John’s love of music certainly stemmed from his father and the classical records he would play each evening when he returned home from work. John recalls. "I can certainly remember that these included not just the ‘standard’ orchestral pieces from Bach, Mozart, Schubert and List, but also early chamber music from Purcel, William Byrd and Thomas Tallis. I think this accounts for my wide taste in music and the way I construct a lot of my songs clearly owes much to the sounds I was hearing from a very young age." John's father wasn't musical, in a 'performer' sense, although John can recall early improptu 'concerts' that the extended family gave at Christmas, where each 'branch' of the family would do a little "turn" at the very large gatherings. (Dad's family had orginated in the East End of London, and this was clearly a cultural tradition.) "I do remember Dad doing some George Formby numbers on a banjo ukulele at one of these gatherings, and when I was about five or six I was dressed up as french policeman while our family sang the comic song 'we run them in, we run them in' , from The Bold Gendarmes by Offenbach. I think must have been my first public performance" There's a humourous rendition of it here on YouTube  .

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John’s mother bought him his first guitar at 13yrs of age (the year that ‘Love me Do’ by the Beatles changed music forever) and by 15 John was playing in local pop groups in the area, enjoying the ‘buzz’ and how music moved people. He was always a ‘rebel’ at heart and despite passing his 11-plus, entering Letchworth Grammar School, where he became a prefect, house-captain and gained County Caps at Rugby, Athletics and Cross-Country running John turned down a place he was offered at Durham University and set off hitch-hiking through Europe, with an old guitar on his back. This was the era of the 'flower power' generation and John fully embraced the 'hippie' culture, it’s lifestyle and it’s music. From the early summer of 1968 until the late Autum of that year John was living in the Hippy Caves at Matala, playing guitar in a makeshift band on the beach and drinking numerous glass of Retsina wine at the beachside Mermaid Café – later made famous by Joni Mitchell in her song Carey when she stayed for a while at Matala in 1970.  However, recklessly on a stormy night, he nearly drowned in the sea getting cramp swimming whilst high on drugs and alcohol. So John made the reluctant decision that maybe he was heading out of control and it was time to head back to the UK

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During the next few years he found himself up in the Midlands ( His Parents having moved to Coventry whilst John was away ! ) playing in various musical outfits including gigs at Warwick University. Living with his parents gave him space and the opportunity to fit out the garage as a ‘practice’ venue playing with various musicians from the local area who would turn up and jam. One of these was a 16yr old schoolboy, John ‘Brad’ Bradbury, who later, after attending Art School in Hull, went on to be the fabulous ‘rimshot’ drummer with The Specials!

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For the next couple of years John, now living in his own property that he was renovating in Kenilworth, played Bass in a Midlands based full-time pop band, playing six to seven times a week and travelling throughout most of England from South Yorkshire to Cornwall in their Transit Van. Typical weekends would entail playing on a Friday night, two gigs on Saturday ( an evening and then a late night residency at a Birmingham club) followed by a Sunday lunchtime gig at a crowded Dudley Pub backing a troop of local “strippers” ( and also sharing their dressing room !)

 

John remembers one memorable booking that happened during the first miners’ strike of Feb.1972. "The Band had turned up at a Working Men’s Social Club in the North Midlands only to find there was no electricity, although the club was open and the Hall was full of people drinking at tables lit by candles. "Sorry lads, there's no power so the booking is cancelled" declared the doorman. We certainly were not having that, as we had driven over three hours to get there. So our drummer showed him the booking contract that stated that we would be paid on the night if we arrived on time and performed two sixty minute sets. We then proceded to dutifully set up all our equipment and plugged our electric guitars and microphones into the lifeless amps. Our drummer then 'counted us in 'with his sticks and we started our set. The sound must have been truly awful. Very loud drums, weak vocals without mics and inaudible guitar twangs! The looks we were getting from the audience, well, you could cut it with a knife!  After three numbers the ‘Social Secretary’ mounted the stage, handed our drummer the full booking fee, in cash, and begged us to leave."  

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John married Jayne in Coventry on Friday 13th May 1972 and shortly after gave up playing music for a “proper job” to support his wife and their first child Jon-Jon, who was born in September 1972.  In 1975 John applied to study at the Oxford School of Architecture, where his daughter Felicity and youngest son Thomas were born. After qualifying, John went to work in Swansea for a leading South Wales Housing Association in 1982, living on the beautiful Gower Peninsular. He bought a house high up above Caswell Bay with sweeping views across the sea to the North Devon Coast. From the house the family were able to walk down the unmade track through a wooded valley to play on the beach in less than 5 minutes. After a brief spell working in Bristol for Ibstock Bricks, the family moved to Winchester in 1989 where John became Chief Architect for Redland Building Products heading a team of seven staff offering design solutions to Architectural Practices all over the United Kingdom.

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Throughout his professional career as an Architect and then later as a property renovator in France, where he lived for over a decade with his second wife running a property renovation company in the Charente Region, John continued composing his own songs on the guitar and piano, although he rarely ever played them to anyone outside his immediate family circle.  Returning to England in 2013 after a serious fall which led to a permanent knee injury, subsequent company failure (as with two operations he was unable to work for 9 months) and a long divorce process, his meeting with Julie through Internet dating in Late 2018 changed all that.

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Within a few months of their relationship, and with Julie’s encouragement and support, John had recorded his first ever EP. You can read all about this on this page.

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