The
photo of Midnight Train looks as if it is from the late 1980's at some pub gig
in the north. For a few years we were playing everywhere between Liverpool/ Hull
/ Kendal/ Colne/ Redcar/Newcastle/Manchester/Sheffield, there was more gigs than
we wanted to do.
The line up shown here is Brian Duffissey on bass, Peter
O'Grady on keyboard, John White on the drums, myself, Grom Kelly singing and just
out of shot Steve Isherwood on guitar. Later when Pete and John left we had Mirian
Walton on piano and Danny Martin on Drums.
There had been plenty of line up
changes before that, including Mick Spur on Hammond; Johnny Hardcastle on guitars;
the late Chris Taylor on drums; on tenor sax we had Jon Taylor, Lynn Walker, Jaqueline
Hicks and finally Tony Birkhill; Mick Jackson played alto for a couple of years,
Rick Winkless on trumpet/flugel horn, then Sonia Kelly [ no relation] and many
others . The core band was augmented by brass and reed players from LCM.
The
original Midnight Train had been a professional band that had recorded in the
60's. It was half reformed for a party in Leeds 1982? and got so many gigs it
just carried on until 1999 when Brian Duffisey fell ill.
Steve Isherwood,
John Shepard, Peter O'Grady and myself got together to play a few gigs about 2003?
so that Brian Duffissey could get his bass out. You know what I mean. Unfortunately,
after a dozen or so gigs he was struggling and was replaced by Findlay Topham,
who then went off to Brittany and was replaced by the excellent Lee Abbott.
I
pulled the plug Christmas 2007, I felt it was time for it to rest in pieces.
As
a bit of info/biog for your site some c.v. stuff about some of the folks.
Steve
Isherwood was in Mojo magazine a couple of years ago he was in 'The Outer Limits'
on Immediate Label.
John White was one of the drummers in Gary Glitters band.
Ade Cook worked for Trevor Horn as one of the first programmers( he was either
first or second ) in the UK Music industry, musical director for the world tours
of 'Frankie goes to Hollywood', 'Moody Blues', Terrance Trent Darby, is well known
as a music educator, composer, writer and he is still a member of Bass Dance.
Probably along with Bill Nelson ( who Ade knew in the mist of rock time),
someone who should figure on your site.
Cam Sublette, returned to the US and
I heard he was involved on some of the Philly sound recordings.
Previously
I was the vocalist in Junior's Eyes 1969-1970. When that band dropped 'out of
any kind of known reality' in early spring 1970, I was approached by Ade to do
some stuff with himself, John Shepard, Trevor Craven and (briefly) Alan Holdsworth
for a festival gig. Spiral Highway grew out of that.
Junior's was a pro band
signed by Denny Cordell to Regal Zonophone there is probably some stuff available,
you know how they re release stuff. The lads in Juniors played on sessions for
James Taylor, Marsha Hunt , Marc Bolan, Jackie Lomax ,David Bowie etc; there is
some German TV [ Mike Lechebusch's 'Beat Club' ], some American film crew shot
us in a London park for US TV, all of that London hippy underground scene. 1966-
1970.
before that I was singer with The Midnight Train 1966 when it was semi
pro, I left the band to concentrate on singing jazz-blues .
I was asked to
return in August for a European tour 1967 , the band returned to England and imploded
in Feb1968.
information
supplied by Grom Kelly