Did I Tell You The One About Me And Marc Bolan?

24 Feb.2020

Well that’s pushing it a bit, but I did come across the Elfin One on three occasions. On the first of these, the original ‘Van der Graaf Generator’, consisting of Peter Hammill and myself, supported the original ‘Tyrannosaurus Rex’, consisting of Marc Bolan and Steve Peregrin Took, at The Magic Village club […]

The Free Art Research Trio

11 February 2020

THE FREE ART RESEARCH TRIO – PART 1

I want to tell you about a strange corner of my musical life that is not represented to any great extent on this website, and not at all in any recorded musical form. This story is half way between a musical essay […]

Did I Ever Tell You The One About Me And Orson Wells?

30 January 2020

It was in the early 1970s and I was in Soho, no doubt trying to set-up some ill-starred music project or other, and probably looking like a weekend hippy. It was pouring with rain and I was trying to get a cab to go home… (This fact alone shows just how long […]

Opera: ‘Bel Canto’ or ‘Can Belt-o’

19th March 2019

The Operatic Voice is not really my cup of tea. The Operatic Voice is generally too much for me; it’s too loud and too dramatic. Opera singers are trained to produce an astonishing volume of sound while still producing a beautiful tone. They are supposed to be heard at the back […]

Did I Ever Tell You The One About Me And Kirk Douglas?

19th March 2019

In 1976 I was in Edinburgh as Musical Director of ‘The Kibbo Kift’, a musical at the Traverse Theatre that I had written with composer Maxwell Hutchinson. (Script and recordings are in the Archive section of this site, by the way.) I was in Princes Street Gardens one afternoon, in the […]