I was born and raised in the Tamworth, Staffs area of England . I have to say that I have since wished that I had grown up somewhere more cosmopolitan where I would have been exposed to wider cultural influences, and in a less parochial atmosphere, but what can you do? I seem to have been playing catch up with the world, other musics, other cultures, other influences, greater awareness, and a more worldly intelligence etc ever since.

My greatest musical influences are pretty much the same now as those I developed in my formative years. First passions included The Beatles, of course, Eric Clapton, most importantly, Peter Green, and these have been joined by Stevie Wonder, Robert Johnson, Edward Elgar, and old Delta blues, in the intervening years. I find all the profundity I need in these people.

Anyway, I first got into music seriously at the age of 10 in 1963 – there, that's given away my age , perhaps it is a bit of a surprise to those that would have put my birth date somewhere closer 1943 than 1953 – when I first heard The BEATLES. I've always said that if I had been born ten years earlier I could not have had a career as a musician because so little of what happened in the 1950s reached me in any sort of way. Even in my dotage, when I have become a bit more tolerant of most kinds of music (the exception being the likes of Coldplay and all of their droning, monotonous, empty progeny who all make me think of the Emperor's New Clothes), I still find little that really touches me or excites me in the way the Beatles did (and still do).

There was, however, one small exception to this in the record ‘Mr Sandman' by The Chordettes which, apparently I drove everyone mad with by demanding repeated playing. For my 50 th birthday, my uncle, Graham (whose 78 it was), and his wife, Margaret, put the original 78 into a golden frame for me to hang on my wall, and I suppose, that this is actually ‘where it all began'. Listening to the song now, I realise that this is where my love of vocal harmony was spawned, later to be turned into a passion by the Beatles, Hollies and Beach Boys. I always particularly liked finding the bottom harmony, which is often the most difficult one to sort out, and I still love singing bottom harmonies now. These days it is sheer laziness because I don't wasn't to have to risk a hernia trying to reach those high notes.

Anyway, I nagged my parents into buying me a guitar, which they did, and had immediate cause to regret their decision. Let's just say that my first attempts left much to be desired, so they enrolled me with a local guitar teacher, Mr Hough, an eccentric genius who lived in a house full of weird and wonderful musical instruments (including a huge pipe organ in his sitting room, the pipes of which were so large that they extended through the ceiling and up into the bedroom above), and who was a complete inspiration. I didn't stay with Mr Hough long because he wanted me to become his protégé and study classical guitar, which was never going to happen. However, I stayed with him long enough to crack the basics and make life a lot less dissonant for my parents.

I don't want to ramble too much, so I'll move on. My first band was THE WILD FOUR in around 1965 with Ron Alcott on bass, Stef Carfoot on drums, and Steve Wagstaffe (Waggy) on wildly unpredictable rhythm guitar. Soon had to change the name because a) we weren't very wild, and b) Waggy was pretty unreliable and would often not turn up for rehearsals or gigs. It became a bit ridiculous for a bunch of pretty tame 12/13 year olds to turn up to the local Working Men's Club or youth club calling themselves the Wild Four, especially when there were often only three of us. So, we became THE TEENBEATS. Cool name, eh? Well, we were teenagers and we did play what was popularly known as ‘beat' music, so what else could we call ourselves?

The Teenbeats played the usual repertoire of the time, i.e. Beatles, Hollies, Searchers, Kinks etc and we were pretty good on a good day with a following wind. We always had a disastrous relationship with best band competitions, though. We always came last if we ever actually managed to progress through the heats to the final, but usually we fell at the first hurdle and watched bands we all thought were vastly inferior to us go on and do well, or even win the damned contests. This should have taught us something, but we just put it down to the cloth ears of the judges.

The Teenbeats stayed together, I suppose, for around 3 or 4 years, and moved away from out and out pop music and became a ‘progressive' band. This meant playing Hendrix, Cream, Canned Heat etc, and doing ridiculous things like me playing guitar with my teeth (a la Hendrix, and which partly accounts for the terrible state of my front teeth now), and setting Stef's cymbals (and nearly Kingsbury Working Men's Club) on fire by fixing a circle of cotton wool doused liberally with lighter fuel and then applying a match at the right moment (i.e. during Jimi Hendrix's ‘Fire'). We were a little too liberal with the lighter fuel on occasion. But anyway, we were a ‘serious' band now, and I stacked up a motley selection of mismatched and (usually) empty speaker cabinets behind me to give the impression of playing in front of 4 Marshall 100-watt stacks (my dream at the time). I usually only had a 50-watt top and one 4x12 cabinet working (if I was lucky). Later on, I felt as if I had been vindicated when I was part of Trickster in the late 1970s and we supported the American AOR band, Boston , on their European tour. Tom Scholz had at least eight 4x12 cabinets behind him and stage, but when we had to use their equipment on one occasion when ours failed to turn up, I realised that he was actually using only one, and his onstage volume level was incredibly low. Another illusion shattered.

Next band was the curiously named NIGEL PARKER . Curious because a) it was a band, and b) there was no-one in the band called either Nigel or Parker, but then, we were young, what can I say……. This band was short-lived because it was crap and had pretensions of being some sort of arty, progressive band which would only ever attract an audience of nerds and misfits. Spinal Tap's ‘Jazz Odyssey' springs to mind when I think of what we were attempting musically. Yes, it was that good!

Soon, though, that old Bates restlessness kicked in and I had to move on. I joined perhaps the most successful local Tamworth-based band, SOURCE OF POWER in around 1968. At least, they were the most successful local band until I joined and then things went rapidly downhill. I realised that they were one of those bands that were only good with a particular line-up. By this I mean that as individual musicians they weren't too clever, but as an entity they really worked well, they also had really good lights, which probably made them appear better than they really were. Problem with this is that when you change the dynamics and introduce a rogue element, such as myself, the whole edifice collapses, and of course, that's exactly what happened. The whole episode ended badly with the drummer threatening to ‘kick my head in', a threat that still stands today, I think.

By this time, I was working in Birmingham in a music shop called RINGWAY MUSIC. The journey to this apparently perfect job went via a short spell at Drayton Manor Park, before it became a mega-theme park (I worked on the boats – 6½ days a week for about threepence ha'penny wages), and then the now defunct Birmingham department store, Grey's (the blueprint, I am sure, for Grace Brothers in ‘Are You Being Served').

My career took a different turn for a while when I joined a ‘heavy' band, the Wolverhampton-based, JUG. JUG were also one of the most popular bands in the Black Country when I joined on bass guitar, but you can guess what happened, yes, the famous Bates kiss-of-death struck again and it all fizzled out fairly quickly, but not before we had made several journeys up to Glasgow to play at the infamous ELECTRIC GARDENS in Sauchiehall Street. Here there was no booze served, everyone entering the venue was searched for weapons, there seemed to be a heavyweight bouncer for every 10 members of the often 3000-strong audience (I still remember the huge room we played in being ringed by bouncers standing on a ledge 5 or 6 feet above the throng spaced 10 feet apart around the WHOLE room). We played with Status Quo, Tear Gas (who later became the Sensational Alex Harvey Band), Mungo Jerry, Slade (before ‘Get Down and Get With It', their first hit), and a few others I can't remember.

Status Quo were priceless. The tables in the shared dressing room were filled with their tatty, beaten-up, crappy Fender Telecasters with a huge sign saying ‘DO NOT TOUCH'. We were indignant because our guitars were much better and in totally pristine condition, typical semi-pro guitars, and they had the nerve to tell us not to touch their rusty-stringed pieces of crap. We were also indignant because they spent 29 minutes (we timed it) on one cord, E, ‘improvising' . We thought a lot of ourselves in those days.

JUG also ended in quiet acrimony. Myself and the singer, John Ogden, who still works at the Express and Star in Wolverhampton, and who is all-round an extremely fine chap, and I got fed up of carrying all the guitarists' speaker cabinets up stairs (every gig seemed to be upstairs in the Black Country) while he went home after work to ‘feed his guppies', a job that should have taken a few minutes, but was often timed so that he arrived just as all the gear had been loaded in. His timing was impeccable. He was a damned good guitarist though.

After this, I definitely took an extreme left turn and joined a sort of cabaret/folk band called ENIGMA. So I went from Led Zep's ‘Black Dog' to Nana Mouskouri's ‘ Island in the Sun' in a few days. Bizarre, or what? This was around 1970/71.

ENIGMA had a sort of record deal, which is what attracted me initially. Actually, it turned out to be a production deal with Morgan Music who were based in Willesden in London . We spent a lot of time trying to become the new New Seekers (a little difficult when the old New Seekers, if you get my drift, were still around and still very successful), but we wrote a lot of totally inappropriate songs and did a lot of recording in a top-flight London studio with proper session musicians, so there were benefits. The other major benefit was that I met Joy Strachan who was one of the singers in the band, and we became good friends. She is still one of my best friends and favourite people. Joy is lovely in every way.

I also wrote a song at this time that I still play occasionally on stage at special gigs, ‘Wouldn't It Be Nice'.

Enigma mutated in to QUILL with the addition of Gil Showell on drums and Wally Lowe on bass (Wally went on to become bass player for that ‘wonderful' (meant sarcastically, by the way) pomp-rock band Magnum, and became a sort of novelty jug-band sort of thing. We were actually quite original at the time because the line up included violin, occasional ukulele, and other weird things, and we were pretty successful on the live circuit. Highlight for me was our tour behind the Iron Curtain in 1973 when we spent two weeks in East Germany. Rather, it should have been a highlight, but it was somewhat blighted by me consuming too much of an extremely dodgy batch of illicit Corn Liquor, which meant that I spent at least half of the tour groaning and throwing up. It got to the point that, during our stage shows, I did not know what would come out of my mouth when I opened it to sing. Would it be music, or something rather more visceral? Anyway, it was good tour. There is a nice circularity in this, because I spend much of my time now in Eastern Germany playing in many of the same towns I played in back in 1973. I steer clear of the Corn Liqour now, though.

QUILL released one unsuccessful single, SPENT THE RENT' on the Beatles' Parlophone label, which I took to be a good omen, but it wasn't. A record best forgotten.

I left in 1973, I think, in a dispute over whether we should sign with Red Bus Records (I think that was the name of the label). Mitch Murray and Peter Callender had a song they wanted us to record and release, which turned out to be a hit for Paper Lace, a song called ‘Billy, Don't Be A Hero'. I was pissed off because our drummer and main songwriter, Gil, wouldn't sign this deal, so I spat out the dummy and stormed indignantly off into the sunset. In retrospect, you were SOOOOOOOOOOO right, Gil. I apologise.

Next was a brief stint as a solo artist under the embarrassing soubriquet, BILLY BATES . What was I thinking?

Anyway, another unsuccessful single, the Gilbert O'Sullivan influenced, MR HAND ME DOWN , was issued in 1974 to universal indifference. I also got involved in an attempt to muscle in on the Wombles success when I was asked to write a couple of songs for the kid's characters, Benjy the Bear and Rumpo the Rabbit. I wrote the songs, ‘ WE LOVE BENJY' and ‘RUMPO'S REGGAE' , the single was released and, you've guessed, it completely flopped. It did get quite a few plays on Ed ‘Stewpot' Stewart's Saturday morning kids show, though. Impressed?????

I suppose the highlight of this period was being asked to play bass guitar for DUANE EDDY during his 1974 UK comeback tour. This was hard work and was extremely poorly paid, and involved many of those dreaded ‘doubles', i.e. fist gig of the night in some social club in Nottingham, and then haring off down the M1 to play at Barbarella's in Birmingham . We couldn't even afford board and lodging some nights, so we slept in the van. Typical of this was when we played at the famous Lyceum in the Strand , Paul McCartney was supposed to be in the audience, and we finished the gig and had to find some quiet back street and sleep on the gear under a thin blanket in the van.

The tour was enjoyable though. Good ol' boy Duane was a nice enough chap and a passable guitarist, but did he invite me back to play bass again a couple of years later when he was riding high after his comeback hit ‘Dance With The Guitar Man'? Did he buggery!

One enduring memory of this tour involves physical pain. One of Duane Eddy's big bits of the 1950s was PETER GUNN, and I vaguely knew that it was based around one riff played in unison by the guitar and bass that lasted about 5 minutes. I thought ‘no problem, it will be in the key of E'. Wrong!!! It was in F. Those of you know of such things will realise how damned difficult it is to play the PETER GUNN riff in F for 5 minutes, on bass. It meant that my left hand seized up and I could only get it to work again after some intensive massage. Problem was that close to the end of this epic, the track stopped and we all had a series of 2-bar solos to play. Of course, when it came to my solos, I couldn't actually uncontort (does this word exist?) my hand from the claw-like shape it had adopted, and so I sounded like a 12-year old novice after two lessons. Embarrassing. Perhaps that's why he didn't ask me back.

Anyway, my next step was to work with a very talented chap called COLIN THURSTON , who was the resident engineer at Southern Music, who I was signed to at the time. We got on well and found that we had a mutual passion for the Beatles. Consequently, we would steal illicitly into the studio and spend whole weekends re-recording many Beatles classics and trying to re-create the same sound with the two of us playing all the instruments and doing the vocals. Of course, we failed, but learned a lot about the whole recording process. Colin went on to be one of the 1980s' biggest producers, producing DuranDuran, Kajagoogoo, Human League, plus a host of others.

Out of this came the embryonic TRICKSTER , via a residency at a West End restaurant/night club, The Piazza, in Piccadilly.

By 1975, Colin was working in another studio, TPA in Denmark Street , with me as his trusty assistant. We would go into the studio after having played 4/5 hours at the Piazza and work all night, and then we worked all day on legitimate sessions. Sleep was a luxury during this period.

We actually released a couple of singles during this time – TAKE TO THE MOUNTAINS under the name, THE BILLY BATES COMPANY, and a double b-side (yes, it was that good) containing the Beatles songs COME TOGETHER and DEAR PRUDENCE (can't remember what we called ourselves for that one). Of course, both flopped, but TAKE TO THE MOUNTAINS got a glowing review in the old MELODY MAKER, and did get a lot of airplay.

We refined the idea of TRICKSTER over the next year or so, and finally got a deal with UNITED ARTISTS records, and started working on our album with then house-producer at UA, MARTIN RUSHENT (who also went on to mega success with the Stranglers, Human League and so on, and so on ….do you detect a pattern emerging here?). Our first single, FLYAWAY , flew away into the sunset, never to be seen again (perhaps the best place for it), but during the recording process, we switched labels to JET RECORDS , home of ELO and WIZZARD , among others, and run by legendary pop gangster, DON ARDEN. With such illustrious label mates, success would surely follow.

We made the mistake of agreeing to be managed by Mr Arden, and while we got to be a part of the 1978 ELO SPACESHIP tour, which took us around the world, I have to say that working with Arden and the various members of his family who were involved in the business, including the now ubiquitous ‘champion of the housewife' ……. (excuse me while I compose myself), Sharon Arden (now Osbourne), was not the best decision I ever made, or the best experience I ever had. Perhaps I should leave it at that ………

OZZY was also with Jet Records at the time, but was actually the office joke then. He was always pissed out of his skull and making a nuisance of himself around the office. Occasionally, he would attempt (and I do mean ‘attempt' to get on the train, because he often couldn't work out how to open the door) to get on the same train back to Birmingham as the Trickster bass-player, John Fincham, and myself, and if we saw him tottering down the platform towards our carriage, we would dive under the table so he wouldn't see us. We knew from experience that if he spotted us, our hour and a half journey back to Brum would be, shall we say, eventful, i.e. boozy, loud, and embarrassing, but often hilarious as well. Again, I will say no more for fear of litigation. Ozzy was so pissed ALL the time around then, and so probably remembers absolutely nothing of ever having met me.

So anyway, TRICKSTER finally settled on its line-up – Me (guitar/vocals), Colin Hewinson (keyboards/vocals), Paul Elliot (drums), Mike Sheppard (bass/guitar/vocals/ copious amounts of drugs and alcohol) - released the album FIND THE LADY and the single IF THAT'S THE WAY THE FEELING TAKES YOU to, once again, universal indifference, although the single did receive massive airplay in the USA and sold around 50,000 copies, but this was not enough to even threaten the top 500. You have to admit that this is a pretty impressive (under)achievement when you consider that we were a part of one of the biggest tours happening anywhere in the world in 1978, playing to 10,000 plus crowds every night, and proud occupants of a huge billboard on Hollywood Boulevard.

What followed was the increasingly desperate release, as a single, of almost every track on the album in the (vain) hope that someone, somewhere would find something they wanted to buy or play on the radio, and elevate the band to the level that we all felt we should occupy.

In all fairness to Mr Arden and Jet Records, it was pretty clear at this early stage that Trickster were a lost cause, but they let us make another album. We enlisted new bass-player, John Fincham, and wonderful singer/songwriter/guitarist, Mike Groth, to hopefully enhance our chances of success, and he did indeed write some good songs for our second album, BACK TO ZERO , but we again failed, despite another major tour with another major act at the time, BOSTON . The closest we came to threatening the singles charts was with a track of mine called I'M SATISFIED, which, in fact, was the least Trickster-like song we ever recorded. Nevertheless, I do have printed evidence that this track entered the British charts at number 99 and stayed there for TWO WHOLE WEEKS. So what did Jet Records do after we had all glimpsed this pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel? You've guessed, they dropped us from the label, and embroiled us in a legal dispute which meant that we could not sign to another label or ply our trade as a band in any way, shape or form. We had no money to fight them, so we folded.

I have to say though, that, although I was disappointed at having had such an opportunity and having blown it, I was hugely relieved to be out of that band. If we had succeeded, at least two of them would now be dead through over-indulgence in illegal substances, and I would probably still be in debt to the Inland Revenue who, even at that time, were convinced (wrongly) that we were all sitting on large stashes of cash. In short, I think it would have ruined my life, and more importantly, it would have meant that I wouldn't have met my wife, Jo, and gone on to have my wonderful daughters, Rosie and Sarah.

Above all this though, was the simple fact that Trickster was a pretty crappy band, especially live. A definite case of the whole being, unusually, less than the sum of the parts because there were some really talented people in the band.

Went into a bit of a wasteland for a year or so after the demise of Trickster. Did some work as a recording engineer and as assistant engineer to Colin Thurston as he began work on the first DuranDuran album, but my heart wasn't really in it. Got involved with a studio project situated in the Rainbow theatre in Finsbury Park (a pretty famous rock venue in the 70s and 80s), but that fell apart after all the gear was stolen from the actual studio before we opened for business.

I moved back to Birmingham when a major tragedy struck my family with the death of my beloved brother, David (Basher), in February 1981. In November of the same year I rejoined QUILL , and this is where I met my wife to be, Jo, when she joined the band as keyboard player/oboe player and singer. It wasn't exactly love at first sight, but love and lust followed soon after our first meeting.

QUILL released a single, SAY IT AIN'T SO , in 1982, which was produced by me and backed up with a song written by Jo and myself called DON'T STOP ME NOW. Again, the single was a spectacular flop, but sold well locally, and got a fair amount of airplay. In retrospect, my production left a lot to be desired, but I was still learning. I was also pissed out of my skull most of the time around this period. A combination of first marriage falling apart, what seemed to be unrequited love for Jo, and delayed shock at the death of David. A period spent seriously off the rails, but there were some good moments …. which I can't really go into here.

Anyway, that well-established Bates restlessness began to assert itself in 1983 when Jo and I left to form DON'T PANIC . We were initially a duo trying to do a sort of Eurythmics kind of thing, and we did sign a publishing deal with RCA/Arista, but despite a lot of record label interest from both sides of the Atlantic that led to absolutely zilch, we decided to cut our losses and decamp for a while in 1987 to DUBAI and ABU DHABI in the United Arab Emirates to actually make some money for a change. This is where I feel I made a lot of progress as a singer because we were playing 6 nights every week, plus one lunchtime some of the time, and three or four 45-minute sets per night. In such circumstances, you either toughen up or clap out, vocally. The whole experience was pretty good, but the hypocrisy we encountered in this supposedly Muslim part of the world left us with a more universal scepticism, and just got on our damned nerves finally.

An important addendum to this period in the 80s was meeting a young Martyn Baylay with whom I have spasmodically written songs with ever since, and who had some success in the Eurovision Song Contest with the song ‘COME BACK' sung by Jessica Garlick.

I have to say that my experiences of the record industry in the 1970s and 1980s made me extremely reluctant to ever get involved again, and so when Jo and I moved back to the UK in 1990, after Iraq invaded Kuwait and were making threatening noises towards the UAE, we decided to move to Malvern in Worcestershire, where I thought I would never be tempted by the bright lights and promises of success. WRONG!!!!!

Jo and I returned from the Middle East fundamentally because of the first Gulf War, but we had been looking for an excuse for some time. We returned at the beginning of August 1990, by the end of the month we had bought a small house in Malvern and Jo was pregnant with Rosie. Pretty good going. Our beautiful Rosie was born in May 1991, by the way. Our equally beautiful second daughter, Sarah, followed in February 1993, just before I started work with ELO Part 2.

Anyway, back to 1990/91. I did spend a year or so working with Martyn Baylay constructing conservatories, doing guitar workshops and awful pub gigs, pretty depressing stuff, but the music business eventually sought me out and I got involved in a few more serious projects.

Initially, I was doing work as a session singer for local radio and TV jingles at the Old Smithy in Worcester . I then progressed(?) onto writing and producing jingles, before meeting up with Simon Harrison who had a recording project on the go at the Old Smithy, and who needed a co-writer and singer. This turned in to the album POWER , which was released under the band name ATLANTIC . This was an interesting project in some ways because it involved me writing lyrics and melodies to already existing backing tracks. It was challenging, but ultimately frustrating because of being constrained by pre-existing chord sequences, most of which were a little too similar for my tastes.

Nevertheless, it was an OK album, and I did manage the dubious distinction of being voted Number 2 in the Best Singer category of an obscure Belgian Heavy Rock magazine poll. Impressed ?????

I was also involved in singing the THEME from THE GLADIATORS , a successful TV series, in this period. Of course, things are never simple with Bates. The song was written supposedly especially for me by Muff Murfin and one of his American cohorts, but when I came to record the track, it didn't exactly sound wonderful. The demo vocal, done by a small, bald, fat American session singer, sounded bloody great, but they couldn't use him in the video because he didn't look the part. So basically, they used his version on most of the broadcasts in the UK , although I occasionally heard my version being used and always cringed at my vocal performance. The album went Gold, though. Of course, this had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it contained about 10 rock classics from the likes of Queen, Free and many more ………

Around the same time I met Kelly Groucott again after many years, at one of my pub gigs in Wombourne, close to Wolverhampton . He told me about the ELO Part 2 project which had just hit the rocks financially because of the over-ambitious nature of the launch, i.e. Russian Symphony Orchestra, first gigs at the NEC, Birmingham etc. In other words, they were trying to take up where the original ELO left off 5 years earlier. The whole thing had fallen apart, but Bev Bevan, Kelly, Mik Kaminski, Lou Clarke and the others wanted to have another go – more sensibly this time. In the first incarnation of Part 2, Neil Lockwood had played rhythm guitar and Pete Haycock had played lead, but neither of them fancied taking a risk on it a second time. Enter SuperBates, who proceeded to take on this two man job single-handed. In short, the audition/rehearsal was good, and it was all systems go for the next 6/7years.

Also around 1992/3, my musical career took another of its left turns when I got involved with the writing and recording of a couple of albums for the ballroom dancing market. My friend, Martyn, Jo, and myself, put together the albums LE CAFÉ D'AMOUR and LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT YOU. The albums contained songs we had written in a pop style, but with strict-tempo rhythm tracks. Again, this is not my finest moment, but the first of these albums sold inordinately well, especially in Japan . Things were getting to be too busy with ELO Pt2 for me to remain involved, so I made my excuses and bowed out.

1993 saw a pretty long UK/German tour, followed by an 8-week stint in the USA , and then a trip to Poland at the end of the year. Pretty heady stuff when you have vowed to say out of the Rock Biz and consigned yourself to a life of pubs and conservatory building.

1994 took up where '93 left off with much touring, plus the recording and release of the album MOMENT OF TRUTH (my title, by the way), one fairly successful single, Eric Troyer's POWER OF A MILLION LIGHTS (my title again), and one complete flop, my song, BREAKING DOWN THE WALLS (history repeating itself).

1995 was a strange year. At the end of '94, my dad head been life-threateningly ill, I had come back from South America with a serious and very painful infection (no, not what you're thinking). Into '95 and my first wife, Karen, died of cancer, and I got very ill with chest and throat problems which threatened to blight a big tour of Australia planned by the band for April of that year. With a combination of homeopathy, healthy food and positive thought, I managed to recover for the tour, but the video footage reveals a lead guitarist/singer looking none too healthy, and in truth, I was barely keeping it together, healthwise (mentally and physically).

One of our gigs in Melbourne was filmed and recorded with the intention of releasing a ‘live' album and video/DVD of the tour. This resulted in the ONE NIGHT album, which has seen the light of day in an infinite number of guises and disguises throughout the world ever since. The video never made it onto the shelves because there was only about a half an hour of useable footage. I can personally vouch for this having spent several days in a dark video editing suite searching the master tapes for footage of the required quality.

I was also charged with the responsibility for co-producing the album with Chris Tsangerides (famous for work with Gary Moore, Sabbath and Thin Lizzy, to name but a few). This sounds like a dream job when you consider that we mixed the album in a great studio in Trinidad called the Caribbean Sound Basin . Loads of people have imagined a couple of days in the studio followed by a week on the beach and so on. The reality, I have to painfully tell you, was the exact opposite, unfortunately.

Responsibility for making sure that our concert was recorded properly had fallen to our manager/producer, Stefan Galfas, a pathetic little man who used to attempt to make up for his vertical shortcomings by telling the MOST outrageous stories about himself, his family, his escapades, and his life. Or should I say the most outrageous lies. When you tell lies of such magnitude, you should at least try to make sure that the truth cannot be so easily discovered, Mr Galfas.

Anyway, when we finally managed to get 3 ADAT machines to synchronise and began to put up the faders, we found that the quality of the recorded material was bloody awful. Bev's drums, for example, usually so ‘big' sounding, actually sounded like someone hitting a series of cardboard boxes, and the orchestra (not the most impressive bunch of musicians anyway) sounded like a badly recorded Portsmouth Sinfonia. It was clear that this was going to be a mammoth task if we were to have an album that the band could be proud of. And so it was, a mammoth task, that is. We spent three weeks closeted in the studio, albeit a nice space to occupy, trying to make a silk purse out of the proverbial sow's ear. If we achieved this, it is mainly down to Mr Tsangerides' expertise as an engineer. Worst of all was that I had to watch the 1995 FA Cup Final in my room, and not at home in my own chair, surrounded by empty beer cans, nuts and a crisp-strewn floor. The way we have to suffer for our art sometimes ………..

An extremely lengthy US tour, and a UK tour in the autumn, from which we made absolutely no money due to increased production costs, supposedly in keeping with what Galfas thought our audience would expect, took care of the rest of 1995. This was the year, I think, that I spent 8 out of the 12 months away from home. Christ, how I missed Jo and my beautiful daughters.

By 1996 , I was pretty up to the top with ELO Pt2 and decided to make my first solo album, an album by the way, that our manager Stefan Bullshit ….oh sorry, Galfas, assured me had many major labels queuing to release. Of course, this proved to complete bollocks, so I decided to do it all myself in my own studio (????), and on my own label, DON'T PANIC PRODUCTIONS , which I had with my wife, Jo.

The album, NAKED, followed in 1996. I never intended this album to be commercially successful, and I wasn't disappointed, but I really enjoyed making it, warts and all, and still have a fond feeling about it. It is totally imperfect and flawed, but many people have expressed their affection towards it. Thank you for that.

Around the same time I conceived of the idea of promoting a concert at TAMWORTH CASTLE to which I would invite members of Part 2, plus my new found (if only temporary) friend, Gordon Giltrap, to play. Much to their own surprise and subsequent bewilderment, they all agreed. I also decide to record and film this occasion and release a CD and video. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but when the multi-track recorder broke down halfway through the concert, I knew it was an ill-starred venture. When I got to review the video footage, my worst fears were confirmed. Again, there was barely enough footage of useable quality, but I had to go ahead and release the damned thing because our partner at the time, Mike Flanders, had already taken orders and money from people.

The CD and video, A LITTLE LIGHT ON AN ELECTRIC NIGHT , are worthy attempts at something really magical, but I have to say that this was not my finest moment, mostly due to the gods not being with us on the night, and a shoestring budget.

1996 contained the usual cocktail of touring the planet, with the added responsibility of a couple of tours with Mik Kaminski to promote and sell NAKED.

Touring with ELO Part 2 was often a strange, unpredictable and tiring thing. I am sorry, but the exact chronology of our various visits to South America , South Africa , Eastern Europe , New Zealand etc escapes me, or rather, doesn't really interest me any more, but some of the bizarre travel schedules stay with me. Take, for instance, a trip to Johannesburg, followed by an overnight flight in a smoke-filled EgyptAir plane to Cairo, followed by a frustrating few hours in a filthy, smelly, people-filled Transfer area before boarding a Singapore Airlines flight to Dubai, where we played and then went immediately from the stage back to the airport for a flight to Stansted for a gig in Colchester, and then on to Aberdeen for another gig. So, on 4 consecutive nights, we played in Johannesburg , Dubai , Colchester, and Aberdeen . Out of these four nights, we only got to sleep in a bed for two of them. The life of a jetsetter is a wonderful thing, wouldn't you agree?

It was this sort of eccentric and inconsiderate scheduling that made me begin to wonder whether I wanted to be a part of the band anymore. This, plus the fact that I had Rosie and Sarah, my two fairly new daughters at home, and I hardly ever saw them. Jo was also creaking under the strain of my continual absences.

1997 saw me touring Germany as a solo artist, the release of NAKED in Germany , and me beginning to put my next album, AGONY AND ECSTACY , together. Not forgetting much touring with Part 2. My stints in Germany at this time were tiring, but I really enjoyed them, largely because I was accompanied by my friend, Mark Knight. Mark is a wonderful bass player, a lovely chap, and a great navigator. These were the days before GPS systems, so without him I would have been perpetually lost.

I think I actually released AGONY & ECSTACY in 1998, but my memory is not what it used to be, so I may be wrong. This album is a mixed bag. I was definitely trying to achieve something with this hotch-potch of styles and ideas, but listening to it now, I cannot quite fathom out what that was. Whatever it was, I didn't succeed. Nevertheless, there are a few good moments. My favourite track is probably one of the last I wrote for the album, MEASURE OF THE MAN, which I wrote in response to some pretty vicious and nasty talk about me by various bitter and twisted harridans, with all sorts of agendas, posing as ELO Pt2 fans. I have to say that this was one of the major reasons for me leaving the band early in 1999. This, plus the fact that we were obviously on the slippery slope down. An Australian tour illustrated the fact because we were suddenly playing tacky casinos and social clubs, after having played larger venues to thousands of people three years earlier.

I have to say that ELO Part 2 could still be a functional and successful band if the financial needs of certain members had not forced us into playing all sorts of seedy, rundown venues when we should have been capitalising on the success we had in places like Carnegie Hall, Rosemont Theatre, Philadelphia Academy etc. A good example of this was the fact that the night after our great triumph at Carnegie Hall in New York we were playing in front of a huge inflatable beer bottle on the Budweiser stage at some godawful county fair in upstate New York . This sort of paradox cheapened the band's reputation and image with the major US promoters, and ultimately doomed the band to the garbage heap. A great shame.

So, I left the band in January 1999. My last gig was in St Petersburg . Not a bad place to bow out. My last gig in the USA was not so illustrious, a place called Maddie's Bar, a roadhouse in Pennsylvania , I think. A FAR cry from earlier triumphs. C'est la vie.

1999 saw me indulging in half-hearted and futile attempts to launch a solo career, but I have to say my heart was not really in it, and I succumbed to pretty major depression before deciding to pull myself up by the boots straps and see whether any part of my brain was actually still functional. So in September 1999, I became an undergraduate at the University of Wales , Lampeter, and embarked on a History degree.

This period of study and introspection meant that my musical career went into suspended animation for 3 or 4 years. In fact, I was not certain whether I would ever do music seriously again. I would actually be a PhD student now and lecturing in some Uni or other if I had been able to remain solvent financially while I was sorting it all out, but I HAD to get back to music in order to pay the bills.

During this period I did quite a few pub gigs and other bits of rubbish, but it was all pretty depressing. One positive thing was that it gave me a fresh perspective on what I should do, musically, and I did actually record songs on a very casual basis during my 4 years studying. I am a songwriter, albeit not a very successful or natural one, so it was inevitable that I would have ideas that I needed to make into something, if only to unclutter my brain.

The album I released in 2003, ALTER EGO , was a fairly motley collection of the stuff I had written and recorded between 2000 and 2003. It is my favourite CD of mine, although the recording/production values are a little lo-fi. Nevertheless, it contains some of my best lyrics (never my strong point) and most thoughtful songs. It is, most definitely, completely uncommercial, but all the better for that. My favourite song from this album, from a sentimental point of view, is OPEN YOUR HEART , a message to my daughters. but a song I wrote just as I thought I had compiled the album, ONE SKY , is one of my most important songs. I wrote this song as a result of reading a book by Arundhati Roy called the Algebra of Infinite Justice, and is something of a comment on the instinctive cultural and racial intolerance we in the, so-called, Christian world manifest and act upon. After all, there is little difference between us all, biologically. It is in the area of culture that our major differences lie, and this is a human construct driven by an infinite number of vested interests, prejudices, economic considerations and simple xenophobia. The song is just a cry for a little tolerance, and for us all to free ourselves from the pernicious influence and views of the American Christian Right perpetrated by good ol' George ‘Dubya'. Additionally, there is a lot of double talk on all sides about the reasons for and motivations behind war.

ALTER EGO, when it emerged in September 2003, coincided with something of a rebirth of my career as a musician. My friend, ErnstAlbrecht Scholz from Sounds Promotion in Rathenow, close to Berlin, called me and suggested that I could tour Germany again if we put together a band and played ELO, ELO Pt2, and Phil Bates songs. I decided to give it a go, and project THE ELECTRIC LIGHT BAND, featuring PHIL BATES , was born, and has been running successfully ever since.

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT BAND is quite an interesting concoction actually. It is made up of German musicians, Ernie Schmeidel on keyboards, Ralf Vornberger on bass, guitar and vocals, Bernhard Herzinger on drums and vocals, occasionally Valentin Gregor on violin ….plus me. These guys are seriously talented. We put the whole thing together in two days of concentrated rehearsal, plus many phone calls/e-mails to discuss harmonies etc. This is no mean feat when you think how difficult some ELO tracks are. They are also very nice guys and a pleasure to spend time with, especially Ernie who has allowed me into his home and the bosom of his family during my frequent trips there.

Simultaneously, in autumn 2003, I began a, so far, very short career teaching History undergraduates in Brecon, Wales . I taught a module on 19 th Century Wales from October until December to year one students beginning the same degree I had just finished. I got a decent degree, by the way, a 2:1. Not bad for someone who had always thought of himself as complete academic imbecile. I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the lecturing and would still be doing more and more of it if financial necessities hadn't intervened, plus a reluctance to commit to full-time lecturing.

2003/4 saw me gradually clawing my way out of the depressing circuit I had been playing on during my period of study, helped by increasingly frequent trips to Germany, for either 2/3 week tours, or odd weekends,

This process was helped further by a call from Bev Bevan, one of my ELO Pt2 cohorts, who fancied another knock after around 4 years absence from shed building. Along with Neil Lockwood, from the original ELO Pt2 on keyboards, and Phil Tree, ex-Roy Wood, on bass, the BEV BEVAN BAND was formed. First gig was on April 1 st 2004 at the Jamhouse in Birmingham , where we did a monthly residency until the end of the year.

2005 saw this band mutate into BEV BEVAN'S MOVE , with a tour of small UK theatres, much like those played by ELO Pt2 back in 1993, during the autumn of this year.

Skipping back a little, I released my fourth solo offering, ONE SKY , in September 2004 to coincide with another German tour. This album is a little more mainstream than previous offerings. This means that there are drums, electric guitars, vocal harmonies etc, and is a little more commercial in approach. I called the album ONE SKY because I wanted to include a slightly more produced and filled-out version of the song that was a last minute inclusion on ALTER EGO.

I do like ONE SKY, the album, in many ways, but I will not record another album like it. My first love is the acoustic/bluesy/celtic approach to writing and playing, but this was inconsistent with the music that my German audiences were hearing onstage, so I made an album with more of a ‘band' feel. On this CD, I also re-recorded two tracks from NAKED, WRITING ON THE WALL and MY DECLINE AND FALL, plus a song I wrote for Jo in around 1992, STILL IN LOVE WITH YOU. Another old song, FEAR OF A LONELY HEART, I wrote with Martyn Baylay back in around 1984.

So, 2005 sees me back in the mainstream of gigging, recording etc, and enjoying most of it a great deal. I hope to catch you all at some point. Thanks for reading this. I do tend to go on rather a lot, but I hope you got something out of it.

Love, best wishes and thanks.

Phil

Bates Bands