About Us
Born in 1964 and raised in Stevenage, (strong in arm, weak in head), my first music inspiration was The Jungle Book from the ’60s. into the 70s with Deep Purple, T-Rex, Elvis, Motown & Funk. The ’80s were my teenage years with Jazz-Funk, the Mod revival Bands like Gangsters, Secret Affair, Specials & Madness then back to Soul with Luther Vandross, Chaka Kahn etc with too many to list. My passion for playing the Saxophone started when my football career with Watford F.C. ended with a serious back injury. It happened with no inspiration, ok maybe because I was on a big downer with life, it’s what we call depression now. My mum needed a hand with her jewellery suitcases as she did parties and she asked if I could give her a hand with them, so I turned up at her party and the lady who was holding the party said to me “ why don’t you go upstairs and meet my son Gary he’s upstairs” so off I trotted up to his room knocked on the door and went in.
There was Gary standing there playing his Sax, I thought it looked cool and he let me have a go and the rest was history. The next month I saved some money and went and bought myself my first Tenor Saxophone. It was a cheap Trafford made in East Germany and I booked myself a tutor (Kevin Flannagan) and away I went – Sex, Drugs ‘N’ Rock n Roll or so I thought. My inspirations were Grover Washington Jnr, Charlie Parker, David Sanborn, John Coltrane and many other artists. My early life in the music world was mostly playing in Bands which brought me to play keyboards, which led me into writing music. It was in the ’90s that my writing career started mostly collaborating with other musicians in the Bands I played in. My first, ‘be it a short film’ scored music that I had co-written with John Saltwell which was for a film called ‘China by Ben Fuller.’
This was played at the Edinburgh Film festival and also shown on Channel Four. Off the back of this, we were invited by Producer Richard Leyland through Fuji Films to write the music for Party in the Park – Hyde Park and the Reading Festival for TV broadcasting in 1999. In the same year, we also wrote several pieces of music, for the Empire film awards for TV broadcasting where films such as Titanic, Matrix and James Bond were up for nominations. After forming a few different bands with my friend John Saltwell, I played Saxophone with SoulFusionSeven which includes ‘Steppin up My Love’ which was released on an album in 2014 called ‘Smooth Winter Soul’ by Tom Glide and then remixed by T-Groove in 2016 which reached number 1 in the Soul Beats Charts. In 2017, I played Sax on another track called Summer Breeze, written by John Saltwell and Cheryl Aldridge. This track reached No 1 in the UK Soul Charts in August that year. It was also re-released by T-Groove later that year.
In 2017, I followed my own emotional artistic style which inspired me to write a song called ‘To Be Someone’ for an old school friend, Peter Meadows who I had known since we were 5. The song is to be used in his 1st Film ‘To Be Someone’ which is based on a book he wrote also titled ‘To Be Someone.’ This was inspired by the great cult film ‘Quadrophenia’. Peter has Teamed up with Ray Burdis from of ArchAngel Films who are now in the process of shooting the film this year 2019. I am hoping to be involved with the film score as I have arranged 8 different variations of the song, so this I am looking forward to doing……. watch this space!
