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BIOG |
I was Born in Holbrook, Derbyshire on the 9th July 1971 to a soundtrack written and performed by John Denver - spending a happy childhood in Kilburn, Derbyshire, blessed with a mum and dad who enabled me to study the Piano and thus pave the way for what would later become my life as a songwriter. Whilst I had one hand on the Piano my other hand was wielding a paint brush - watching Tony Hart's 'Take Hart'. My head was firmly in the clouds with my feet trying to follow with flashy high kicks - studying the martial arts and feeling spiritually guided by my idol 'Bruce Lee' (whom my Dad had introduced me to on the advent of Beta-max video). The (sur)real world would eventually beckon and force my hand to make a career decision between music and art, but I never did because they are one of the same...
When I was 12 years old I found a mystical secret door, I turned the key (Bb - I think), flung it open to reveal a magical world of synthesizers, sequencers and drum machines, it was there I would reside. The first record I bought was the 7"single of 'Hungry like the wolf' by Duran Duran, a 'Duranie' convert, I sculptured me and my blonde hair into a Nik Rhodes / David Sylvian-esque new romantic synth boffin and attended school knowing full well where I was going (probably the last time I did). My bedroom resembled a spaceship cockpit modelled on the Millennium Falcon with my bank of synthesizers and studio equipment consisting of Moog Rogue, Korg Poly 800, Roland SH101, Fostex X-15 multi-track tape machine and Roland Drumatics to name but a few, all layered like cantilevered Architecture.
I religiously read 'Smash Hits' and wallpapered my bedroom wall with posters of my heroes: Stephen Duffy, Nik Rhodes, Howard Jones, Martin Gore, Vince Clarke and dreamt of Roland Jupiter Eights and Fairlight C.M.I.s as bourgeois fashion accessories on Top Of The Pops. My world was held together with bluetack...
I began writing music before I was a teenager, experimenting with and programming synthesizers and sequencers, I found with these two hands I had a modest electronic orchestra at my fingertips. Rehearsals over I booked myself into Pelican Recording Studios in Derby and recorded my first piece 'I'll miss you' (in retrospect - an instrumental piece about death), absorbing as much information about multi-track recording as possible. I wanted to be 'the boy behind the music' and not the boy stood precariously in-front of it, so Sallyann stepped into the lead singer's eighties shoes and we promptly recorded my first actual 'songs' (engineered by the gracious Ken Cook). My numerous instrumentals would later all become songs and the songs - albums, once I'd found something / someone to write lyrics about, when I was fifteen 'that someone' found me...
School holidays were spent wandering the train lines, long summer evenings we listened in awe to Depeche Mode and Yazoo 12 inch mixes in either Vince's or my bedroom - Vince continued to live the dream, and later became a DJ for a while. I, however had my sights set on a muse. During this blissful time of discovery and journey from innocence I fell in love with my soul mate and when I turned 15 asked her to marry me, we didn't but she did take my hand and we fleetingly became boyfriend and girlfriend, if I close my eyes I can still feel her elegant artist's fingers clutching mine - like on those glorious rainy days she'd meet me on the bandstand...
It was then I left town to seek my fortune and that very 'fortune' smiled at me once more as I attained a position at 'Barnsley College of Art and Design', this brought a galaxy of new friends and adventures, I still visit Barnsley Metropolitan Library's coffee shop to this day to pay tribute to our pretentious years spent dreaming there (in fact we were there more than at college). Graduating, I left my second home to return to the Derbyshire Dales with John Denver and Stephen Duffy playing on my mind. I then fell in love with Stephen's band 'The Lilac Time' which promptly ignited the desire to learn guitar - my ever faithful friend, the one I run to when I'm beat or in love - so I guess we're constant companions.
Now based in Belper (a stone's throw from my place of birth), I aspired to The Beatles and found myself writing for and finally on stage fronting various bands such as the infamous four piece 'Novel'. We signed T-Shirts in our heyday and somehow captured the imagination of our piers reaching the peak of our power supporting Skiddaddle, when the audience favoured us! The infinite songs I wrote for and with Novel still mystically live on as I'm always being asked by fans to compile an album of all the demos, something me and a fellow novel member will do soon (I promise) to finally fulfil the dream and sound that was Novel.
Always on the verge of my 'big break', I wandered from A through B to CND and worked in a record store, hanging out with Shelley. Then on the merits of numerous demo tapes I'd sent off I attained a position of 'sound engineer' at Meadow Farm Recording Studio - mentored by Stewart Field. Professional studio work was a dream come true and the experience enriched me and remains invaluable to this day as a muso, sound engineer and producer. It was there I met my long standing friend and electromaniac Mark Johnson of Silver Factory Superstars. I enlisted him into 'Novel' and the rest is history, literally. We eventually awoke from the 'Novel' dream leaving most of the pages left unread when the 'novelty' wore off. I then left the recording studio as the lifestyle was similar to that of an actor, the work was either 'feast or famine', so I returned to painting and worked as a graphic artist and dreamt up my next project...
'The Cottage Industry' was then formed with Mark Johnson and a concept EP followed, vanished and therefore the collective did too, although MJ is still involved in the wings. It was around this time that I was hangin' with my now right hand man (yet another keyboard player) Paul 'Northers' Northridge, we formed 'Zuckerman's Famous Pig' (a line from E. B. White's 'Charlotte's Web'), predominantly to take my songs on the road and we performed various concerts and radio sessions under this umbrella. Interest in my work gathered momentum so the band was augmented to a three piece with Chris Preston playing percussion and penny whistle, then with ego prevailing the name changed (again) to the humbly titled 'The Mark Lilley Band', I had lost my way. Along this beaten track I was receiving art accolades such as having paintings hung in 'The Derbyshire Museum and Art Gallery', and being commissioned to paint album covers, but songwriting called me on, always...
So I became an underground folkstar, even being commissioned to write and record. I was billed as ‘local hero’ at the ‘Belper Folk Festival’ then later headlined at ‘The Amber Valley Festival’ sharing a dressing room with Blue Peter’s Simon Groom! Stage fright would eventually ease under the banner of pretension and red wine, but then came the inevitable 'offstage fright'.
The second time I asked a girl to marry me was in the mid 1990s. I'd fallen in love (again) with 'the opening titles' Philippa Street, so I drew up the plan, put pen to paper, wrote her song and stole her from her long-term boyfriend. I was 23 and she was 18 and many beautiful care free years passed with my now extended family. We bought our first home and moved in during a rainstorm one Tuesday evening, whilst only the previous night Michele with one 'L' had asked me to run away with her to the fairground - I declined and opted for domestic bliss, 'Dawson's Creek' and dinner parties with my girlfriend Philippa instead, but then I lost 'me' somewhere along the way again. I would only professionally record sporadically during this period, these songs would later appear on my debut album and I hope they don't sound too disjointed from the remainder I recorded in the space of a year. I was now frequenting and singing solo in folk clubs. The folk world seemed to embrace me with open arms and everything was going my way - signing autographs after concerts and generally learning my craft playing live. So convinced I was the new John Denver I had to marry before turning 30, remaining true to one of our favourite books / films I proposed on 'Watership Down', Philippa agreed and we made love against a tree. We bunked off work and day-tripped to Barnsley or The Malvern Hills to drink tea at 'The Kettle Sings' to be close to Stephen Duffy. We holidayed in Saundersfoot, Pembrokeshire continuing the family tradition of exploring rock pools and wandering along our favourite beach Wiseman's Bridge, watching the total eclipse of the sun of 1999 and drinking Claret, transfixed and listening to the visionary Kula Shaker. We wed the following year, and divorced the next. I was unsure of the question but now certain marriage wasn't the answer so music became my mistress again, I was reinstated as the resident sound engineer / producer / arranger at Meadow Farm Studio and started my second childhood...
After packing my bags I left married life and crash landed in the next chapter, my brother and brilliant Dad constructed The Lilley Pad recording studio and I furnished it with a state of the art dream making machine that I'd drawn up the blueprints for years ago - It was there I would at last do what I am here to do. But before I embarked on recording my debut album in it's entirety I needed to make my pilgrimage to 'Windstar' and John Denver's 'Spirit' monument in Aspen, Colorado to pay homage to my guiding superstar. After a cinematic road-trip through eight states and suitably inspired by John and the American dream I returned to England to finish 'the opening titles'. Late bank holiday Sunday evenings my Dad and I ventured to the U.C.I cinema and sat in wonderment at the big screen - brought alive by the projector machine's magical beam.
'the opening titles' was released In August 2004 and a short lived promotional tour of my street followed, being asked to play a live acoustic session with interview on BBC Radio Derby’s prime time ‘Shane O’ Conner Show’. I signed my first non exclusive record contract with Chromium Records as they wanted to release 'birthday suit' on one of their compilation albums, so I was living the dream...
A few months later my life's work seemed to disappear into oblivion, but despair eventually diminished as I read the debut's reviews: "a sweetly coated treat" (The Derbyshire Times), "a debut of emotional highs and lows" (The Belper News) "the opening titles has a strong pop/folk sound" (The Derbyshire Evening Telegraph). It seemed I had touched someone's heart at least so I picked myself up, dusted myself off, retreated into the inner sanctum and began to write and record my second album (a concept popart album) and picture myself hanging with Stephen Duffy, Crispian Mills and other poets again. The closest I'd come to critical acclaim so far was finding a copy of my debut hidden behind a 'Lilac Time' album in Reveal Records (an award winning indie record store), good company indeed, it was far out man - on that day I proclaimed I had finally made it!!! (although my bank account disagreed and my ability to wander down the street unrecognised severely dismayed me too.)
I ran home, fumbled under my bed for a jar of stardust hidden in a tatty but charismatic cardboard box, opened the lid and began to sprinkle the contents (consisting of various love letters, paraphernalia, bigger production and dreams) over my second album. The new popart concept album came in a gush like a true love on the back seat of my car in the summer of love 2005, I couldn't stop this if I tried. Maybe I was this prolific songwriter people told me about so I wandered around my home town in disguise, almost undercover, living a reclusive existence and perfected being an arrogant poet - avoiding the rat race and desiring only acclaim and her, always her...
Then in the spring of 2005 disaster struck as disasters do and my Dad suddenly died, my world and I fell apart. Like me, the album stopped in it's tracks, and I crashed off the rails never to return to that same comfortable path again. That day (the worse day of my life), I began to write I reckon so (My Dad's favourite phrase, a Clint Eastwood remark taken from the landmark Cowboy film 'The Outlaw Josey Wales', and now the title of Dad's song and epitaph), to complete the circle my Mum sings the backing vocals beautifully on this song making it even more poignant.
As an angel had been brutally taken away another one was promptly sent to save me - my first love, my picture without a frame returned. As a person and artiste my whole perspective changed - I began to see my own vanishing point, so I grabbed a celebrity magazine, turned to one of the last pages and I circled an ad for rehab, then in this circle she drew two eyes, a nose and a smile. The rose tinted glasses I wore while I wrote had been savagely trampled underfoot and lost forever, so my songs would undoubtedly become darker, but my angel found the bluetack from my bedroom many years ago and patched my glasses and me back together.
As I pondered and scribbled down the final pages of my second album, another chapter unfolded in front of my eyes, the chapter where I wrote songs in my sleep and worked in a land caught between fiction and non-fiction at the Library. My 'Derbyshire Libraries and Heritage Division' colleagues renewed my pride as well as my books and whilst reading between the lines and shelving a 'History of Art' hardback one summer's day - I saw a beautiful librarian through the dusty wooden shelves and henceforth that's all I could see. Inspired once more - I bought a blank canvas, began to wield my Winsor and Newton paintbrushes again and painted the album cover-art in gouache, titled "Emily, the sea and me", after a dream I had. I used to spend my life painting every blade of grass, but now I just wanted to roll on it. This new found ecstasy and freedom is visible and apparent in my latest brush strokes. So there, lying on the green but never jealous grass of rural England I thanked my lucky stars (that's you) and wistfully began writing my third solo album. To be continued...
Mark Lilley 2007