Music
My first job was as a keyboard demonstrator at Southern Music. I saved up for my first proper synthesiser — a Yamaha DX7 — and formed my first band with my school friend Layton. We changed the band name every month, but eventually settled on SQ. We spent years recording… and only ever managed one gig.
After that, I built my own recording studio, DMS (Digital Music Studios), thanks to a government grant.
In the early ’90s I picked up the guitar and stepped things up a level. By 1994 I’d formed a band called Spy. We recorded a couple of albums (our Livewire album is still on iTunes: https://music.apple.com/gb/album/livewire/1275940489 and played around 100 gigs — at one point doing five different venues a week — sharing stages with bands like Catatonia and Jesus Jones.
We almost made it. We were in the newspapers, on magazine covers, recorded a John Peel session he genuinely liked, and were eventually flown to the US by Geffen Records. We even met David Geffen himself. For a moment we thought we’d finally “made it”, but in the end he only wanted to sign our vocalist for a solo deal… which she took, with Leo Sayer as her manager.
When SPY ended, I decided it was probably time to behave like an adult and get a proper job, and went to work for a company called oneAdvanced where I’ve been for the last 29 years. Though I never actually stopped writing music. These days I outsource the vocals to session singers (for everyone’s wellbeing), and I still jump in to help music students with production whenever I can.
I’ve been writing songs for over 45 years. I originally wanted to compose film scores like Hans Zimmer, then during the SPY years it was all tongue-in-cheek indie guitar. Nowadays I just want to write simple pop songs that people can actually sing along to.
Let me know what you think of my songwriting these days. Here are the tracks from my 2025 album Step Off the Ride (available on all good streaming apps and digital stores) - but I’ve added them here so you can listen for free.
I wrote and produced every track myself — but I did reach out for a vocalist, because my own singing voice sounds like a cat being drop-kicked down a staircase.
The title track is all about how fast the world’s spinning these days — especially with AI changing absolutely everything — and that longing to just step off for a while and spend time with the people we love.
A couple of film tracks for “Killing a friend”
And if anyone happens to know a popstar who fancies using one of my songs — ideally in exchange for helping shave a bit off my mortgage — do feel free to pass them my number.
Before I ever slung a guitar on in SPY, I was scraping by as a bargain-bin session musician. People didn’t hire me for my dazzling keyboard skills — they hired me because I owned a ridiculous number of synths and was cheaper than renting the real talent.
Still, it wasn’t all bad. You can actually hear me playing piano on a Primal Scream track… and I walked away with £300 for it, which was a small fortune at the time.
Back when I was a keyboard demonstrator for Southern Music, I discovered the secret to selling synths: don’t waffle, play the sound people know. Stick a DX7 in front of me, play the bassline from Madonna’s Borderline, and instantly the shop would light up — “Oh wow, that sound!” Suddenly everyone wanted to take one home.
Of course, some keyboards didn’t have any famous tracks behind them — so I’d just make my own. One model had a clever little feature for recording short melodic lines, so I whipped up a ridiculously catchy bassline to show it off.
A customer bought that keyboard… and about a year later I nearly launched myself off the sofa when I heard my bassline coming out of the radio. He’d lifted my demo note-for-note. Sure, he slapped a tune and some vocals on top, but the groove? 100% mine.
The band? Swing Out Sister.
The song? Breakout.
Chart position? Number 4 in 1986.
I tried to get the lawyers on it (funded by the owner of Southern music who incidentally wanted 50% of the royalties but as I looked at it, I'd rather have 50% of something than 100% of nothing) , but because I hadn’t copyrighted the thing in the correct way, they walked away laughing — and I didn’t see a single penny.
I’ve still got the original tape as proof. Typical, The biggest hit I ever wrote… and I didn’t make a penny from it.
Let me know what you think - heres my original recording (excuse the background hiss - it was recorded on an old tape deck).
….and heres breakout - fast forward to about 20 seconds.
Old…. but gold. Solid gold.
