Written By the Man Himself

Part One

I was born in a snow-blanketed Edinburgh on the 14th of February 1958. The following morning the nurse greeted my nineteen year old Mum with the words: “So who’s had a Valentine’s baby then?”.

At six years old the family relocated to Lancaster where - for the subsequent ten years - we lived on a boat on the Lancaster Canal which resembled nothing so much as a floating library, its clinker-built hull lined with hundreds of books. My father’s multiple sclerosis eventually fractured the family so my mother, sister and younger brother moved to London. I - at thirteen - was content to remain on the boat, despite my father’s increasingly ill temper which I put down to the side effects of his illness. At sixteen I moved to one of my father’s properties cohabiting with students from Lancaster University and the boat sank shortly afterwards, my father moving into the basement of the same property, though we lived largely separate lives. Around that time I had taken up the piano and went to weekly classical lessons. My father had played trumpet and flugelhorn in his student days in Edinburgh being good enough to impress Tubby Hayes, who suggested he join his band if he ever thought about making music his profession. He never took up the offer but did advise me never to succumb to a total reliance on reading music and to work things out by ear - which was the best advice he ever gave me.

At eighteen I left school with offers to several universities to study History and chose the University of East Anglia in Norwich. I took a year off and travelled to the Sudan on the advice of my mother who had worked with drama students there the year before. On the way, I was robbed in Cairo and had the slightly anxiety-inducing experience of arriving in Khartoum with just twenty-five pence and a one-way ticket from Cairo. A series of adventures and misadventures resulted in me staying for three months. I was sexually propositioned by a vast millionaire - a director of Khartoum football club and owner of The Ambassador Hotel in which I was staying - an experience I later dubbed ‘Carry On Up The Nile’ when his false teeth fell out as he attempted to kiss me. However, the family of Sheik El Din Gibril rescued me (a wonderful family my mother had met when she had been there) and I was taken in by them and lived in their mud adobe house in Omdurman; the whole experience is something I’ve never regretted. I formed close bonds with the children of the family who were closest to my age (there were twenty-two children and two mothers) and whilst there I travelled across the Sahara on the roof of a train, and toured a sugar factory simply because - much to my embarrassment - I was white. At the onset of the rainy season in September 1977 I contracted malaria and was on death’s door for three days. Meanwhile in London, the Sex Pistols had reached Number two (actually number one had it not been for BBC politics) with ‘God Save the Queen’. Also, both Elvis Presley and Groucho Marx died - on the same day. A fact that I discovered translated from an Arabic newspaper in a Southern Sudanese Village.

I returned to England, my fare to Cairo having been paid for by a Government official who took pity on my plight. I later learned that he had been imprisoned for embezzlement of Government funds by President Nimeiri and remember feeling pangs of guilt: was this my fault? But I made peace with myself - the fare to Cairo was a modest sum and, if he was guilty, there were probably far larger sums involved than my ticket.

I commenced ‘studies’ at UEA in October 1977 and discovered that punk in East Anglia was viewed as some sort of alien life form. There were probably four punks in Norwich itself who were given a hard time by the local community and I started to gravitate towards a group of fellow students who appreciated The Clash, The Velvets, The Sex Pistols, Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh and all the other fresh and wonderful bands that were springing into life independent of the major labels and creating a vibrant and energetic scene which morphed into things like Two-Tone and ‘New Wave’. Fellow sympathisers there included Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson, the founders of The Fast Show twenty years later. It is fair to say that very little work, lots of drink and amphetamines and a devotion to the weekly fix of The New Musical Express in its glory days formed a large part of the ‘curriculum’.

I swapped the student life for that of a stock-keeper at Hornes Menswear and, by 1980 The Higsons had formed. I was their ‘legendary stylophone player and raconteur’ for the first three gigs before I moved to London, where I got a job counting blouses in the Holloway Road at Martin Ford - Famous for Separates before graduating to the position of  ‘golf stock-keeper’ at Lillywhites in Piccadilly Circus.

In 1984 fellow UEA ‘student’, Jim Reilly, persuaded me to join him in a performance of four or so songs at a show at the Moonlight Ballroom in Hammersmith. I was only really confident in playing in the key of C so - as a safety guard - we wrote everything in that key. However, on arriving at the venue, I found that middle C wasn’t working and had to inform the audience in some terror that they would have to ‘imagine it’. I was a little bewildered when audience members complimented us on being ‘the funniest gig they’d seen in ages’ and from these humble beginnings we formed the band Hackney Five-0 and our style became a kind of high-energy country - dubbed ‘cow-punk’ by the press (imagine Fats Waller left hand, Velvet Underground guitar and Hank Williams lyrics and you get a vague idea). This seemed to chime nicely with bands that were emerging at the same time - Pogue Mahone (The Pogues), The Boothill Footappers, The Blubbery Hellbellies etc.) We contributed a track to the ‘Don’t Let the Hope Close Down’ LP - a benefit album for the legendary Hope and Anchor in Islington - and became part of that scene by default. We expanded our capabilities eventually releasing two albums through Midnight Music - ‘Between the Floors’ (1986) and ‘Three Foot to the Left’ (1987) and a third - ‘Millstone’ (1988) which remained unreleased when the record label folded. None of these records sold much but were rated highly by people who knew of their existence; Jim Reilly’s lyrics in particular were highly praised - he later co-authored ‘Marvellous - Isn’t It?’ the biography of Ron Manager with Paul Whitehouse.

In 1988 I was working for a book publisher by day - Quartet Books - and doing music in my spare time. But things were about to change. 

PART TWO

Mark Bedford, the bass player with Madness, and Terry Edwards, a fellow UEA ‘alumni’, asked me if I would be interested in playing on a demo which, to our complete surprise, was taken up by Go! Discs. We christened ourselves BUtterfield 8 and the album ‘Blow’ was written and recorded in two weeks to which I contributed two compositions. But looking around at the musicians I was working with, I realised I was completely out of my depth and handed in my resignation at Quartet Books to embark on an intensive programme of piano practice; I wrote out a timetable and worked on everything I could think of for eight hours a day taking a different key each week over a twelve-week cycle: major and minor scales, blues and modal scales, riffs, finger strength exercises (three volumes of Dohnanyi - absolute killers!) arpeggios and the rest. I also accepted anything in the way of gigs I was offered (which wasn’t much) and underwent a weekly baptism of fire as a soloist at a restaurant in Brixton to largely disinterested diners. However I had to cease this regime as I ran out of money; my marriage collapsed and I became a door-to-door salesman of plastic kitchen utensils, but fearsome threats from dogs, and a memorable client who tried to sell me God for two hours (he finally bought a hand brush - I didn’t buy God) brought the realisation that this was getting me nowhere. So I struggled on looking for openings in the music industry. However two further projects landed in my lap. I started to work with Dave Graney (later the ‘King of Pop’ in Australia’s version of The Brits) and - also in 1988 - the EP ‘Dave Graney with the Coral Snakes at his Stone Beach’ was released. We recorded the album ‘I Am the Hunter and I am the Prey’ on Fire Records in 1990 but Dave had immigration problems and was forced to return to Australia, a sliding doors moment for me as I had the option of relocating with him and other members of the band to the other side of the world. However I opted to remain and - coincidentally whilst recording ‘I am the Hunter …” had a call from Chris Foreman (Madness guitarist) who had started a band called The Nutty Boys’ aka Crunch! with Lee Thompson, Madness’s saxophone player. He auditioned me as I stood at a payphone in London Bridge Station: “Have you got quick ears?” and “How tall are you?” were questions I passed with flying colours having quick ears and not being overly tall. There followed two years of sporadic touring (Germany, France and the UK) and three singles: ‘It’s OK I’m a Policeman’, ‘Birthday Girl’ and ‘Magic Carpet’ before Madness reformed in 1992 for the legendary Madstock gigs at Finsbury Park in North London. 

Meanwhile, I had stumbled on a talent I didn’t realise I had: teaching. My philosophy was that any language is learnt aurally and, music being a language, should be no different - reading would come later just as it does with any other language. The results amongst children in north London were so striking that Jay Rayner wrote a glowing article in The Guardian about my methods in 1993 and I was flooded with clients including George Harrison and Suggs. In addition, I wrote and presented - alongside fellow pianist and good friend Seamus Beaghen - the video ‘A Beginners Guide to Boogie and Blues Piano’ with director Jeff Baynes which became, according to Time Warner, the most reviewed tuition video in history (26 reviews as well as radio and television exposure). To cap it all my daughter, Melody, was born on December 7th 1993. All looked rosy and positive; the world was beginning to smile …

PART THREE

My teaching practice grew throughout the 1990s and I recorded and gigged with a variety of artists including Club Montepulciano, the Australian singer and songwriter Dave Studdert, (with whom I did a couple of gigs in Australia in 1997) and Terry Edwards as well as continuing sporadic gigs with Crunch! and BUtterfield 8. However from 1997 onwards my life was to change entirely. Between 1997 and 2002 I was forced to give up teaching and concentrate on the welfare of my daughter. I have written a memoir about those traumatic years currently being considered for publication so will only say that - as a result of events - my daughter was placed in my sole care from March 2001 and, unable to work because of my commitments to her, I finally declared bankruptcy at 1:57 pm on the 11th September 2001. A date and time now infamous as the moment the first airliner plunged into the first of the Twin Towers and changed the world entirely. Around about the same time I commenced a residency at The Mac Bar in Camden Town every Sunday lunchtime in which I played - unrehearsed for the most part - with a variety of special guests. My first guest was Graham Coxon and we hit it off both musically and personally immediately. He was going through a torrid time with Blur and during our many head to heads in pubs and coffee houses over the following weeks, I gave him a listen to some piano solo tracks I had recorded in an attempt to get my musical life back on track. Graham listened intently, briefly taking the earphones out to ask “Is this you?” to which I nodded. He listened some more before again removing the earphones and saying “Can I release this?” Of course I was delighted. So my first album, Pianophernalia, was released the following year on his label Transcopic to wide critical acclaim. Our shared musical sensibility also resulted in my contributing keyboards to his next four solo albums in the following years: ‘The Kiss of Morning’ (2002), ‘Happiness in Magazines’(2004), ‘Love Travels at Illegal Speeds’ (2006) and ‘The Spinning Top’ (2009). After the last of these albums we did a short tour taking in Manchester, Edinburgh and Birmingham culminating in a show at The Barbican which featured Martin Carthy and Robyn Hitchcock in the line-up which was - needless to say - thrilling. These connections led to sessions with The King Blues, Mower, and the acclaimed debut album ‘The End of History’ by Fionn Reagan. 

During this period I was also lucky enough to be offered openings into film and television. My first part, as a piano player (a recurring theme), was in the final episode of The Fast Show in 1997. This was followed by a brief appearance as a ghost in the BBC re-make of ‘Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) and, in 2002, a baffled waiter in ‘Swiss Toni’ for BBC3. Then, in 2004 - a truly big one - as the pianist and leader of The Louis Vause Orchestra in the Paramount remake of ‘Alfie’ starring Jude Law and Sienna Miller. Given just four days to recruit, rehearse and record a twelve piece orchestra in time to mime for the actual filming Dave Stewart, who was the MD for the film, found it hard to believe that we hadn’t been on the road “for months or something”. The Orchestra is on screen for mere nanoseconds in the released cut but - hey - there I am in the credits. Just a shame that the film was a bit of a flop. 

In the meantime I had been writing material for a follow-up album to ‘Pianophernalia’ with a five piece band in mind: John Eacott (trumpet and flugelhorn), Louise Elliott (Tenor Sax and Flute) Gareth Huw Davies (Double Bass) and Dave Bryant (Drums and Percussion). The band debuted much of the new material at The Brighton Festival in May 2004. 

However there was a problem. Transcopic, Graham Coxon’s label, was no more and I had to somehow raise finances to record the album and pay for studio time, the musicians and the producer. So it was with a kind of wild, totally unfounded optimism that I entered my local pub - The Lord Stanley - in the days leading up to Christmas 2004 and said in a tolerably loud voice as I ordered a drink, that I was looking for someone who needed a tax loss. Perhaps the atmosphere was right: an open fire in the grate, a decorated Christmas tree and mulled wine on tap creating a warm and vibrant atmosphere, but somehow the planets seemed to be aligned. I was asked to play a tune on the piano and, with the sound of laughter at my quip “Stick with me and I could lose you a million” left with the promise of £2000 an hour later. I booked Eastcote Studios for the 12th and 13th of January 2005 and enlisted Mike Pelanconi as producer whose work I had so admired when working with Graham Coxon. Mike and I mixed the album - entitled ‘Mechanicatastrophe’ - at his new base in Brighton. Later in the year, Richard England of Cadiz Music was impressed enough to license the album for release on their idiosyncratic imprint High Coin alongside luminaries such as Herb Alpert, Ronnie Spector and The Flaming Lips. The album was finally released on the 2nd October 2006 with an afternoon performance at The Peasant in Islington. Much to my surprise (and amusement) the first review was from The Daily Mirror who, amongst other things called me “The Jamie Cullum it’s cool to like”, though reading their description of my music made me wonder if the scribe had listened to the album at all.

PART FOUR

Meanwhile Paul Whitehouse had come up with an idea for a radio show to be entitled ‘Down the Line’ - a spoof phone-in for BBC Radio 4. I was told to keep it a secret as the plan was to unleash it on the public as a serious ‘current affairs’ programme. I was enlisted as an occasional caller and Simon Day whispered to me that he thought I was really good at sounding  “extremely serious - like one of those idiots who actually listens to Radio 4”. “That’s because I am!” I responded. Other contributors besides Paul himself included Rhys Thomas (as the ‘award winning DJ/Host, Gary Bellamy), Catherine Tate, Simon Day, Charlie Higson, Arabella Weir, and Lee Mack. On transmission - the first series was released in 2006 - such was the volume of complaint (including a memorable Daily Telegraph headline that stated it was ‘witless drivel’) that the the BBC had to come clean and admit that it was actually a spoof by the fourth week of transmission. Of course it was a further delight to gain the journalists award for ‘Best Comedy’ later in the year and it was great fun to record - the final series ran in 2013.

Finally I decided to ‘become qualified’ and commenced a Music and Literature degree with the Open University in January 2007. A fantastic course - I felt like an eighteen year old attending an opening week of intensive music of all styles at Durham University that summer - I finally graduated with a First in the Autumn of 2011. However I had simultaneously been diagnosed with Hepatitis C and was finding life increasingly difficult. Despite this an abiding interest in Cuban music - the basis of much of the music of New Orleans - saw me undertake a trip to Havana in the Autumn of 2008 where I was lucky enough to stay with Carlos Puisseaux, guiro player with The Cuban All Stars and Sierra Maestra which gave me access to some incredible experiences that had me pinching myself: had I actually entered the film ‘The Buena Vista Social Club’? In 2011 I had enough material for a new album, with some tracks influenced by my Cuban experience, entitled ‘Midnight in Havana’, but work on that was interrupted by a diagnosis of liver cancer - I was given two years to live by the specialist unless I was lucky enough to secure a transplant, so I set to work determined to get it finished before I became too ill to do anything. And just before this diagnosis I had been whisked off to Prague by Madness to appear as an accordion playing gypsy in an advert for Kronenberg. The track they used was a slowed down ‘french’ version of their hit ‘Baggy Trousers’ (Le Grand Pantalon) and it was only whilst recording the track live in the studio that I looked around and realised that I had become - albeit temporarily - the eighth member of ‘The Magnificent Seven’ which was a particular thrill. Shortly afterwards Lee Thompson (sax) and Mark Bedford (bass) decided to form a band, The Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra, to play the tunes that had originally inspired them to form Madness and I was recruited as pianist alongside my old friend Seamus Beaghen on organ and a host of other enthusiasts to ‘have fun’ and - perhaps - ‘make a bit of money’. But rehearsals had to be paused; at two o clock in the morning of the 11th July 2012 I was summoned to The Royal Free Hospital in North London: a liver had become available. I had been on the waiting list for just one day …

PART FIVE

My mother has often told me that - as a four year old - I had a keen sense of nostalgia forever looking back with misty eyed reverence on the memories I then had. I still treasure life in much the same way, but throughout the experience of the transplant itself it occurred to me that dying is one of the few things you are not able to look back on with any sense of nostalgia though - bizarrely - I do have fond memories of the daily routine of the hospital ward (once the initial pain and discomfort had alleviated somewhat). I was keenly aware of how lucky I had been and life seemed a gift that couldn’t be wasted as I launched myself into a number of new projects and my positivity seemed to attract new opportunities that seemed to fly in simultaneously from unexpected quarters. I finished the recording and mix of ‘Midnight in Havana’ and also entered Mike Pelanconi’s Blackman Studio in Brighton with the Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra to record their first album, ‘The Benevolence of Sister Mary Ignatius’. In the Spring of 2013 we filmed videos for the first single by the band ‘Fu Manchu’ featuring Bitty McClean and had to interrupt a short tour of the UK for an appearance on Later With Jools Holland which was incredibly exciting - so exciting indeed that I forgot to take my immunosuppressants. I also filmed two videos for my album: the first at Wilton’s Music Hall for the track ‘Bucaneros at O’Reilly’s’ directed by Jeff Baynes followed by ‘Velvet and Absinthe’ directed by Melody Cornford and I finally launched the album at a packed show at Aces ’N’ Eights in North London in December 2013. In early 2015 Charlie Higson asked if I would be interested in portraying a piano player, Willie Plumb, in a new ITV series based on Jekyll and Hyde; (my answer: “You bet!”). My task - apart from filming which took place at Three Mills Studios in East London - was to compose incidental music that would fit the period in which the series was to be set - the 1930’s. This was supervised by film composer David Arnold at his studio in Hampstead. As I waited there for him it was a particular thrill to see, framed on the wall, the rough, pencil draft for the strings written by George Martin for the Beatles track Yesterday. Signed by Martin and Paul McCartney ‘with thanks to Mozart’ it had all the hallmarks of a ‘work in progress’; I felt like giving it a quick bow. As to what I’d written David said “That sounds like something [from the 1930’s] but it isn’t … which is handy”. To paraphrase John Lennon I had ‘passed the audition’. Simultaneously I was preparing the James Booker track ‘True’ to play and talk about for a short BBC Radio 4 series written by ‘radio God’ Piers Plowright in which he examined his ‘favourite sounds’ from a long life in radio. I was getting used to having my nerves shredded. And, as if things weren’t busy enough, I accepted an invitation to join the band of Two Tone legend, Rhoda Dakar, and my first appearance with her was at the Jazz Cafe as part of The London International Ska Festival. 

Dave Robinson - he of Stiff Records (‘If it ain’t stiff it ain’t worth a fuck’) - had been very impressed with the Ska Orchestra and finally took charge in his inimitable fashion. We recorded a further single, ‘Bangarang’ and for Christmas 2015 ‘It May Be Winter Outside’ which singularly failed to crack the Christmas market. But under Dave’s direction we started to record tracks for a second LP entitled ‘Bite the Bullet’. At the same time, I was recruited to play piano on what would become the double album ‘Danger Island’ by ex Marseille Figs frontman J. Maizlish Mole. I ended up working on a lot of the brass and string arrangements on this epic album and it remains a work that I am inordinately proud of. I live in the hope that this will be rediscovered by the world at large - it deserves it. Meanwhile the Ska Orchestra shot an advert for Boots the Chemists to promote their hearing aids - they were after an excellent band that were old enough to have a couple of members that might be suffering some hearing loss and we fit the bill though - happily - the hearing loss bit didn’t apply to me. And in 2017 Rhoda Dakar booked Black Barn, Paul Weller’s studio, to record the EP ‘The Lotek Four’ followed by ‘The Lotek Four Vol 2’ in 2018. So I got to play Glastonbury with both Rhoda Dakar and The Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra and the latter had signed off with a gig in Norway. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly and I continued to gig and do sessions - memorably one for Wendy James for her album ‘Queen High Street’ -  before the world suddenly … stopped …

PART SIX

Due to my immunosuppressed immune system I had to be especially rigorous in shutting myself off from the outside world. Occasionally I would take early morning cycle rides and marvel at the deserted streets, at the volume of bird song and the beauty of a land without cars. As a form of therapy I started to sketch what I saw and as I worked these sketches up into paintings I found that - in my head - it was a way of experiencing the world outside at one remove. Much to my surprise people on social media expressed interest in purchasing prints of these and in 2020 I produced a calendar (and associated Limited Edition Prints) entitled ‘Lockdown London’. This was followed in 2021 by a series on ‘The Regents Canal’ and - again - a calendar. The calendars sold out quite quickly but the limited edition prints and postcards remain available and can be viewed and purchased on this website. 

In the Autumn of 2020 I had a phone call from Johnny Flynn who said he was working on a film ‘The Score’ which required a piano player and would I be interested as my style was exactly what the director, Malachi Smyth was looking for. On being assured that there would be strict covid protocols on the set (a cafe in Luton Hoo) I agreed and found myself filming my scene with no less than Johnny, Will Poulter and Naomi Ackie. Again I wrote the music I played which was loosely based on one of Johnny’s songs ‘The Water’ and I was told that everyone was delighted with my contribution. Meanwhile I had had the jabs as recommended, but in the Spring of 2022 I finally caught Covid and was swiftly put on a course of anti-virals. But there was clearly something else wrong and I was rushed to hospital where I had an emergency operation on my gut and half of my small intestine was removed. It was during that operation that the discovery was made; I had Lymphoma. In the Summer I was treated with chemotherapy and this seemed to work; in September I was told that the lymphoma had been successfully dealt with however I had no less than three viruses in my stomach and of course, the after effects of the chemo take some getting over. It was whilst I was recovering that I noticed my piano playing appeared unmediated by thought; I would watch my fingers and listen but I was too exhausted to do anything else. This form of what I call ‘pure music’ - a music that is driven by and suffused with emotion - was something I decided I had to record, so in April 2023 I booked an Air BnB in St. Leonards on Sea where Russell Baker - the proprietor of The Kino-Teatr - had offered the venue, equipped with a super grand piano, on the days when The Kino was shut. His in-house engineer, Ollie Cherer, did a fantastic job of recording me. Simon Charterton (ex Alex Harvey, The Higsons and currently The Near Jazz Experience) joined me on two tracks playing drums and percussion. Double Bass was added later by Gareth Huw Davies on two tracks and Mike Pelanconi produced the finished recording at his studio in Lewisham. 

Entitled ‘Paris Sketches and More Pianistic Gems’ release is currently scheduled for July of 2024.