Click on Baby John for more pics

JOHN'S MUSICAL HIGHS AND LOWS:

1974 - I got a toy drum kit and Lego for Xmas. I showed more interest in the Lego. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

1976 - I made my live debut playing guitar at a school concert. My sister, Sarah, also played in the concert but we only had one guitar between us, so I sat behind her and we swapped the guitar between numbers.

1978 - Punk was in full swing and I started learning to play the euphonium. I'd actually wanted to learn the trumpet but the school didn't have enough trumpets to go round so Richard Hoadley and me had to settle for euphoniums instead. Thatcher Thatcher The Milk Snatcher and her education cuts strike again.

1979 - Richard Hoadley and me did a euphonium duet in front of the whole school during morning assembly. He later told people that I'd made some mistakes during the performance. I didn't speak to him for two weeks..1980 - I joined my first band. Admittedly it was the Kent Wind Band but we all have to start somewhere.

1981 - I gave up the euphonium because lack of practice meant that I'd been miming during the Kent Wind Band rehearsals and the shouts of 'that's a funny looking briefcase' from other school kids finally got to me.

1981 - During a double chemistry lesson, David Brown, Tony Costanza and me decided to form an Adam and the Ants tribute band (long before tribute bands are ten-a-penny like they are these days). We later abandoned the idea when we realised that: a) the only instrument we had was the bass drum from the toy drum kit I got for Xmas in 1974 (I had to give the euphonium back); and b) we couldn't be arsed.

1982 - Inspired by the Trio hit 'Da Da Da', I got my first keyboard, a Casio VL1. It was basically a jumped up calculator but it hooked me into the strange and heady world of bleeps and farty noises that is synthesisers.

1984 - Grant Murphy and me formed a classic 80s synth pop duo. We were so enigmatic that we never had a name or wrote any actual songs but despite that we were still a major force in the mid 80s Dartford electro pop scene.

1986 - 1992 - I became the keyboard player in a band put together by school mates. At first we were called 'Look Back in Anger', then 'Make' and finally we settled on 'The Fortune Cookies'. The Cookies, as no-one called us, played all the main music venues in the North West Kent area but when those three pubs wouldn't let us play anymore, and after various line-up changes, we burst on to the London music scene. We stormed many of the 'new band' nights at places like the Powerhaus and the Rock Garden and we were once described by an audience member as 'not as shit as I thought you'd be'. Our finest hour came in 1990 when we supported the Blue Aeroplanes (who themselves supported REM) at the Tunnel Club in Greenwich. We also made a self-financed, limited release, EP (in other words, we paid for some studio time, recorded four songs and flogged a few cassettes of them to our mates) called 'In it for the money', which those thieving bastards, Supergrass, later nicked as the title for their second album.

1993 - 2000 - Apart from a brief stint in 1996 with Luton based band Bandage (Steve the singer thought it would be funny on posters if it said Support: Bandage) I spent the time concentrating on solo stuff, recording and various on-off collaborations with the likes of Michael 'The Governor' York, Nick 'The Flasher' Proctor, Tom 'Fingers' Draper (all ex-members of The Fortune Cookies) and Kevin 'the man with the golden tonsils' Mills.

2000 - I moved to Brighton and joined the mighty Protocol. All the rest will probably just be a footnote, this is where history really starts

2003 - John switches from Keyboards to Drums in a move to relive his younger rock and roll years. (see 1974 above).

Send John an email