jon Hiseman (Colosseum) and progressive rock bands like Yes and Wishbone Ash.
During the 1970s the drums were left behind and an introduction to the folk scene would find me occasionally playing ragtime versions of old and new songs. This sparked an interest in the construction of both instruments and sound equipment, specifically acoustic guitars. To date I have made or modified more than 20 instruments and countless speaker cabinets.
During the 1980s an old school friend mentioned the bass player was leaving his band. As a bass had just been constructed this was a good opportunity to give it a try. This was the start of bass guitar being my instrument of choice and continues to this day. It is highly likely that you will see me performing with one of my custom-built instruments.