'Speedway Kick' began as a bedroom collaboration between myself, Tel Sutton, and Jon O'Donnell, shortly after beginning our studies in Media Performance at Salford University College in Sept 1990 (along with the likes of Maxine Peake and Benedict Wong). Our 4-track portastudio demos, done for a laugh at first, began to get passed around and we were picked up by local impresario (and James' percussionist) Johnny Slater. After some strong words of encouragement from Sir George Martin (who told us our songs were better than the one he'd just had to give the 'John Lennon Songwriting Award' for that day), and a visit by Tony Wilson to watch us rehearsing in the basement, we very quickly caught the attention of Sony Music Publishing's Charlie Pinder. He stumped up the cash for an expanded line-up featuring my ex-bandmate from 80s radicals, 'The Way', bassist Jonathan White (later of Groove Armada, Faithless, John Squire and Magazine), to record in Stockport's Moonraker Studios (our overriding memory from the sessions was being visited by the legendary Edward Barton). This sudden interest forced us to expand with the former 'No Man's Land' drummer, Keith Angel, and we played our first gig at Thames Poly Freshers' Ball (didn't go down too well as it was all original material and they wanted the hits of the day). This was followed by three more gigs: Salford Uni College Cafeteria (with Wonky Alice supporting), Burnley Mechanics ('The Event II') and PJ Bells (with Machine Gun Feedback?) before the course ended and we went our separate ways. Jon OD had already begun to make a name for himself as the MC with 'Manic', and his appearance with them on The Hitman and Her meant he was much in-demand after that... but he went into newspapers, and eventually ended up as the MD of Evening Standard/The Independent. After SK I formed 'The On' with Jon and Keith, setting up a studio in Doncaster where we would sleep by day and record by night for a year... got 'Demo Of The Week' on Hit The North (from Marc Riley) in July 1993... basically Britpop before it broke, but we broke up just as we were about to sign to Island. I followed that band with 'Electrascope' (1996-2000, infamous for losing our Parlophone deal to Coldplay, after I booked them), 'The Special Guest Stars' (2006-2012, a duo with The Way's drummer, Ian Deakin, and a whole host of special guests) and 'Dada Baba' (2019-2024, basically Electrascope minus our guitarist, Jon Lord). My wife died suddenly in May 2024, and this has made me decide to go back as a solo artist and revisit all the best songs I wrote for those bands, so watch out in 2025.
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