I didn't realise what a task it would be to write a biography when that little voice in my head said "Why not write a biog for the web site?" Well it has really given me a trip through the dusty old memory banks.

1965 is the best place to begin, that's when I first started to play the guitar - an old Hofner and later a copy of a Strat. About this time I started hanging around with older musicians who were college students and they made me somewhat aware of some of the Blues and Jazz guitarists.

After some time my brother Tony who played the guitar (see Friends of Jade Warrior for plenty of info) moved back into the family house for a while - I clearly remember the day I said "Tony, what is that thing you do on the guitar when you use all the fingers at once?" he said "it's called fingerstyle". He showed me a pattern using the thumb and three fingers, I said "how long will it take me to do that pattern well?" He said "about a month". Much to both our surpise, within a few days I had it going really well - I think that was the first point that I thought I had a bit of a talent for the guitar.

The next major point was hearing albums like "John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton". The Beatles "Revolver" showed a more "electric backwards" side to guitar playing - what a great album that is.

The most major time really was when Jimi Hendrix appeared - whoosh went guitar players minds and imagination - especially in those early days when you couldn't be exactly sure how he did what he did. "The Magic of the Music ruled" - once Hendrix arrived everything changed - even if you forget his sometimes amazing stage show - his poetic lyrics (especially on Axis Bold as Love album). His imagination as a songwriter and his "To Boldly Go" attitude with his sounds and production inventiveness - if you forget all of that - you are still left with one of the most creative, inspired and gifted musicians of our time. Yes I loved his guitar playing and still do very much. As with many musicians of my age, the Sixties had a huge influence.

Anyway back to the biog - the first gig I remember doing was in a function room above a pub in my home town of Acton, West London. I was there to do a guest spot with a friend.s band called "The Tripp" this was around the end of 1967 I think - anyway all was going OK until I got on stage and started to play "Purple Haze" very loudly!! - The room emptied in about 30 seconds - not the best of starts - anyway over the next couple of years I met some fairly good musicians and had a lot of good jams. I think around 1967 I bought my first new guitar - an Eko 335 type - which ended up having two complete sets of electrics on it - 4 pickups - 2 outputs etc - a lot of 1967 and 68 is a bit of a blur - so best move on to the next year.

1968 - I think it was around this time that I was making music with a couple of good friends. Clive Faria who played guitar (he had a lovely Telecaster) and piano and a great drummer called Loui Chalmers. We did some recording on a Revox 2tk and we had something put onto an acetate record, which was a "big deal" for us in those early days.


1969 was a year of change - I left my home in Acton and moved into a flat in Ealing, London. Tony my brother, Glyn Havard, Allan Price and Tom Newman lived there - so I guess that was the very beginning for me Glyn and Allan - I do remember we had a good few jams in that flat. Glyn was very into King Crimson at the time, so we used to jam on some of those King Crimson riffs.

I was in a band called "Black August" playing the bass - we played the college circuit (those really late night college gigs that would go on till 4.00 am or later), I do remember one gig in particular at "The Roundhouse" which was a really psychedelic place - I am sure it would have been really psychedelic even if I hadn't smoked too much of the good stuff before going on stage!!

At this time my brother Tony and his friend of many years Jon Field were getting some music together - some of which would eventually end up on the first Jade Warrior album. Glyn first started working on some ideas with them at this point, so you could say, "This was the Time and Place that Jade Warrior was born".

Around this time I did my first "paid" recording session. It was for Pat Lyons' Nirvana. I remember going home on the tube from Marble Arch thinking "Wow! I got ten shillings and sixpence for playing my guitar". I think all of Jade Warrior were on that album. Pat also had a band with Tony and Jon Field in the early sixties.


One of the very first gigs that Jade Warrior did at "Bumpers" club in London. (1971)

1970 - 1971 The EKO guitar went and I bought a very early Les Paul copy, one of the very first copies around and Jon Field did the "Hot Nail" pattern treatment on the body which looked great. Also at this time I bought a Shaftesbury copy of a Rickenbacker bass, which got me more into the bass. Most sadly Jimi Hendrix "moved back upstairs" this year. I was doing a day job - and I don't think I was in a band at this time.

At some point I went to see one of my favourite bands of that time at the Marquee club called "Vanilla Fudge" they were playing their last ever gig and it was really great.


"A crash course in how to play the guitar in a different way".

Tony said that Jade Warrior were doing a showcase gig to secure a record deal - but they needed another guitarist - so Tony asked me some thing like - "You will have to learn to play tuned to "Open C", learn new fingering and several new "techniques". I said "Yeah OK". He said you only have a week till the gig - gulp! Anyway, after one week's rehearsal all went well and from that gig came the deal and the first album.

I didn't see anyone from the band for a while and then I was asked to join and play in the live band - we did do a fair amount of gigs, places like The Marquee and The Greyhound in London were always good gigs, we also did several strange "Daytime " gigs in a college in Romford, which was a strange experience!

We were well received in many places and quite often got encores. I was using my Les Paul copy guitar for the first gigs going through an old P.A. amp and I used to get a great "Raving solo" but not much quality - It used to drive Tony mad that I had a really cheap guitar and amp - but it sounded great - he had a Telecaster and a good amp - but could get nowhere near the volume I could. Eventually we got new gear - I got a Hi-watt amp and 2 4x12s and "Dream of Dreams" a Fender Stratocaster - at last I had what I wanted for many years. I remember when we got the gear, we were in rehearsal rooms at the time - they all left the room for a while - so that I could, as Tony would say "Go Bananas with the Strat" - which I certainly did - happy days!


1972 - "The tour of the USA"

One of my favourite years. I did some recording for Jade Warrior for the "Last Autumn's Dream" album and in June we started our first and only tour of the USA which was a most enjoyable experience for me. I was only 19 years old and really having a great time. We started on the East coast with concerts in NY, NJ and Philadelphia, then went to places like Boston, Chicago and St Louis and ended up on the West Coast.

At what turned out to be the end of the tour, we were playing a residency at "The Whisky a go-go" in LA. On one night I looked at the audience and sitting in front of me was "Edgar Winter" which was a bit strange, but very nice. The next night he came back again and this time he also brought his brother "Johnny Winter" - amazing really! We had "The Winter brothers" watching "The Duhig brothers". Lots of details about these times can be found in interviews we did for the Friends of Jade Warrior web site.


1973 I think it was early this year (or last) that we became aware of John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra. Those first two albums they did really influenced me - to such an extent that later I bought a twin neck guitar like the one John McLaughlin had. After Jimi Hendrix my next most favourite guitarist/musician is John McLaughlin. I also love what he did with "Shakti". He took his acoustic guitar playing to really great areas of music with that band. At rehearsals, before Tony and Jon arrived, Glyn, Allan and I often used to jam on some of the riffs from the "The Inner Mounting Flame" the first Mahavishnu album.

Jade Warrior was unfortunately having a few personal and musical problems - I did some more recording for another 2 JW albums. We did some more gigs and went to Belgium and Holland - someone got really ill - I think it was Jon, so our first and only European tour came to an abrupt end - Jade Warrior as a five piece band also ended at this time. Glyn, Allan and I got together and did a lot of jamming and some basic recording, we also did something in some studio as well, but eventually Allan moved back to South Wales.


1974 - "The Chiswick Years"

Glyn moved to Chiswick in London, which was within walking distance from where I lived in Acton (again), so we got together a lot, played loads of Frisbee in Chiswick park (a very trippy place in those days) and went to a pub called The Duke of York a lot. We also played a lot of music. It was around this time Glyn played me "Court and Spark" and "The Hissing of Summer Lawns" by Joni Mitchell and I loved it - later, "Hejira" with Jaco Pastorius on fretless bass was brilliant.


1975 Glyn and I met Barry Mitchell a great drummer with the exact same feel for rhythm as I had, which was great. Barry was with his guitarist friend Terry Jenkins, so we all got together in a four piece called "Blackthorn Rose" we rehearsed a lot, did some basic recording and split up (oh! the normality of it all).


1976 to 1979 My brother Tony had become my representative and had approached Island records for a deal for me. It had all gone very well - I had got some recording time in Island studios and the guy at Island was impressed with what he heard. The album was going to be based around "really electric" guitar playing with a String Quartet - a lot like some of the really dynamic music written by Bartok. Well just as we were expecting to go sign the contract, we heard that the guy that Tony had been dealing with at Island had left his job. No one else at Island could "see" the album idea - so try as he may, Tony could go no further with Island. I think it was somewhere around this time that I played on an album by "Tom Newman" called "Fine old Tom".

I went back to being a builder's labourer again. During 1978 my nephew Dennis Sullivan and I started playing a lot of guitar together. Dennis is another member of our family who is very deeply into guitar playing. We used to have great fun jamming.


1980 - 1982 "The Amsterdam Trip"


I had been invited to play at a "Tribute to Jimi Hendrix" concert in Amsterdam with various other guest musicians - I am glad to say that Dennis was able to come with me. We had enjoyed a good portion of the local specialities - including some "Spaceballs" when this voice shouted down to the dressing room area "David you're on" - "Mitch Mitchell is waiting on stage for you"!! Now that is something you don't hear often - Jimi Hendrix's drummer is waiting to play with you! That was a great buzz - I played guitar and Dennis played the bass and we jammed for a few numbers. It was so strange being on stage, using a Stratocaster and wah-wah, with my (natural) afro type hairstyle looking out at a large "church" full of Hendrix devotees - looking straight back at me, very strange indeed. I was told it had been filmed, but I have never seen it myself.

Next - Tony got really good interest from Arista records, as they admitted that they were looking for a "Guitar Hero" for their label. They gave me studio time, paid me a good retainer fee and I could afford to get a band together. The band was called "Red Shift" which had Barry on drums, Terry on guitar and vocals and a bass player from Tunisia called Najib. We did some studio recording - that most of the Arista staff loved - indeed the P.R. man "blew" his office Hi-Fi through playing it at top volume. The band rehearsed and did one open-air gig - which went well, but the line up split.

Next line up for "Red Shift" was Barry on drums again, Glyn on bass and a friend of Glyn's called Gavin on Hammond organ and Rhodes - again we did a bit of recording, and one very "memorable" gig at The Nashville pub/club in London. I should mention that playing the Nashville in those days was a bit of a worry - at this time Punk was "in fashion" and the Nashville was one of the main punk gigs in London - so we did not know how we would go down. As it turned out we went down really well! I think the punks liked the huge amount of energy coming from the stage - when the music raced it was in top gear!! After the gig the guys from Arista were ecstatic about it all. A meeting was set up to finalise contracts - then one guy, the director of Arista said no. All the rest of the top staff said yes to giving the deal, but, the boss wins, I guess.

So I went back to being a builder's labourer again. I bought a 4 track Studiomaster cassette with a built-in mixer and a Korg MS20 mono synth. I recorded some very far out weird synth material, with tracks such as "Dinosaurs", "Monkey Battle" and "Indian Mountain". I was recording loads of ideas, during this creative time.


Dennis and I during one of our many jams (1983)
At the end of the 70's and into the 80's I was having a good time making music with my nephew Dennis. At that time Dennis was a very good guitarist (nowadays he's brilliant!) and we did a lot of jamming with me playing keyboards. We worked on a load of songs Dennis had written - in a line up called "Crosstalk". Later, Dennis got hold of a JX3P polyphonic synth - and wow! - did we have some good jams then!! - we were really flying. The interplay between guitar and keyboards was really full of "Fire, Imagination and Colour" I do hope some of those jams see the light of day at some point, as they were really very good!!


1983 - 84 Glyn got back in touch, so we decided to do some recording of ideas on my 4tk. We ended up with nearly an albums worth of ideas and some were really good - I will mention these tapes again later on. Around this time I was recording a lot of music that was very inspired by reading the "Don Juan" series of books by Carlos Castaneda. Some of the tracks I wrote were "Dreaming into left and right", "The Wall of Fog" and "Journey to Ixtlan". I really related to those books (and still do) very strongly. Back in the un-real world I was doing building work again. I don't know when it happened, but I really enjoyed the music of Kate Bush, especially her album "The Dreaming".


1984 - 86 Tony had bought a keyboard called an Emulator - a very early sampler - indeed it was one of the very first in the country. He used to hire it out to bands going on "Top of the Pops" and in those days the musicians union, etc. were very against this new "threat" to its members. When it was used on TV the word "Emulator" had to be blacked out!! Haven't views towards using a sampler "publicly" dramatically changed in 20 years. I used the Emulator a lot on my music at that time. Tony used it on his "Horizen" album. Both Tony and I had just read the "Dune" books and we both got inspired to write music. Tony's first track on "Horizen" is "Dune". I wrote a track called "Danger Rhythm", about the dangers of walking in a rhythm on Dune.

It was somewhere around this time I first heard a voice on the phone saying "Hullo! My name is Brian Imig, I am phoning from Chicago", from that time onwards Brian and I became great friends. Back in those days we would send each other tapes and do overdubs. It was really good having Brian on "Off Planet" - it was also good to see him again after so many years.

Tony and his family moved from London to a place in the English countryside just outside of Glastonbury. I made several visits and I loved the place!


1987 - "The Glastonbury Years"


Early in 1987 I moved to Glastonbury to become recording engineer at "Jade Warrior Studios" that Tony was setting up. At last I had got out of London and far away from the city. The studio was above a lovely courtyard right at the center of most of the "Cosmic activity" that was happening at that time. You see 1987 was a very special year, in August there was a very significant planetary line up/conjunction. This time period was called "Harmonic Convergence" and people from all over the planet were arriving here in Glastonbury. I made many life-long friends around this time and shared several "Out There" experiences.

Anyway back to the studio. It was certainly a most creative studio environment, sometimes while recording the "veil" between the worlds seemed very thin in there. We used to hire out the studio to clients but now and again, when we had quite times, I would work on my own music.


The reception area at Jade Warrior Studios (1987)        Dennis and I jamming at JW Studios (1987)
Tony had met a most interesting person called "Lifus" and suggested that I should meet with him because Tony thought he had "a very unusual voice". We met, got on well and decided to make an album, which was called "Angel Isle" based around the little known story of the true bloodline of Jesus. We had thought it would make a very interesting "stage show" with actors, a kind of "alternative musical" and could be very effective with the right stage presentation. I wrote and played the music and Lifus wrote the lyrics and sang most of the vocals. It has some large and expansive orchestral pieces and at times "captures the atmosphere" of ancient days. Here are some of the titles to give you an idea, "Spirit and the Cross", "The Rising", "Little Egypt" and "Angel Isle". This album was almost completed - but there are still a few things to do on it before it's ready for release - hopefully one day.


Lifus and I during the recording of our "Angel Isle" album.(1998)
I also made a couple of "meditation" albums. One was with well known new age author Timothy Wyllie and his friend Alma, called "Light of the Heart". Timothy and Alma did a spoken guided mediation and I then added keyboards and some guitar - it is truly a good album of its type. This was supposed to be released in 2001, but as yet it hasn't. Another album was a "guided journey" through "Mystical Tibet" called "Kingdom of the Gods" - many people have said I should release it again without the narration on it - just the music - this may happen at some point.


1989 I must be up to around 89' by now. Over the past couple of years apart from working on projects with other people, I had been recording a lot of my own ideas and jamming with my good friend Cheyne Towers who plays bass - we would often jam and some of it was really good stuff. There are many good tracks laying around from this time period - I must have a listen some time. I had also started several tracks on my own "Epic" which I still have not finished, it (hopefully) will end up being ten tracks on a double album called "Dreaming the Kabala". This is a project from my alter ego called "Separate Reality". It is the musical interpretation of ten of my "Lucid Dreams" - it is quite a thing to complete - but again I do hope to finish it some day!


The Puffball Wizard - my good friend and great bassist Cheyne Towers
Next up is the "Tumi Band". This rather unusual guy called Tumi came in and booked the studio and Tony and I thought "He writes some really good songs". So (as he used to do) Tony said "Why don't you do some music with him?" We did a lot of recording and eventually became "The Tumi Band". Tumi was into John Lennon as much as I was into Jimi Hendrix, so it made for an interesting blend of ideas.

We had started doing some gigs, but it soon became apparent that we would have problems being a "Nine piece band" - yes! We had tried to do gigs with nine people - a very difficult thing to keep happy. So we eventually became a four piece, with Tumi on vocals and electro/acoustic guitar, Jackie Slade on Vocals, Cheyne on bass and me on guitar. Oh yes and Roland R8 on drums. I should also mention that a large amount of jamming was going on around this time.

At some point I did a "weekend album" album with Neil Mazda, who played keyboards. He had a very interesting keyboard by Waldorf called a Wave 2.3. I played a fair bit of guitar and some keyboards with him. It was quite a spacey album.

1990 One day I walked in the studio and heard some very, very good vocals coming from the vocal booth, it sounded as if a mature, pro vocalist was singing. I said to Tony "Wow! What a good voice - who is it?" Tony said it is a seventeen year old girl called Julie Daske, then out of the vocal booth came this young girl with an amazing voice!

Tony did some more stuff with Julie, but then suddenly one November morning Tony died - from a heart problem - many people were very, very sad. I dived into organizing a tribute concert at the local town hall. Many musicians played that night including Steve Gray with Herbie Flowers, The Tumi Band, Julie Daske, Dennis Sullivan, my old friend Donald Hoo-Yung, and local musicians Nick Harrison, Dave Beach, Ernie Bell with Charlie Miller and several others. A good friend of Tony's and mine called Chris "The Amp" Johns played Jade Warrior and July album tracks throughout the evening. It was a very good send-off for Tony - till' we meet again!


1991 I started working with Julie and over the next couple of years we ended up with an excellent album called "Enchanting Deep Waters" which was released for a while (in 1993) and got a great response. I played guitar and co-produced the album, Cheyne played bass. It is still one of my favourite albums.


I also made a good friend called Graham Russell. Graham came into the studio to record an album called "The Quest" which was a mix of Folk with electric instruments. I was engineer and I played some keyboards. We had a very memorable last recording session that ended about 5.00 am. I do hope to make some music with Graham at some point in the near future. Also in 91' I produced a video documentary about Crop Circles called "Undeniable Evidence" and I did the soundtrack tape called "Ishmara", by "Separate Reality" Which was released for a while.


1992 - 93 This as it turned out was more or less the end period of music making for me - for some time. We finished Julie's "Enchanting Deep Waters", and Tumi and I recorded a load of songs that were a bit different. This was a more dreamy and hypnotic type of music, a lot of it was connected to a Native American Indian theme. And Julie did some vocal sounds on my "Dreaming the Kabala" project.

In 1993 we had to close Jade Warrior Studios. I had tried my best to keep it going, but eventually, due to financial problems we closed - a sad day for many people.

1994 - 1997 This period was not very musical. As a direct result of trying to distribute our "Crop Circle" video, we became suppliers of UFO videos. As this grew we decided to publish our own magazine called "UFO Reality" (to get some real truth out there!) about UFOs etc. Finances were very up and down. Although our magazine was very well received around the world, all business abruptly stopped in 98' because of my illness.

1998 - 2000 From the start of 1998 I was seriously ill with tuberculosis, for a few years I could do nothing but rest and take horrible antibiotics. Wow! - can TB be a really stubborn thing to get rid of?! - assuming of course that you can get rid of it.

Around the summer of 2000 I started archiving to CD some of my tapes and I found a whole load of tracks that I had recorded with Glyn in the eighties on my 4tk Studiomaster. I had forgotten what they sounded like or even that we had done most of them and I thought that Glyn would be most pleased to hear them again - but I had lost contact with Glyn many years before. Then completely out of the blue I needed to phone Jon Field. Jon mentioned that he had Glyn's phone number, so I phoned Glyn and sent him the CD without telling him what was on it - so as to give him as much of a surprise as possible - which indeed it did.


"Ye Olde Strat" with "Ye Olde David"
2000 - 2002 "Dogstar Poets to the Rescue!!"

In November 2000 Glyn, Allan and I got back together for the first time in nearly 20 years! It was very strange, but within a few minutes of jamming we all felt as if "the last time we jammed was only a few months ago". It all "gelled" as it used to in the old days. We had great fun and ended up with a pile of interesting tracks. We sent some of the jams to Hi-Note, they really loved them and asked if we wanted to put them out, but we decided that the first thing that should be heard from us as a new band should be the best we can make it. In other words we decided to do a whole new album. You can read about how we made "Off Planet" elsewhere on this site.


Brian during one of our jams in 2002
In autumn 2002 Brian Imig came over for another visit, it was so good to see him again. Glyn, Brian and I had some really good jams with loads of ideas flying around. I also had a good chance to jam on a great new electronic percussion instrument I had bought called a "HandSonic", you play it like a hand drum or tabla and it sounds great. I imagine it will be used a lot on the next Dogstar Poets album, which brings us right up to date in this biography.

So there you have it - most of my involvement (that I can remember) with music throughout many years. I am sure that I have forgotten a load of things, but I have to stop somewhere, or I will go on forever. It is true, I would have made a lot more music over the years, if 40% of my life had not been taken up doing building work, I can imagine loads of musicians saying " Yeah! same here mate".

I have had fun going back in time and now that all this typing is finished (at last), I can get back to making some music. I hope someone found something of interest in these paragraphs. Indeed if you have read this far down the page you probably know me better than I know myself!

May you always walk in wonder - may your laughter never end.

David

Many thanks to Dennis and Brian for some of the pics, also thanks to Malcolm for scanning some of them in.