John's Bio ...

I had a normal upbringing in the suburbs of South West London except that I never knew my father and this became something of a theme in my songwriting later.

My family were very much into classical music and that was seen as real music and anything non-classical wasn't. But I listened to pop radio Radio Luxembourg and like everyone else the "newly created" Radio 1. And after I had seen the movie of Woodstock at the age of 15 I wanted to become a guitar player like Hendrix Alvin Lee and Santana.

I had music lessons and learned to read music, I can't play the piano properly from music but am quite proficient at keyboards of all kinds and play guitar bass and most stringed instruments OK. I also dabble with drums and percussion so can create my recordings solo.

The 70s is my era musically Led Zep 2 Steely Dan Stevie Wonder Bowie Little Feat British prog rock such as Caravan, Soft Machine, Hatfield and the North, Gong and also although it was not trendy at the time I always liked country music and The Carpenters.

By the 1980s I was entertaining ideas of succeeding in the music industry as a songwriter and performer but the need to earn a living for a growing family had put a stop to that by 1986 and I only started again once I was semi-retired in the early 2010's.

My first project was to look out all my compositions from the 80's and record the ones that had in my opinion stood the test of time and this ended up as 17 tracks on my 2011 album Retrospectives. Most of these songs were originally written in the car during the day and recorded on my Teac 4-track at night time with headphones but I made the re-recordings in 2011 on a used Yamaha AW4416 in a tiny home studio.

My circumstances meant that through the Twenty Teens I was pretty-much performing covers but I was able to get into writing songs again.

My songs are amalgamations of 2 notebooks one of lyrical ideas and the other of musical fragments. My words cover a wide range of personal emotions and scraps of current affairs and things I find interesting. Musical bits come in the form of melodies, riffs, chord sequences, rhythms and sounds I find promising. I am often working on more than one song at a time so lyrics and music might switch around.

I generally songwrite in the studio with the multitrack recorder (Avid Pro-tools) so can build up layers I can also change tempos key signatures and of course alter and refine the layout, structure, instrumentation and overall mood. So the production is happening alongside the songwriting. Very occasionally a whole song will come at once and where that has happened I've put it in the individual composition notes but it is rare TBH.

Once I have a set of songs I like to finish them off, put them in order and compile an album. I always liked listening to whole albums and I think the tracklist is very important to tell a bit of a story and develop and atmosphere. When I decided to write a musical this came to the fore because the narrative is everything and Lily the Musical is like a double album to me.

Truthfully I have always written songs and produced recordings for my own enjoyment but I have never given up the idea that others might like them too.

John (Crawley) 2025