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In Brief

C P Sykes is a singer songwriter, poet and playwright whose live performances have wowed audiences lucky enough to hear him –

Magnifico

Lovely

Touching

“Unmissable” – The Latest, Brighton

From Window Cleaner to Oxford Don  - A Career in Words and Music

C P Sykes formed his first band in the back garden, aged 13 - himself on banjo, and two friends on drum and mandolin. The band played a Beatles song – one Beatles song - A Hard Day’s Night. That was their entire repertoire. They got their first gig at once, playing in front of the school music class.

Thirty years later Chris formed his second band.

-see www.myspace.com/cpsykes

At school Chris especially loved English, art and history but not technical drawing, metalwork and science. His other love was music but he often played the teacher up and was sent outside the door but this did not stop him getting the lead in Patience, a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, the part of a ‘fleshly poet’ and Oscar Wilde/Swinburne send up, Reginald Bunthorne. Though when his mates started laughing at him in his velvet jacket and knee britches, and calling him ‘poofter’ he dropped out, leaving his charismatic English teacher, Mick Keenan, to take centre
stage as the droopy poet.

Chris left school aged seventeen, without A levels, took a job as a window cleaner, got himself an acoustic guitar and spent his time sitting in the warm kitchen playing guitar and writing long Hemingway type novels set in the Spanish civil war. Over the next few years Chris left home and continued to play guitar, write songs and send out his first, second and third novels, gathering rejection letters like autumn leaves. After three years of work as a window cleaner, clothes salesman and record shop manager, he left work and went to study painting at Borough Road teacher's training college in West London. He also bought himself a second guitar; a Spanish guitar and took classical guitar lessons.

Learning about painting, drawing, photography, printing and pottery, as well as the history of art Chris found wonderful. He mostly spent all day slapping oil and mixed media onto canvas and wood ala Jackson Pollock. Some afternoons and most evenings he played guitar and wrote songs. Chris had mates who formed and played in bands at that time.

He shared a house with a school friend, Graham Limmer and his drum kit and earplugs. Graham played in several folk bands around West London but Chris wanted to be a poet singer song writer like Leonard Cohen (only not so miserable), or John Denver (only he didn’t have any mountains near him to sing about.) Cat Stevens, Ralph McTell, Paul Simon, James Taylor and Joni Mitchell were others Chris wanted to emulate. He heard both Cohen and Mitchell play in London and went to hear James Taylor and the Byrds play live at the Lincoln Folk Festival. He listened to the Band, Led Zeppelin and Neil Young. He loved the playing of great guitarists like Jimmy Page, Rory Gallagher, Segovia and Johnny Winter who he saw play live at the Albert Hall. He also listened a lot to Hugh Masekela on trumpet and blue note jazz organ master Jimmy Smith. He heard Elton John play the Fairfield’s Hall in Croydon and wondered if one day he would be able to sit at the piano and sing but he was young and try as he might in life and in music Chris only knew three chords.

Chris left the University of London with a B.Ed degree and an MA. He did not return to window cleaning but instead went on to teach at three major universities; Warwick, Oxford and Sussex. ‘From window cleaner to Oxford Don,’ as his artist friend Ralph Lillford said.

Through this period Chris’s music took a back seat as he had poems published in various UK and US magazines and books. He wrote and presented a series on Sport and Literature for BBC radio 4 in which he interviewed writers such as John Updike and Harold Pinter. Later he got himself sacked from a BBC TV series for writing a script that was ‘too funny.' It was the best thing that could have happened to him because he began to succeed at writing scripts, predominately for the theatre.

He wrote the 'heart-warming' comedy; 'Marry Me, You Idiot’ which opened in London 2002 starring Lynda Bellingham; and followed it up with ‘Playing Away' which premiered at Sadler’s Wells to great notices in 2005. It starred Rebecca Thornhill, musical theatre star of Chicago, Mary Poppins and many other West End musicals. In theatre he was lucky enough to work with actresses like Siobhan Redmond, Samantha Bond, who played Miss Money penny in the Piers Brosnan James Bond films, and the great Harriet Walter.

A Silence Filled up with Sounds

Writing scripts and poetry has always suited Chris; he likes the white paper around the words. He says it is a silence filled up with sound. It has proved a good training for song writing. Writing song lyrics, Chris has learned needs precision and economy of words but lyric writers also need to leave a space to be filled up with music. Through courses at the City Lit in London Chris developed his keyboard skills and singing. He did music theory to Associated Board Grade 5. And he wrote and wrote songs and songs, composing mostly on guitar but sometimes on the keyboard. Twelve of them were recorded on the CD Walking on the Beach. Chris now sings and performs these songs at gigs with guitarist John Blackwell and others.

WALKING ON THE BEACH came out in 2009 and includes twelve original songs arranged by Gareth Huw Davies. Gareth recently toured with Graham Coxon of Blur. Also on the CD are great Jazz guitarist John Blackwell and drummer Roy Dodds. Roy plays a lot with Eddie Reader and was drummer on the 1989 number one hit Perfect, with Fairground Attraction. Completing the line up are Jim Hart, Joe Townsend, David Blackmore, Tami Tal and Tony Harris. Chris is now a member of the British Academy of Composers & Songwriters as well as the Society of Authors. After a performance at the Brighton Fringe in 2009, his show was called ‘unmissable - a safe bet for a good night out' - The Latest, Brighton.

In Summary

C P Sykes is a member of the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters as well as the Society of Authors and he was at one time Deputy Chair of The Writers Guild of Great Britain. When he is not writing and performing he is also an excellent and popular teacher and currently divides his time between directing summer schools for the University of Sussex and teaching creative writing for a number of institutions including the University of Oxford and the City Literary Institute, London.

 

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