Steve Stapley Beyond The Blues CD

Steve Stapley made his first professional recording at Abbey Road in 1968. A few years later, Steve and his then music partner, Richard Markstein, formed what must have been one of the first experimental world music bands in the UK. The band consisted of two Nigerian drummers and a South African guitarist, with Richard on bass and Steve playing acoustic guitar and singing. Soon afterwards, Steve and Richard got signed as a duo by DJM records - around the time when Elton John was becoming huge - where they remained, recording an album, a series of singles and touring the UK. Pete Brown, poet and author of many of the Cream’s classic hits, joined them on percussion and scrabble.Departing the relatively safe but, for him, increasingly unproductive confines of DJM, Steve played clubs and bars in and around London for the following six or seven sleepless years.Moving to LA, where he married and became a house-writer for LEM America, and fronted a couple of rock bands, Steve had some success writing songs for movies and writing English lyrics for French legend, Johnny Halladay’s, Gold Album, En VQ, and for the French No.1 single, ‘Casualty of Love’. After five years in California, he and his wife, returned to England, where he started writing jingles and singing for TV commercials. After the sudden loss of his first wife, Steve was introduced by Mike Finesilver – co-writer of Arthur Brown’s iconic, ‘I am the God of Hellfire’ - to American singer, Lynda Hayes. Steve and Lynda sang a duet on one of Mike’s songs, in his well known, Pathway Studio, and fell in love. They now have two sons and live in Northamptonshire. Steve, as well as writing and performing, co-directs multimedia video production company, ‘Paydirt Productions Ltd’.