Peter Viney's Blog

Trading Boundaries, near Uckfield, Sussex
Thursday 3rd August 2023

STREAMING UNTIL SUNDAY

John Wetton died in January 2017. See my TRIBUTE TO JOHN WETTON here. I first met him when he was fourteen and he joined The Corvettes, soon to morph into the palmer james group. I wore my palmer james group T-shirt to the show. We designed this for a 2019 reunion show in Poole, with most of the band apart from John, and we re-used Richard Palmer’s original 1960s design for cards, publicity and the bass drum head.

It was an enormous privilege for me and Karen to be invited to this incredible musical event. Many thanks to Lisa Wetton, Martin Darvill , and Dylan Wetton and everyone else who created an extraordinary tribute to an extraordinary life. Trading Boundaries is in deepest Sussex on the edge of Ashdown Forest, and has a Roger Dean gallery of album artwork … Roger Dean also designed the publicity for this and spoke at the show.

I took a few photos, but I’m borrowing more from online Facebook pages. Please tell me if you wish credit, or object to me using them. I made a point of never reviewing Asia or the John Wetton Band, because when you know someone for that long, it’s an automatic 5 stars. So, I didn’t think of noting the running order or who exactly did what and when, in my normal way. Fortunately, set list.com has it all and I’ve copied it and corrected the running order below. My memory was shaky! This is not so much a review (plot spoiler: it was 5 stars) more an attempt to add some backstory.

The show was backed by the Paul Green Rock Academy from Philadelphia, an ever-changing line-up of highly-talented young musicians. John worked with them, and other rock academies.

Lisa Wetton: When Paul Green informed me that the Rock Academy kids would be touring Europe in July, and were available for a show – perhaps even to do a tribute to John Wetton, I thought why not! We could do a lovely little fundraiser event at the beautiful Trading Boundaries, invite a couple of guest artists to tell some stories and play some music, and proceeds would go to Macmillan Caring Locally
Somebody once said, “be careful what you wish for”.
Never in a million years did I imagine that within a few short months we’d be hosting an event that would bring together nearly 20 of the greatest rock artists of the past century, sharing the stage with 31 young people no older than 18 years of age, playing 5 hours of music, and pulling a drumming God out of a 12-year retirement…oh, and live-streaming the event around the world (yes, you can still buy a ticket to watch for the next two weeks)….with a production manager that reluctantly took on this massive web of chaos in the final 3 weeks! Or was it 2?! I can’t recall now as my mind is all a blur. (Facebook 7 August)

John wanted to mentor young musicians. He also loved female singers doing his songs (they had four or more female singers) as with Annie Haslam of Renaissance. I once went to see The Unthanks with John and he was thrilled to talk about his lyrics with them, and also loved their voices on Starless. John told me that by the time you’re twenty (younger in his case), if you’re really good you should be able to translate any music in your head onto your chosen instrument, and that by that age, you had all the necessary technique. After that, your life experience made you the musician you became, but as far as just playing the notes, you should have it by then.

The Paul Green Rock Academy (PGRA) backed throughout. Sometimes they were the only performers other times they supported the principals.

song	artist	JW / origin
Life on Mars	Rick Wakeman solo	David Bowie Ziggy Stardust
Eleanor Rigby	Rick Wakeman solo	The Beatles Revolver
Easy Money	PGRA + David Cross	King Crimson Larks Tongues in Aspic
Exiles	PGRA + David Cross	King Crimson Larks Tongues in Aspic
Book of Saturday	PGRA	King Crimson Larks Tongues in Aspic
Fracture	PGRA + David Cross	King Crimson Starless & Bible Black
Fallen Angel	PGRA + Mel Collins	King Crimson Red
Red	PG RA + David Kilminster	King Crimson Red
One More Red Nightmare	PGRA	King Crimson Red
Tribute by Roger Dean
In The Dead of Night	Martin Orford, John Mitchell, PGRA	UK UK
Rendezvous 6.02	Martin Orford, John Mitchell, PGRA	UK Danger Money
All Along The Watchtower	Steve Hackett, Harry Whitley, PGRA	Quango Live in The Hood
Afterglow	Steve Hackett, PGRA	Genesis Genesis Revisited II
Woman	PGRA	John Wetton Caught in The Crossfire
Battle Lines	Martin Orford, John Mitchell, PGRA	John Wetton Battle Lines
Burlesque	Roger Chapman, Jim Cregan, Laurie Wisefield + PGRA	Family Bandstand
My Friend The Sun	Roger Chapman, Jim Cregan, Laurie Wisefield + PGRA	Family Bandstand
The Smile Has Left Your Eyes	Chris Braide via video prerecorded	Asia Alpha
Let’s Stick Together	Chris Difford, Phil Manzanera, Bill Bruford Guy Pratt + PGRA	Bryan Ferry Let’s Stick Together
Ride Easy	PGRA	Asia Asia
Voice of America	PGRA	Asia Astra
In The End	Annie Haslam, John Mitchell, Martin Orford Asia+ PGRA	Icon Icon
Rubicon	Asia + PGRA	Icon Icon II
Only Time Will Tell	Asia 2023	Asia Asia
My Own Time (I’ll Do What I Want)	Asia 2023	Asia Alpha
An Extraordinary Life	Asia 2023	Asia Phoenix
Sole Survivor	Asia 2023	Asia Asia
Starless	King Crimson + PGRA John Mitchell, David Cross, Mel Collins, Jakko Jakszyk, David Kilminster	King Crimson Red
Heat of The Moment	Asia 2023 + PGRA	Asia Asia

It was most ably compered by Jerry Ewing, seen here with Dylan Wetton and Geoff Downes.

It was also set up for minimal changes of instruments and amplifiers. Everyone used the same drum kit (which is hard for drummers). I remembered seeing Mogul Thrash (John’s first recorded band) at the Roundhouse in 1970. Four stages in a circle, and it was the audience that moved around.

Rick Wakeman opened solo, and Rick is a raconteur. He explained that he and John tried to start a band more than once, rehearsed, and yet it never happened. John’s second professional band, Splinter, with Ed Bicknell on drums, and Gooch on keyboard was a trio, and he always liked that line-up. He mentioned that when he told me about rehearsing with Rick Wakeman. Rick also said, movingly, that if things had turned out differently, he knew John would have been here for him. He played Life on Mars. As you should all know, Rick Wakeman played keyboards on David Bowie’s original. Then he did Eleanor Rigby “in the style of Prokofiev.” Next time he plays anyway near me, I’ll be there!

(Trivia note: The palmer james group were often third on a three band bill at Bournemouth Pavilion. Davey Jones & The Lower Third were often second on the bill and they shared a dressing room. They remember Davey, later David Bowie, as personable and friendly).

The School of Rock band made the first ventures into the 1973/1974 King Crimson songbook with David Cross on violin. David Cross is flying the King Crimson banner high with current shows, and recently Richard Palmer-James supported the David Cross Band at this venue. Richard Palmer-James, John’s oldest friend, couldn’t be here tonight, but his King Crimson lyrics were heavily represented, and occupied the next fifteen minutes or so.

They launched with Easy Money, which over the years was John’s most aggressive performance. Wisely they avoided that dropped verse from the original which KC and John used to perform live.

They took me to the judge
But the bastard wouldn’t budge …

John dropped that verse from solo shows, just as he dropped the Good Morning Little Schoolgirl track from 1977’s Jacknife reunion LP on reissue. Jacknife was basically a Ginger Man reunion, with Curt Cress replacing Bob Jenkins on drums. Times had changed. No longer appropriate or funny. John was adamant that it was dropped on the reissue.

Exiles was great:

My home… was a place near the sand
Cliffs… and a military band
Blew an air of normality

I explained to the female singers in the interval that the military band which ‘blew an air of normality’ was on the bandstand in Bournemouth Gardens, below which Richard and I played in the stream as primary kids, and where Richard spent an entire student summer nailing up the glass candle holders for the annual illuminations. Then kids were given tapers at dusk to go around lighting them. Elf & Safe Tea stopped that. Nowadays it’s electric. Richard wrote the lyrics in Munich. It’s an ear worm for me every time I see the gardens.

Book of Saturday is another Richard Palmer-James lyric. Beautifully done here.

Mel Collins played on Fallen Angel. Then there was the Rock Academy for Fracture. The guitarist sat down in true Robert Fripp style. It took me back to my teens and an abortive attempt to form a garage band (or in the UK parents’ front room band) with a jazzy guitarist who had been taught by Robert. He was much too good for the rest of us, but he insisted that he sit down to play. We asked why and he said a guitar strap distorted the neck and so pulled the guitar out of tune. We looked at his Epiphone electric. ‘But the strap’s attached to the body, not the neck,’ we said, ‘It’s not a Spanish guitar.’ “oh!’ he replied, ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ He left because he didn’t want to play Louie Louie.

In retrospect, my ultimate John Wetton solo shows were John and David Kilminster on acoustic guitars with subtle and sympathetic keyboards from Martin Orford. No bass. No electric guitars. The songs were stripped right back, highlighting the lyrics and melody. Heat of the Moment as a folk ballad? Yes, it worked. It had its greatest effect on songs like The Night Watch (sadly missed tonight), Book of Saturday and Exiles. That was when John was producing a live album every year to sell at gigs … it was very much a family business, with Beate selling the CDs and T-shirts.

David Kilminster was there for the Icon Urban Psalms DVD too, which is perhaps my favourite John concert. Tonight David was demonstrating his incredible searing lead guitar chops instead on Red. Red is regarded in awe by so many as a hugely innovative record, one of the heaviest records ever.  I’m far more into Larks Tongues in Aspic, and while I love it most for the melodic songs,  I saw that line-up with Jamie Muir thrashing gongs with chains and spitting out streams of red from blood capsules. Then Starless & Bible Black comes next.

John told me a tale of touring Japan, some years later, so probably solo, or with Asia. They played at a US military base and he found himself invited to dinner with an admiral. The admiral told him that when the aircraft carrier based fighters did exercises, that Red was the pilot’s favourite headset soundtrack because it got their adrenalin wound up. John said, ‘I still don’t know how I feel about that!’

The UK segment had Martin Orford on keyboards and John Mitchell singing, In The Dead of Night from the first album and Rendezvous 602 from Danger Money. The latter was on nearly every John solo show. UK are mentioned so often in the book An Extraordinary Life as an inspiration for musicians.

It was a thrill to see Steve Hackett as the last few years I’ve been listening a lot to his solo albums. Steve Hackett and John were old friends. John joined Steve on tour. Steve opened with All Along The Watchtower, a Tetrad / Ginger Man staple, though in my memory it was a Richard Palmer-James lead vocal then, which continued into early Supertramp.

The lead vocalist was Harry Whitley. Chatting to everyone at the show, and at breakfast the next morning, all agreed Harry was such a major talent.

John used to do it on shows with Steve, just as he recorded it in 1991 on the German Jimi Hendrix Tribute Show and then with Carl Palmer and David Kilminster in Qango. See Live in The Hood. Here’s a surprise. John was NOT ever a Bob Dylan fan. John and Beate named their son Dylan after Dylan Thomas, yes, the man who coined the phrase Starless and Bible Black in Under Milk Wood, which John and I both studied at Bournemouth School For Boys with the charismatic Tom Burcher teaching us. John, like me, had a Welsh mother and was deeply into Dylan Thomas. John tried to watch Bob Dylan twice and walked out after ten or twenty minutes. Singing out of tune was not acceptable to John. I have a small stack of Grateful Dead LPs, which we swopped for Karen’s copy of Music From Big Pink with John. John got the Grateful Dead LPs free from WEA – Reprise when he was in Family. He reckoned five Grateful Dead LPs were a fair swop for one LP by The Band (both Karen and I had copies and we only needed the one). One of John’s pithy oral reviews to me was the Grateful Dead in London. “They spent twenty minutes trying to tune up. They thought they’d succeeded. They hadn’t. I left.” I remember John phoning me from a recording studio. The engineer had pointed out that John was singing the Jimi Hendrix version of the All Along The Watchtower lyrics. He wanted me to check the Lyrics book and the John Wesley Harding LP so he could get it right according to Bob Dylan. He phoned back twenty minutes later to check … in those days you couldn’t trace lyrics on the web.

The second number was Genesis’s Afterglow. You can hearJohn sing it with Steve on Genesis Revisited II. This brought out the full School of Rock female vocal line-up.

The Academy kids did Woman and Battle Lines. We were going into the John Wetton solo years, with John Mitchell and Martin Orford with the School of Rock. As soon as the solo era was announced, I said ‘They have to do Battle lines’. And it started.

Battle Lines is one of John’s best songs, and there’s a YouTube live 2001 version. The Battle Lines album is from the Virgin Records sessions in Los Angeles with an all-star cast. John was there for a year. Steve Lukather of Toto and Michael Landau on guitars, Simon Phillips on drums, Robert Fripp guesting, Paul Buckmaster arrangements. John played acoustic guitar and keyboards as well as bass. He played acoustic guitar more and more through the years. It was supposed to launch him as a major solo artist, then Virgin changed management, and as so often happens, the new guys dropped it. That’s what they do to demonstrate power, and they always go for a big target. Check out Mike Yarwood or Benny Hill with TV companies. It happens in publishing too, as I know to my chagrin (at least three times). Anyway, Battle Lines was used in the movie about the Battle of Culloden, Chasing The Deer, which starred Brian Blessed. I assume they latched onto the title first rather than the lyrics! However, John did the whole soundtrack and album.

Then there was Roger Chapman and Jim Cregan doing the Family set, with Laurie Wisefield from Wishbone Ash who played with Roger for years in the Shortlist, and John was briefly in Wishbone Ash too. That was a tremendous highlight. Jim Cregan would be the person at the event who knew John next-longest after me. John’s girlfriend babysat for Jim’s sister, and John used to go along. Karen told Jim that the events of the evening were described graphically at the school bus stop the next day, so that when she first met John in 1971, she said, ‘THE John Wetton? I used to hear about you every day back in 1966.’ John said,’You mean the palmer james group (no capitals is correct)?’ ‘Oh, no. I never saw them. What you got up to when you were babysitting.’ Tetrad, who changed their name to Ginger Man, was John’s first professional group with Richard Palmer-James, John Hutcheson and Bob Jenkins. After Tetrad’s failed Decca audition, they all went to see Jim who played them Blossom Toes’ new album, and John realized it was time to stop doing covers and get writing. So did Richard. John went to Splinter. Richard to Supertramp.

Roger, Laurie and Jim did Burlesque and My Friend The Sun. Jim and Laurie played electric guitar on the first, acoustic on the second. Jim had introduced John to Family, then took over from John when he left. As soon as Roger started, you knew that you had the original powerful singer on the song. I didn’t manage to speak to him. I wanted to apologise for the awful textured vegetable protein Bolognese we cooked for him and John at John’s flat in Earls Court circa early 1972. That was a good and raucous evening.

From my Tribute:

John got the offer to join Family. He told us on a Saturday morning in Bournemouth, and he told us the problem: he would have to play violin in The Weaver’s Answer, and he hadn’t played violin before, though he was cheerful enough: it’s got four strings. No frets, different playing style with a bow, but hey, it’s a musical instrument. He went over to Don Strike’s Music and bought a violin. That was mid-morning. We arranged to meet for the evening, as John intended to spend the day learning violin. When we got to John’s parents place, John said, ‘Is this OK?’ And proceeded to play The Weaver’s Answer on violin. Fast forward to Bryan Ferry’s solo album Another Time, Another Place, where John plays violin as well as bass.

I first saw both Blossom Toes and Family at Hull University- John first heard Family on my copy of Music From A Doll’s House which I bought the day after hearing them, at a point where I could not afford albums. John loved them. They are a band that should have been mega. Premier league. That’s another story.

Burlesque is a bass player’s dream bass line. As a result, on John’s solo shows, people in the audience would shout out Burlesque! John declined. I once said he should put it in the act. After all, John could sing anything. Look at the Christmas charity albums he participated in every year. All were tributes to a particular artists. John always chose the strongest one … Bohemian Rhapsody on the Queen one. Breakfast in America on the Supertramp one. Happy Xmas (War is Over) on the John Lennon one, Mother on the Pink Floyd one, Your Own Special Way on the Genesis one. Very, very few people can sing like Roger Chapman, but John could have got near. John said he never would. It was ‘lead singer etiquette’ he said. It was Roger’s song. No one could do it better. OK, Roger proved that tonight with driving guitar from Jim and Laurie.

The Smile Has Left Your Eyes sung by Chris Braide was on a video link, and I missed the intro as I went for a pee. It was special to John, partly because it was his Mum’s favourite of his songs. We also had several conversations about it including one with the producer Mike Stone one Boxing Day, a meal cooked by John. He had watched the massive hit Bryan Adams had with Everything I Do and John was convinced that it would have been a number one hit if he’d done it solo, rather than with Asia (apologies to Asia). Mike Stone agreed. He reckoned a rock band plus orchestra and a straight Middle of The Road arrangement. John was never a rock snob. He was championing ABBA years before it became fashionable to do so. In Bill Bruford’s autobiography he mentions a source of tension in UK was John’s desire to have a massive rock hit, number one in America. John showed me the passage. I asked him if he was offended. “Of course I’m not. Bill’s absolutely right. And I fucking did it!’

A major highlight for all was Let’s Stick Together. It was an inspired and unexpected choice. It was announced as a Roxy Music number. Strictly speaking, it’s a Bryan Ferry number. John was in Roxy Music for the Viva! live album, then in the Bryan Ferry Band. We saw both. The thrill was the line up. Bill Bruford came out of retirement to play drums. Phil Manzanera played guitar, hence the Roxy Music attribution. Chris Difford of Squeeze played acoustic guitar and sang. Guy Pratt from Nick Mason’s band played bass. It was terrific.

It took me right back. John’s churning bass line on the Bryan Ferry original was a reminder of the key to the palmer james group soul band era. They never played the song, the Wilbert Harrison original was obscure, but it would have suited them. The palmer james group were playing four nights a week at good South Coast venues … Bournemouth Pavilion, Bournemouth Royal Ballrooms (now the O2), Weymouth Steering Wheel, Bristol Old Granary, Southampton Pier. John could not only do those James Jamerson Motown riffs, he added to them. Years later, at the Brook in Southampton with John and Carl after a Qango gig, we were talking about how back in their semi-pro days, they’d have regarded this as a small venue. We often discussed covers. John has done What’s Going On but otherwise said he’d done enough Tamla / Atlantic soul in the 60s to last him. What’s Going On was one of his favourite albums.

If you want to hear John’s straight rock bass playing loud, check out Bryan Ferry’s Live At The Royal Albert Hall 1974. That’s John Wetton and Phil Manzanera. It wasn’t released until 2020. Highly recommended.

When John got divorced, he left his LPs behind. He was never a vinyl revival guy, happy with CDs, but he missed the album art. As I spend so much time in secondhand record shops, I would pick up any of his albums for him … Fearless, Bandstand, Return to Fantasy from Uriah Heep, Danger Money from UK. Not King Crimson though … too expensive! I only once saw a Mogul Thrash LP on sale, and that was incredibly expensive. One of the last vinyl finds was an original Wetton-Manzanera. I remember John examining the sleeve minutely and saying it brought back so many memories.

Bill Bruford was great to see, and it was almost incongruous (but fun) to see him playing an old rock standard rather than the King Crimson and UK associations. The Yes connection with John was deep, with Bill Bruford, then Steve Howe (who appeared on a video link to speak) and Geoff Downes. There was more to come. The evening was a flood of memories for me, not least going with John to see Yes at The Marquee. It was the first Yes album era, and John was knocked out by Bill’s playing back then. In retrospect, thinking back, John later got to play with the people he most admired at the end of the 60s … Bill Bruford, Robert Fripp, Roger Chapman and Charlie Whitney.

The School of Rock did Ride Easy then another major Asia song, Voice of America from Astra. I stayed with John in Shepherd’s Bush one night before it was released, and he played it on open reel repeatedly. He was convinced it was going to be as big a hit as Heat of the Moment. It wasn’t. You never can tell. it did spark a conversation on Radio Luxembourg, and if the wind was blowing the right way, you could just about pick up AFN from Germany- American Forces Network. The voice of America.

We were into the Asia / Icon segment.

The most poignant song of all is In The End. John Wetton performed it with Annie Haslam for Icon. John Mitchell played guitars on the original. Richard Palmer-James contributed the lyrics.It’s an important song for me. Annie Haslam is one of the “Class of 71” among John’s friends, along with Karen and Roger Chapman. (Jim Cregan and I go back further). John was briefly playing bass in Renaissance that year, where they met. Read An Extraordinary Life. Annie Haslam literally saved John’s life. He called her in panic, and she flew over from Pennsylvania, saw the state he was in, and booked him straight into the Priory. She picked up his phone list, saw my name, and phoned me to tell me. John stayed sober from then on, and spent much time helping people with dependency, including the daughter of a friend of mine. So many have told me how much he did for them. He passed on what Annie gave him to others … a new life.

Annie sang it with John Mitchell. A highlight of the concert for us and everyone else. We have added history with the song. In 2019 we did a palmer james group / Tetrad reunion gig in Poole. Richard Palmer-James was over from Munich, John Hutcheson from California, Bob Jenkins played drums, and Alec James (who drummed in the original band) sang. John “Andy” Andrews from pre-Supertramp The Lonely Ones and The Joint played bass and sang. Andy had co-written with Richard on his solo work in Munich in 1972, with John Wetton contributing piano. Anyway. Lisa Wetton joined them on backing vocals, and drummed for the Supertramp number, Maybe I’m A Beggar. Richard and Lisa sang In The End as a tribute to John. A review is here.

A friend who was at school with Richard and I when we were four years old was there. He requested the song for his funeral and we played the Icon original with John and Annie. There was not a dry eye in the church.

Rubicon followed. John Mitchell played guitar on the original on Icon II.

Of course the crowning moment was the full Asia segment. John used to speak about signature voices. He had one. I once had a weird experience. I was driving out of Tesco in Branksome, past the Al Gatto Nero pizzeria. The radio was Ken Bruce, and he didn’t announce the song, but it was the first time I heard Asia’s Al Gatto Nero. I had never heard of it but knew John’s voice instantly. He later confirmed that the pizzeria name was the inspiration. Just as The Devil and The Opera House is inspired by the gargoyle opposite the Royal Ballrooms in Boscombe, where the palmer james group played and the gargoyle was originally erected to protest at the opera house it originally was.

John had the signature voice, but the secret of Asia was that you had four signature styles, none more so than Geoff Downes on keyboards. Instantly recognizable. Geoff was John’s most constant collaborator. They were an incredible creative team, and Geoff was also his best friend. The line up was very much Yes related … Billy Sherwood on bass, Jay Schellen on drums, Geoff on keyboards, with John Mitchell on guitar and Harry Whiteley stepping into a massive pair of shoes and doing so better than anyone I could imagine. This guy is a fantastic singer.

They took off with Only Time Will Tell, Asia’s second best-known song. As soon as it started with that keyboard sound, the audience felt the full power. It was astonishingly good. The ear worm is still persisting several days later.

An Extraordinary Life is from Asia’s Phoenix album. What a song that is, based on John’s recovery from his triple heart by-pass. We had a mutual friend, who was a mix of counsellor and clairvoyant, and John gave me a CDR of the song to give to her as thanks for the support she’d given him. She phoned and she had found it incredibly moving. That was a painful era in so many ways, not forgetting the broken ankle from playing football with Dylan as a little boy and putting his foot in a rabbit hole. That’s another story. He wanted a footrest for playing acoustic guitar on a tall seat. We went to Don Strike’s Music in Westbourne where John had guitar lessons along with Robert Fripp, Greg Lake and Al Stewart. He lived about 200 yards away. John bought his violin there. The shop is still there. John had looked in London without much success. In Westbourne they brought out a selection to choose from, apologised that they didn’t have more, and then asked John if he was still playing guitar nowadays.

That was followed by My Own Time (I’ll Do What I Want) which gave Kim Dancha the title of her John Wetton biography, In My Own Time.

Sole Survivor was here. John often told of their unusual ploy in track listing. Bang the three strongest songs first and release the singles in the same order: Wham! Heat of The Moment / Only Time Will Tell / Sole Survivor. Even in 1982, before CD took off, they were predicting CD. No dividing the best songs at one per side. It flew on early MTV with the videos. Nine weeks at #1 in Billboard. At one point (in the 90s) it was listed as the 14th best-selling album ever.

After a short second interval, we were into a King Crimson line up for Starless. David Cross on violin, Jakko Jakszyk from the current King Crimson on guitar. Jakko had travelled from Italy to take part. Mel Collins on sax. David Kilminster (who had played so many King Crimson songs in the John Wetton Band and with Icon live). Starless is the song which John so loved in its Unthanks version.

There are so many songs from the post-2006 reunion albums we could have heard. As John said, someone took the piss out of the character who had an Asia poster in the film 40 Year Old Virgin, he finally got laid to Heat of The Moment, everyone remembered how much they loved Asia, and that was it. Reunion. John was particularly proud of The Face On The Bridge, An Extraordinary Life and Steffi’s Ring. He wanted to send Steffi’s Ring to The Unthanks at one point.

The finish was pre-ordained, it could only be Asia back for The Heat of The Moment.

All this talent was there for John, and all the proceeds of the streaming and show go to Macmillan Locally for the Hospice at Christchurch Hospital, where John passed away. My dad died in the same hospital in 1966. I can’t think of a better cause. It’s going to stream for another two weeks.

The box set with 8 CDs is due in November. The six solo albums with bonus tracks and 2 CDs of unreleased rarities.