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Paul Carmichael

I had a musical upbringing, which was based around Classical Piano. After working my way up through the grades, I started to take an interest in Blues Rock and picked up a guitar. My father was working as a pianist in various dance bands and he took me on my first gig at the age of 14 – but as a bass player. That goes me started! As he was a fanatic trad jazz enthusiast we used to jam a bit around old jazz standards, (sometimes I would play piano and he would play clarinet) and that got me into learning chord sequences.

I got interested in all the UK Rock blues bands when I was a teenage since in those days there were lots of clubs where all the bands performed.

When I was about 16 I discovered Miles Davis (Bitches Brew) and Chick Corea, which later, lead me to start hanging out at Ronnie Scotts Jazz club in London. Really that changed everything.

My obsession with playing bass and improvising made me go professional around the age of 21. I played in bars and clubs around town at night, and by day practiced and rehearsed. This was in the late 70s. Soon after that I met Ian Carr (trumpeter and composer,) who ran the classic British Jazz Rock band Nucleus. This led to several tours of Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.

Through that I met Gary Husband, (drummer with Level 42, John McLaughlin) and Allan Holdsworth. Allan was trying to create a solo project and so we started a band that also included Paul Williams on vocal. This became the IOU band. It resulted in Allan’s first solo Album “IOU” and we debuted it in Los Angeles in the early 80s.

I returned to London to continue touring with Barbara Thomson’s Paraphernalia and Jon Hiseman (Colosseum). I made some recordings were with Dominic Miller (now with Sting). And John Themis solo albums (now a successful writer/producer).

During the 80s I moved over to the scene in London and did lots of sessions (Radio Idents, Adverts, TV theme Tunes) and I was fortunate enough to get a TV show called “Playaway” which ran for several years. In addition I worked with lots of Artists such as Lulu, Manu Dubango, Soft Machine, Charles Aznavour, doing Videos and shows.

The London West end show scene was busy and I did all the big ones Les Miserables, Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat, Cats, aswell as lots of smaller shows such as Which Which, Just So, and my favourite Moby Dick, produced by Cameron Macintosh.

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