Thanks, after all he is 79 years old.
But he still rocking it after all these years, couple of years ago he was in a production called Sonic Elder, and it was quite well received actually. He’s got a really unique style of playing guitar. I think he’s quite talented myself but I am his daughter after all, so I might be a tad biased.
Of course we are hoping to release his entire catalogue of music of which there are many gems. As a child growing up in Chelsea, we were witness to his talent as dad had built a recording studio in our living room and He and Mike Richards The drummer from Gullivers People would often jam and lay down tracks. We have buckets of reel to reel‘s. And we are currently trying to gather as much information about his life, and his music for some kind of project.
Perhaps he did not achieve the level of fame of Pink Floyd, but he lived that life along side so many young and talented musicians of that era.
And eventually became the recipient of an Emmy award, Juno award, two Leo awards and three Saskatchewan music awards. We’re proud of him. He was never your average dad that’s for sure. He’s always been pretty cool
I will say that Norman Smith was shopping dad around to different bands around that time. And there is a story about Rod Clark and the Moody blues auditioning dad as well. With PF There was speculation that they were going to replace Barrett. I think there was some hope that they would hear dad‘s voice, and EMH and see where that landed, but it was subtle. Not outwardly auditioning per se. and of course we know history, and Norman Smith walked out of the studio with the tape of Early Morning Henry.
But of course it’s not the only recording of it. We have numerous recordings of it on reel to reel. But Nothing on digital yet. We’re working to convert it. We might be able to compare the different recordings and pinpoint a date to see if it corresponds to anything in our archives. If we don’t have tape then Norman Smith daughter would have it.
We are also wondering if there’s a chance that Norman Smith overdubbed dad‘s voice onto the track, and then cut the vinyl from that.
It is a very curious catalogue entry attached to this vinyl that seems to indicate that this in fact was Pink Floyd as the backing band.
You have to remember most of the musicians working in the scene were moonlighting around town. My dad might not have recognized the musicians he played with as being Pink Floyd per se. Hard to know. When you’re also an up-and-coming want to be rockstar, you kind of discount the other musicians to some degree. You’ve always got a believe in yourself as being potentially better than the other guy.
One of the reasons why my dad got out of the music industry was because of the massive egos that was pervasive. One whiff of fame and it changes your life instantly. My dad was a 27-year-old, ex Navy, with a wife and two kids living in Chelsea trying to make it. My mum supported him, and she would make all of the frilly costumes for the band. But, it was a slog.
In the end, and because he used to listen to pirate radio, and was friends with Mike Raven, who turned him onto listening to the CBC in Canada. He would listen to Pierre Elliott Trudeau speak about Canada, Canadian politics etc and eventually moved us to Vancouver.
Before leaving England he became a sound engineer at the sound effects company called studio G run by John Gale. Studio G had a hand in producing one or more of the Monty Python albums, on which my dad honed his engineering chops.
He wrote many more songs, and increasingly leaned towards folk music, and political satire.
Anyway, I hope that satisfies some of the curiosities on this thread. Feel free to ask me some questions and I’ll try to answer them.
Cheers
he looks like a young Billy Butler.