December 7, 2016 – Gregory Stuart “Greg” Lake was born on 10 November 1947 in Poole, Dorset near Bournemouth, England. Lake was given his first guitar at the age of 12 and took lessons from a local tutor called Don Strike.
first learned to play guitar at age 12. After 12 months of guitar lessons, Lake ended his tuition as he wished to learn songs by The Shadows but his instructor “wouldn’t have any of it.” After he left school, Lake worked as a draughtsman for a short period of time before he joined The Shame, where he is featured on their single “Don’t Go Away Little Girl”, written by Janis Ian. Lake then became a member of The Gods, which he described as “a very poor training college”.
Tag: progressive rock
Keith Emerson 3/2016
March 10, 2016 – Keith Noel Emerson (Emerson,Lake,Palmer ELP/ The Nice) was born in Todmorden, Yorkshire on 2 November 1944. His family had been evacuated there from the south coast of England during the Second World War. He grew up in Goring-by-Sea, in the borough of the seaside resort of Worthing, West Sussex and attended West Tarring School. His parents were musically inclined and arranged for him to take piano lessons starting at the age of 8. His father, Noel, was an amateur pianist, and thought that Emerson would benefit most as a player from being versatile and being able to read music. However, he never received any formal musical training, and described his piano teachers as being “local little old ladies”. He learned western classical music, which largely inspired his own style, combining it with jazz and rock themes. Continue reading Keith Emerson 3/2016
Chris Squire 6/2015
27Â June 2015 – Christopher Russell Edward ‘Chris’ Squire was born March 4, 1948Â in the Kingsbury area of London. was an English musician, singer and songwriter. He was best known as the bassist and founding member of the progressive rock band Yes. He was the only member to appear on each of their 21 studio albums, released from 1969 to 2014.
Squire took an early interest in church music and sang in the local church and school choirs. After he took up the bass guitar at age sixteen, his earliest gigs were in 1964 for The Selfs, which later evolved into The Syn. In 1968, Squire formed Yes with singer Jon Anderson; he would remain the band’s sole bassist for the next 47 years.
John Tout 5/2015
May 1, 2015 – John Tout was reportedly born in Hackney South London in September of 1944.
He got a piano on his 8th birthday and studied music for the next 8 years. He was mostly into classical Russian composers. By age 18 he joined his first band, got entangled with the Rupert’s People line up and replaced John Hawken on the keys for Renaissance between 1970 and 1980 and again from 1999 to 2002. When he joined the band, in 1970, Renaissance had undergone a complete overhaul from its beginnings as a project founded by Yardbirds members Keith Relf and Jim McCarty, and by the end of 1970, no original members remained.
Chris Rainbow 2/2015
Feb 22, 2015 – Chris Rainbow (Camel) was born Christopher James Harley in Glasgow, Scotland on November 18, 1946.
He started out in a band called Hopestreet, in 1972-3. Following this he adopted the stage name “Rainbow” to avoid confusion with Steve Harley and recorded as Christopher Rainbow, then Chris Rainbow and released three solo albums: Home of the Brave in 1975, Looking Over My Shoulder in 1977 and White Trails in 1979 which produced hits including “Give Me What I Cry For” and “Solid State Brain”.
Glenn Cornick 8/2014
August 27, 2014 – Glenn Cornick (Jethro Tull) was born on April 23rd 1947 in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, England.
He attended Grammar school in that town, before taking up guitar, aged fifteen. Turning to the bass a year later, he left home and the local band scene and fled to the brighter city lights of Blackpool.
Glenn then played with a number of Blackpool-based groups including “The Executives”, a club cover band which played the hotels and clubs on a regular and almost professional basis as in 5 to 6 gigs a week.
Inspite of the financial steadiness with the Executives, he joined the John Evan’s Smash Band in 1966 which enjoyed maybe one gig a week, just before the point when the group was to attempt the brave move to seek full-time work in the south of England as a seven-piece Blues and Soul Band.
Nossi Noske 2/2014
Feb 18, 2014 – Nossi Noske (Birth Control) was born on August 17, 1946 in West Berlin. At age eight he was already singing in the School choir even though music was in those days competing with soccer. He was a very talented soccer player. He played his first gig with the Black Phantoms in the city of Spandau in 1961, but before he enrolled fully into a career as musician he packed food and drove trucks.
His first Band „The Odd Persons“ played gigs in West Germany which included the famous Starclub in Hamburg. In 1969 he succeeded Hugo Egon Balder, in the Band Birth Control, where he played drums and sang until his death in 2014.
In 1983 the band split for ten years after the death of their guitarist Bruno Frenzel; Nossi reunited the band in 1993. In those years he played with Bands such as Hardbeats, Mr. Goodtrip and Lilly & the Rockets.
Pickford Hopkins 6/2013
June 22, 2013 – Gary Pickford-Hopkins was born in 1948 in Abergarwed near Neath Wales. He attended the Alderman Davies Church and was a member of the Church Choir. After graduation Gary’s first job was as an apprentice painter.
His musical career started as frontman for the Vern Davies Band and as a 16 year old, he was a member of a local band called Smokestacks, made up of musicians from Neath and Port Talbot. After a couple of years, the band broke up and Gary joined the popular band The Eyes of Blue.
The band played at clubs and halls throughout South Wales and they went on to win the Melody Maker Battle of the Bands in 1966, of which the first prize was a recording contract.
Peter Bardens 1/2002
January 22, 2002 – Peter Bardens was born in Westminster, London on 19 June 1945 just weeks after World War II came to an end. The name of Peter Bardens is best known from the success of Camel, the progressive rock group he led in the early 1970s.
The keyboard player’s greatest influence on the British music scene, however, took place in the previous decade, when he was a formative member of London’s art school R&B scene and a figure of irrepressible spirit and energy. The son of Dennis Bardens, a writer of mystery novels and biographies, he was born in London in 1945, was brought up in the then Bohemian district of Notting Hill and attended the local Byam Shaw art school, where he studied Fine Art.
Fired by the burgeoning blues movement in west London, Bardens recruited an apprentice drummer called Mick Fleetwood whom he had heard rehearsing in the garage of a house three doors away from where he lived. With the intention of joining a group, Fleetwood had moved to London in 1964 to stay with his sister: “There was a knock on the door. ‘I’ve been hearing you play: would you like a gig?‘ He literally kickstarted me into the music business.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.