Rick Radley – Composer, Musician, Singer
Rick composed the music and worked with Kipper Eldridge and Phil Taylor on the arrangements and recording of the songs.
Rick lives in beautiful Dorset with his wife Sashi. He is a professional musician and composer who has been in the music business for many years. His early career included backing various well-known UK and USA recording artists e.g.. Billy Fury – Madeline Bell – The Flirtations – Bruce Channel to name a few. His career continued as lead singer/guitarist under the alias of `Fred` with Dr Marigolds Prescription who toured during the late 1960`s and 1970`s in the UK and abroad. The band had several record releases, radio and TV appearances. Dr Marigolds held the No. 1 slot in South Africa for 16 weeks in 1973 with their single `Hello Girl`. They also had album releases in the UK and USA. Rick continued to tour internationally during the 80`s and 90`s, and is still working as Lead Guitarist and Vocalist with a touring band performing at high profile society functions.
When first approached by Anne to compose the music for `Artaban` he wasn’t sure, as it was so far away from his genre of Rock and Blues. However, once he read the lyrics and libretto something magical happened.
Kipper Eldridge – Musical arranger, producer and musician.
Kipper worked with Rick Radley, the composer of Artaban’s songs, and Phil Taylor to arrange and record the music in his recording studio in Haslemere.
Kipper is a Grammy and Emmy winning producer and musician, best known for producing and performing on Sting’s biggest selling solo album Brand New Day as well as the platinum albums All This Time and Sacred Love. His passion for music was fired by being given a guitar at the age of seven and within a week was playing Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love”.
Kipper soon progressed to writing his own songs and, by the time he was 19, had formed his own band, One Nation, who signed to IRS/MCA records in 1986. The band went on to make two albums, Strong Enough and Big Life, Big Tears and embarked on numerous tours which included opening for the likes of The Temptations, Jeff Beck and Elvis Costello. Kipper disbanded One Nation to focus his energies on his production and writing skills in 1992.
He wrote and produced for such successful artists as Gary Numan, Catherine Zeta Jones and Curtis Stigers and went on to play, produce and write scores for a number of Hollywood feature films.
A chance meeting with Sting, while he was working on the Sharon Stone movie The Mighty, led to Kipper being invited to Tuscany to collaborate on what was to become Brand New Day, the album that spawned the worldwide hit Desert Rose. Kipper then toured as Sting’s musical director, playing keyboards in the band for four years, and produced and performed on all of Sting’s musical output between 1998 and 2005.
The albums he has produced have sold more than 15 million copies, and Kipper has gone on to work with Stevie Wonder, James Morrison, Mary J Blige, James Taylor, Richard Marx, Clay Aiken and Chris Botti.
Kipper works from his own studio in rural Surrey where he produces, writes and mixes new and established artistes alike.
Phil Taylor – Keyboards and Guitar
Phil worked with Rick (Composer) and Kipper to arrange and record the Artaban songs.
Phil was born in Copenhagen in 1960. For the first ten years of his musical career he played gigs all over the place with all kinds of bands, moving on to play with artists like Nick Heyward and Rick Astley. Phil met Tony Hadley on a TV appearance to promote “Lost In Your Love”. Usually it was a case of “nice to meet you, let’s stay in touch” in these situations, and it ended there, but this was the start of something… Tony wanted a band around him that was going to be in it for the long term, so he booked some live dates.
Outside of playing in Tony’s band, Phil has a rather odd band / recording project called Faint Signs Of Intelligence (just add .com for the website). He also produced the last two Peter Cox releases.