My time in London began in 2008 at the age of 17. I had lived there most of my life but had spent the last three years of school in Los Angeles. I left LA with the goal of becoming a session musician, or at least that’s what I told everyone, it seemed immature to say “I want to be in a band” but truth be told that’s the only thing I wanted to do. Thus began three years of a rather cloistered existence punctuated by various musical ventures, a couple of which would go on to shape me profoundly. I was living at my Dad’s house in Battersea, he would be away in Italy for weeks at a time so it was about as ideal a situation as one could hope for, I certainly had no plans to find a real job so renting a place of my own was out of the question. The first year wasn’t the most fruitful, days were usually spent at home either recording my own music or scouring the NME classifieds for bands to join. I’d been a bit spoilt by LA, there are few places on earth more accepting and indeed celebratory of nostalgia and one tends to forget this after spending any amount of time there. It is in fact not the norm to be surrounded by creative minded eccentric individuals and random old men with whom you can strike up conversations about esoteric 70s art rock. It’s a little bit sad because I have a feeling that this is what London once was and this perception certainly played a part in me wanting to move back, it hadn’t occured to me that I might be 40 years too late. I began to retreat more and more into my own head, adopting the lifestyle that I wished still existed. It wasn’t 1971 out in the real world but perhaps it could be for me. This reached a peak when I decided to go for three months without any modern technology. I had my radio to listen to Radio 4, I had my typewriter and 1967 edition dictionary, I even bought a Super 8 camera and projector. Add to this a steady supply of British 60s/70s TV and film (Steptoe and Son, The Good Life, Rising Damp, The Flying Circus, O Lucky Man, If, Get Carter) and I was set. This delusion extended to a change of name, either Alan or Terry depending on the situation, Harley simply wasn’t authentically vintage enough. At this point my Dad was starting to question what I was doing all day and rightly so. He was accepting and even encouraging of my musical endeavour but he wasn’t going to have his son living the life of a penniless aristocrat. At around the one year mark I lowered my impossibly high/idiosyncratic standards and joined my first band, The Luben Kings, named after the two members Luke and Ben. They were Faces fans but the sound was pretty standard 2000s Indie Rock, nothing wrong with that, I like BRMC as much as the next guy but it marked a departure from the Prog Rock trajectory I viewed myself to be on. I joined the band as an organist. I’d shipped my Hammond L100 over from LA and they seemed very excited to have an actual Hammond in the fold although that excitement faded somewhat when the reality of carting around a 150lbs piece of furniture hit home, the most pressing question was how to get this thing anywhere. I was learning how to drive but my license was still a few months away and Ben didn’t seem so enthusiastic about a trailer on the back of his Fiat Punto. We hired a removal service for a couple of the rehearsals but £60 per trip was too expensive for me so I temporarily moved over to drums. By this point I’d been in the band for about 6 months and we hadn’t done anything, granted this was partly my fault because I kept failing my driving tests but also the search for other permanent members was taking too long for my liking. I was an impatient 18 year old so I left Luke and Ben in early 2009. When it came to my own writing I was mostly re-recording pieces I’d written in LA, maybe doing the odd Classical interpretation but I wasn’t really progressing. One benefit of my three month digital sabbatical is that it prompted me to buy a great deal of vintage gear, most importantly a Teac four track tape machine and a little mixer to go with it. In theory the change of approach from Garageband to tape shouldn’t have too much of an effect but for me it was monumental. I could no longer hide behind slick digital recording and my deficiencies in the songwriting department became glaringly obvious. This kicked off a years long process of trying to learn how to sing and write songs. There was a great deal of practice to be done and I can only imagine the torture my upstairs neighbours went through but my inadequacies had to be addressed if I was to carry out my mission, that of honing my craft, starting the Prog band of my dreams, renting a house in the country and touring around the UK and Europe. All that would take time so in the interim I decided to join The Moon Music Orchestra. In late 2008 my Dad began going to The Gladstone, a pub in Borough that would regularly host shows. I was reluctant to go to a pub to see live music, I was a little bit intimidated to be honest, but he came back one evening raving about this amazing group called Syd Arthur who played Prog Rock and even had a violinist… and there I was thinking that England was a cultural wasteland. At last my chance had come! I would quit the Luben Kings and join Syd Arthur as a keyboardist. Luckily they were booked to play at The Gladstone again in a month’s time so I made a note of the date and waited for my opportunity. There were two acts on that evening, Syd Arthur and The Moon Music Orchestra. The MMO were pleasant enough, kind of Rootsy, kind of Folky, but it wasn’t really my cup of tea. Syd Arthur on the other hand were everything my Dad had promised, I was awestruck and couldn’t believe that a band of this calibre was playing in a little pub in South-East London. A family friend, Tim Sheward, lived just down the street and had become acquainted with the MMO, a member of whom turned out to own The Gladstone itself. It was coming together, this wasn’t your ordinary place to get drunk after a day at work, this pub was part of an ideology, a purpose built creative hub in the most unlikely of places. Anyway, Tim was my ‘in’. After the show I made my way upstairs to meet the bands and most importantly sell myself as Syd Arthur’s next keyboardist. I talked to them for a while, a little bit about musical interests but mostly about my gear which by this point included the Hammond L100, a Leslie speaker, a Mellotron and a Minimoog. Surely any group with such a strong affinity for the Canterbury Scene wouldn’t be able to say no to a Keyboard rig like this but despite my efforts it wasn’t looking promising. Instead I seemed to be drawing more attention from the other band. Danny, the MMO’s bassist was particularly keen on the organ and before I knew it they had invited me round to play with them at their next rehearsal. Who was I to say no? It may not have been my ideal sort of music but they looked cool and they seemed eager to have me along. I had no idea that this would end up being the key band of my formative years. I won’t go into too much detail, I’ll save that for the dedicated band page, but The Gladstone would become my second home for the next two years and in hindsight I took the situation entirely for granted. At the time I viewed the band as a stepping stone to something else but when it eventually started winding down I realised that I had been part of something very precious. Whilst the band was going on I was continuing my own project. I may have been a member of a Roots band but my musical diet predominantly consisted of groups like The Enid, Argent, Renaissance and Henry Cow. I was still spending most of my time at home but by this point I had managed to pass my driving test (third times a charm) and had bought a van, a Citroen Dispatch to be exact. This made the acquisition of musical equipment far easier and allowed me to do the odd trip out into the countryside. One particularly fond memory is going to get the tape machine repaired down on the South coast and stopping at every single medieval church, castle, historical site etc. along the way. When the weather’s just right, England and particularly the English countryside is a magical place. I would occasionally spend time with Tim and another Gladstone regular, Marco Nelson. Marco had been in the music business for a while and had built his own analogue studio. I had developed into quite the gear nerd so when I first set sight on his room full of Studers, 3Ms and Telefunkens I was in heaven. I made an effort to go round to his studio as often as possible whether to watch some Bonzo Dog Band videos with him or try and weasel my way onto a session he was recording. In 2010 the band started to fracture. This phenomenon was one that would haunt me for most of my musical career, in that a band would inevitably fall apart very soon after I got involved, make of that what you will. In this case the members had decided to take a break to focus on that most pervasive of momentum killers, solo projects. There were half-hearted attempts to keep things going, we all played on each other's records, there was the odd show at The Gladstone but it was obvious that the drive was no longer there. My MMO journey finally ended at Marco’s studio in early 2011. It had been decided that as a kind of ‘last hoorah’ we would make an actual record with him, no expense spared. Steve, the drummer, had left and I had been filling in for him. On the first day of recording I was having difficulty maintaining the standard that Marco wanted and at the end of the day after a heated discussion I was let go. I can’t lie, it’s still a bit of a sore-spot. During the decline I’d started looking for other groups to join, one gig a month at the pub wasn’t doing it for me, and even though scrolling through the Gumtree classifieds everyday was as bleak as it sounds I had to find something. I had my own advert up there, the grand plan was still the same, but until I found suitable members I would have to settle for joining bands. Jay Furnival of Seven Suns had seen me with the MMO and asked if I wanted to play organ with him. It was very technical music, kind of Fusion with a World Music flavour, not the sort of thing I’d ordinarily go in for but as it happened I was on a bit of a Return To Forever kick and I quite fancied the idea of doing some guitar and Moog harmonies. We rehearsed after-hours at his workplace in Bermondsey and did a grand total of one show. It was weird going from a band for whom technical prowess meant nothing and substance everything to the complete opposite. Yes it was fun messing around on a synthesiser but it was hollow. I began to realise that the MMO had changed my stance on a few things. I was getting closer to the music I thought I wanted but sitting on stage whilst the drummer did a five minute solo to an audience of one, Tim, was a little too detached for my liking. I left Seven Suns and after a few weeks of searching came across Richard Cadby. He’d moved down to London from Birmingham and was on the hunt for band members. Not to sound too gushing but he was more or less everything I wished for both musically and aesthetically, from the moment I pulled up to his house for the audition and noticed the ‘Prog’ magazine in the window I thought “this is the one”. The inaugural meeting took place in his Hammersmith bedsit, I was auditioning as a bassist and had brought my Rickenbacker and my Dad’s Orange 4x12 Stack, completely filling up the room. We played through his songs but there was really no need, it was a done deal the moment we shook hands and realised that we had each found the only other person in London wearing a tank-top and flares (sweater vest and bells). I was henceforth the Bassist in Yin. I’d go over to his flat every week where we’d practice and show each other what we’d been writing, maybe listen to some music, talk about plans etc. It was all great, idyllic even, until it wasn’t. By about the three month mark I was desperate to escape, in Richard I had found a replica of myself and I couldn’t stand it. I’m sure a degree of self-loathing played a part but it went deeper than that. The very thought of me, age 19 seeing my grand plan come to fruition with the expectation that it would deliver happiness and purpose filled me with disgust. Who was I to know what I needed, after all it was with the MMO that my life was at its most meaningful and I was too myopic to realise it at the time. I knew I was blinkered and though I wasn’t quite able to break away from my obsessions I couldn’t allow them to dictate my future. I left the band offering very little explanation. I felt bad about it but we were only feeding each other’s delusions. I dropped my fake name after that.

It was 2011 and the dream was dead. As if that wasn’t enough the bureaucrats at the Greater London Transport Authority decided to kick me while I was down. The introduction of a new Low Emission Zone around the entirety of the city meant that I could no longer own my van so I sold it and bought an old Mini, I wasn’t carting an organ around anymore so I thought I might as well drive something fun. This coincided with a general disillusionment towards music, specifically the music scene in the UK. It was a crossover period with the Camden-ites coming to an end and the ascent of various forms of Hipster. I did not like what I was seeing so I took a different course, I sold out. I was presented with the opportunity to do so by a family friend, Shelly Poole, who was quite successful in her own right but now wanted to try her hand at artist manufacturing. She was off to a great start, Sara Skjoldnes aka Miss Norway 2009 was singing, Andy Hill who had made a name for himself in the 80s was producing. All the connections were there and they just needed a few interesting looking kids to be in the band. Shelly I think still fundamentally believed in music which may have been a fatal flaw, she wanted to manufacture a band but was perhaps not cynical enough to do so. It’s a noble intention to say that everyone in the group should be involved in the songwriting process, but when you relinquish power in that way and someone as hard-headed and opinionated as me is in the other seat then what could have been a simple dictatorship becomes a committee, and in our case a committee with very different ideas about what should be done. This became a deepening issue as time went on. Sara’s boyfriend Ben was writing music for the group and took on somewhat of a producer’s role, he’d had a fair deal of success as a member of a boyband so for him to be involved at all was a boon. They were living just down the street from me and I would go over to their flat a couple of times a week to record demos. It was pleasant enough, we were in completely different social circles but I thought they were very kind and accommodating. The demo sessions would occasionally get heated, both Ben and I had very rigid ideas about the music but a bit of male sparring isn’t necessarily bad thing. In any other band context this would have been all well and good but I can objectively say that I was the wrong candidate for the job. I had no place trying to guide a group towards commercial success, not only because I knew nothing about popular music but also I had no interest in making popular music. I wanted to change minds, not conform to the mainstream. Still, I stuck with it because I had no self-awareness and it seemed like my best shot at forging a career. Once every couple of weeks we’d have a recording session with Andy at his house in the Norfolk countryside. I’d do the four hour drive in my beloved Mini, which at 55mph was distressingly loud, but as with most things form must take precedence over function. I’d occasionally do the drive with Sara and whilst the enjoyment of driving distracted me somewhat from the miserable conditions, for her it must have been absolute hell. Andy’s house was a charming 16th century manor, not particularly grand or opulent but impressive nonetheless. The studio was in an adjacent building and most of the time that’s where we’d be. At first I got on well with Andy, I think he liked my eccentricities, but when it came to recording he drove me absolutely insane. For every hour in that studio it would be 50 minutes of Sara, Ben, Shelly and me sitting on the sofa, staring at his back while he edited, auto-tuned and time-aligned every single note of every single phrase. Add to this the sharing of opinions and ideas of everyone in the room and it’s a miracle that anything got done. In time it got a bit better though, at least for me, I wore Andy down with my stubbornness and brought out the side of him that was more in tune with my thinking. He was a boomer, he loved all the music that I loved, I could throw out a Captain Beefheart reference and he’d get it, he probably wanted to record the way they used to but we’re all constrained by the requirements placed upon us. So I’d get my way here and there, the recording to mixing ratio became more sensible and we ended up with some decent results, less commercial than they would have been were I not involved, but results regardless. Almost a year went by and I became concerned that things weren’t progressing. I mean we were meant to be a band but there wasn’t a bassist, drummer or keyboardist in sight. Also I thought that selling out (which I was happy to do) would be remunerated with a bit of cash or failing that some industry backing. I was feeling the pinch financially, I’d finally blown through the money I got for my 18th Birthday and the London to Norfolk petrol expenses had become a real burden. I decided to take it upon myself to get things moving and pushed for me and Sara to get out there as a two piece, no doubt inspired by Rob and Charlotte (MMO) who with there new outfit Mancub Babywoman were doing very much that and to good effect. We did two shows, one at The Gladstone and a quasi-karaoke night at The Regal Room in Hammersmith. I suppose I brought it on myself by insisting on playing but it was feeling more and more like a DIY project. I wanted the big guns, an actual record label, industry money behind us… not this. Perhaps I was naive to think that it would work like that, but even as I write this 12 years later I can’t help thinking that the wrong approach was taken if the construction of a marketable Pop group was indeed the goal. I was feeling really down about it all and messaged Eli Pearl, a schoolfriend from LA. He seemed to be doing well, he’d toured the US at least, far more than I had done and I couldn’t help but think that perhaps I was simply in the wrong place. I half-jokingly asked if he wanted to start a band and to my surprise he said yes, I booked my flight to LA that night. I sent Sara a message saying I was leaving and to be honest it couldn’t have gone worse. It was partly my fault, I was sick of Andy and threw in a couple of digs, I was also far too brazen about the issue of copyright and song contributions but at this point I didn’t care if I burnt every bridge. I felt like I’d wasted a year of my life and I was desperate to escape from it all. I sold my Mini, a great deal of musical equipment and on the 20th October 2011 I left London.

I arrived at LAX with a renewed sense of optimism. Don’t get me wrong, I desperately wanted England to work out and in my heart I felt I should be there, but one can only be willfully blind for so long. The England that I loved no longer existed and if I was going to forge a career in music then I would have to go to where the music was happening. I had arranged to spend the first two weeks with Eli in order to come up with an overall plan, write some songs and generally see if things meshed. He and I were staying at his Mum’s downtown loft. The area was still undeveloped at the time, full of factories and dilapidated buildings, I’d spend hours playing guitar and watching the planes flying over the ruins of East downtown. It must be said, it was a relief to be back playing with an old schoolfriend. As English as I may have felt I was undoubtedly a product of my American high school experience. Wildwood School was a very liberal place and though it was ideological to an extent we were still a few years away from the politicisation of everything. A ‘liberal school’ back then mostly meant a lenient attitude towards examinations and a focus on the arts, as such it fostered a dynamic music scene amongst the students. I’d been playing since I was seven but it was there surrounded by virtuosos that I really learnt my craft, and it was there where I met Eli and formed a musical bond that still remained intact after three years of separation. When the two weeks was up I moved into my Mum’s house in Hollywood and got started with the creation of my new bedroom studio. I say bedroom studio, but all the bedrooms were being rented out to lodgers, so I lived in the front room and slept on the sofa with only a curtain acting as a divider between me and the front door. This wasn’t a problem, I believed in the virtues of hardship and if that is what was necessary then so be it. Though the band, now officially called The Brixtones, was my main priority I did have another reason for coming out to LA. My Mum’s boyfriend, Guy had graciously offered to pay for some vocal lessons. I was practicing religiously but the singing wasn’t improving and I knew that if I wanted my songs performed then I would have sing them. Guy’s house was just down the street and he had a studio in the garden. It was in use for most of the day but every night at 1 or 2am I would walk over and sing songs for hours until I was hoarse. Was it the right approach? Almost certainly not, but I was still in the mindset of dedication and technical prowess being the keys to success. What I in fact needed was a realignment of my whole perspective on songwriting but I was still a long way off from coming to terms with that. Eli had taken the reigns on the Brixtones material and outside of the playing I took more of a producers role, pushing my ego to one side and assisting in making his songs the best they could be. I continued writing and recording demos at home but they were more for me than the band. Eli’s CD collection and our regular trips to Amoeba Records were however making an impact. I had almost entirely abandoned Progressive music and was listening instead to the likes of Harry Nilsson, The Hollies, Gram Parsons, Alice Cooper, Dub Reggae, African Garage Rock and a whole host of other obscure gems. Pop music and interesting sounds were the way forward. It’s a shame we weren’t more clued-up on the Lo-fi scene going on at the time, the Silverlake circuit was often sickeningly sincere and I have a feeling that had we been aware then we may have felt a little more free to branch out from the Country/Roots heavy music we were making. By the second EP I was beginning to feel the pangs of failure. I had become a sideman to Eli’s project and although I played a key role there was no escaping this reality. I set myself the task of recording four Pop songs that I could present to him for inclusion on the next release. At first it went well but inevitably faltered when it came to recording the vocals, I simply couldn’t do it and the matter had become an existential one. Was this going to be my fate, forever reliant upon another person for my creative expression? At the same time my overthinking was exacerbating my stage fright and I got to a point where I couldn’t deal with it anymore. The band was going through a slow patch and I was getting calls from former MMO members saying they were starting a new project. The thought of returning to the halcyon days of 2008 filled me with immense comfort and relief. There were no illusions of ‘making it’, they were all working day jobs and the band would purely be extra-curricular. This was music to my ears, I just wanted to enjoy music again and the pressure of trying to pursue it as a career was proving too much. After a great deal of thought I told Eli that I had to leave. Yes there were the musical reasons outlined but I also knew that I needed to grow up a bit. I’d never had to work or pay rent and the absence of real responsibility wasn’t doing me any good. The second return to London would change all of that.