The Composers
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Kevin Adams (1954 - 2020)
Kevin Adams wrote over twenty songs for Living Archive productions and performed its music in community documentary dramas and various other local LAMK projects from 1992 until illness restricted him in 2011. He continued the recording and production of four albums of LAMK’s large catalogue of songs - his and other composers’ - that emerged from these projects. Many of Kevin’s songs are based on the experiences of local people, individually and collectively, past and present. All of them are based on documentary evidence - from verbatim reminiscences, or written accounts such as diaries, letters and newspaper articles. He felt that Milton Keynes was fortunate to have a vast repository of such material in the collections of the Living Archive MK. As a song-writer he said, ‘It has been both a joy and a challenge to compose to such a precise brief of what a song was to be about. There is a sense of great responsibility towards the subject(s) of the song, to be true to their stories.’ Playing guitar, fiddle and mandolin, Kevin performed and recorded widely across the UK and abroad and he produced four solo albums – and continued for many years, despite being disabled by MS. As he said in 2015 in the introduction for his album Sheltermore: ‘Poor health ambushed me in 2010. I survived cancer but was then diagnosed with MS. I am now in a wheelchair, but worse, my hands can no longer manage stringed instruments. Thank heaven for computers!’ For ten years, Kevin became a formidable music producer in his home studio, StudioBlend, creating eight out of the 12 albums which feature online and as CDs. These include three classic albums of songs written for Living Archive MK productions and performed by The Living Archive Band; and five albums created for his own projects. One of his last projects (2018) was an extended piece about Bletchley Park, A CrossWord War. In November 2020, Kevin died from the complications of Covid, but his music lives on. Kevin Adams was fundamental to the music created for Living Archive documentary dramas throughout a quarter of a century. His compositions have been widely acclaimed for both integrity of feeling and variety of form; his live performances – on the fiddle, guitar, mandola, mandolin and vocals – energised Living Archive songs as well as the Living Archive Band; and his studio production of the music has achieved the highest quality sound. A full appreciation of Kevin and his work can be seen on Living Archive MK’s website: Kevin Adams | People | Living Archive Kevin’s careful archiving of the Living Archive Band’s performances were recorded on Music | The Living Archive Band (bandcamp.com) |
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Brad Bradstock (1950 – 2023)
Brad moved to Milton Keynes in 1973, first joining Hemlock, which subsequently became The Cock and Bull Band; and then, as a dancer and musician and – in his words - ‘playing dubious melodeon’ with Stony Stratford Morris. An early acting performance for Living Archive was in Days of Pride (1981) but Brad was an actor and musician in a further six LAMK community musical dramas at Stantonbury Theatre: The Jovial Priest, All Change, Sheltered Lives, Worker by Name, Your Loving Brother Albert and Nellie. In 1996 he won a Sony Award for his one-man show I’ll Tell You What Happened based on the stories of New Bradwell resident, Hawtin Mundy. This show was toured nationwide including the Edinburgh Festival. In 1998, he performed Mr. Worker’s Walkabout around Stony Stratford as local resident Tom Worker. Brad also toured the show A Glance from a Train across the UK with Eric Thompson, telling the story of the coming of the railway to Wolverton. Brad appeared at numerous UK Folk Festivals; he acted in nearly 30 plays and directed three; he made several radio broadcasts, wrote five music scores and performed in many bands, including the Living Archive Band. Brad’s technical support extended to much of the Band’s needs: he hosted their website and included access to their music. He also provided and set up the sound system needed for their many gigs and performances – including amps and mics. He would say: ‘We only need a power socket, I have the rest.’ Brad worked until his retirement at The Redway School in Milton Keynes for children with learning difficulties. He was the school’s ICT technician and systems manager – and also a musician for the children, giving them much-loved musical recreation. Brad died in January 2023 after a long illness, leaving many in Milton Keynes saddened to lose his warmth and friendliness – and his exceptional voice. ‘That Incredible Voice… it was the voice of Milton Keynes…’ Many more tributes and a full recognition of his numerous achievements can be found on: An Appreciation of Brad Bradstock | News | Living Archive |
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Paul Clark (1941-2015)
Paul Clark was involved with Living Archive projects from 1977 with All Change! for which he composed and performed songs – as he did for the next 35 years. Paul served as Chair of Living Archive’s Board from 1984 when ‘The Living Archive Project’, first morphed into a charity. Paul was also Chair at a crucial time in the organisation’s history when, in 1991/1992, it moved out of its original office on Stantonbury Campus to the Old Bath House in Wolverton. Its first full-time General Manager, Roger Kitchen said: ‘It’s never easy to make big changes in any organisation, and Paul’s calm and measured leadership was crucial in helping Living Archive ‘grow up’ into an organisation with its own premises and full-time staff, whilst making sure it kept true to its unique vision of using the past and present life of Milton Keynes as the inspiration for all its work.’ When Paul’s professional duties took him away from Milton Keynes, he became Living Archive’s Vice-Chair, a position he held until June 2012 whilst simultaneously pursuing a high-powered career in education taking him to the top echelons of his profession. Canadian by birth, Paul came to England in the 1960s with a doctorate in Theoretical Physics. He became the Open University’s Dean of Science; he was the HE Funding Councils Director for both England and Scotland; and he was the author of multi-media course materials in his field. Paul was ultimately the OU Pro Vice-Chancellor until he retired (2008). As a Visiting Professor, he spoke at conferences across the world. Paul played piano, clarinet, string bass, and electric bass, with the acoustic guitar his principal instrument. He played in jazz bands; and was one of the 1992 founder members of the Living Archive Band. Indeed, it is at Living Archive where Paul’s special qualities endure, in the musicianship of his songs – 20 of them - written about, and for, the people of Milton Keynes. Paul said in an interview for CRMK radio in 1984: ‘Being given a particular function by Living Archive can be quite liberating. It gives you a framework to start, rather than just sitting down and waiting for inspiration.’ Paul wrote his songs after studying in detail tapes and transcripts of interviews with those who lived through the events and periods of history which the dramas document. Fellow band members commented: ‘Paul’s songs are wonderful to sing… They’re full of pathos with beautiful melodies that embed themselves… Once sung, they can never be forgotten.’ Dr Paul Mowbray Clark became Living Archive’s First Honorary Trustee of the Board in 2012; but it is his songs that are enduring memorials to the unique musician that was Paul Clark. Dr. Paul Mowbray Clark (1941-2015) | People | Living Archive Music | The Living Archive Band (bandcamp.com) |
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John Close (1947-2003)
John Close was born in Middlesex and spent his early life in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. A Royal Latin Grammar Schoolboy, he dropped out of college to work in London various jobs - as a painter, for Social Security, in furniture stores and warehouses, in hospitals and an off-licence… But John also developed his musicianship, through joining groups – such as Splinter and the Sasoon Band; through writing his own songs and poems; and through performing at venues like the Edinburgh Fringe. In 1988 he wrote: ‘Finally (1976) I came to live in Milton Keynes. I stayed with a mate who had the idea that we should be rock stars so I played bass and he played lead and we got a drummer. It didn't last long, but I'd got a job of sorts with British Rail in Wolverton and a house all of my own, with real curtains and a separate bedroom, in Bradville MK… ‘Then I wandered into the OU one day to meet a chap who needed some bog-standard clerical assistance for a month. That was 1978 and I've been here ever since.’ As can be seen on the website created by his sister, Lesley Close, John’s musical output has been prolific and the range of his song writing talent is vast: he leaves behind a rich legacy which sadly now lies mainly unsung (http://onefivenine.info/johnclose.htm). He composed songs for only one Living Archive show – Sheltered Lives in 1983, but they give a wonderful insight into the communal insulation that was Wolverton in the 1930s-‘40s: There’s a War On, In the Event of an Air-Raid, War Weapons Week and Wolverton Whistle include both the comedy – and the pathos – of people facing the disruption of war together. In March 2001 John was diagnosed with motor-neurone disease. Lesley says: ‘During 2002 his condition slowly deteriorated and by February 2003 he felt the quality of his life was so poor that he contacted Dignitas in Switzerland and asked them to help him die. John died, age 55, in Zurich on 26th May 2003.’ |
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Rib Davis
Rib Davis has had a profound love of music from early childhood. He started his university career as a music student. But it was his time spent teaching at Stantonbury in the 1970s – and particularly the influence of Roy Nevitt – that eventually led him to become a playwright, director and oral historian. Having been musical director for Nevitt’s All Change! he went on to research, write and direct many of his own large-scale musical community documentary dramas, including Every Other Garden ‘Ad a Pit, commissioned for the DH Lawrence Centenary Festival in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire. At the same time, he developed as a non-documentary writer. His script output includes 25 plays and dramatised features broadcast on BBC Radio 4, such as the series Beyond Reasonable Doubt and Unwritten Law. Television work includes episodes of Thames tv’s The Bill and his own adaptation for BBC TV’s Screenplay 2 of his award-winning stage play No Further Cause for Concern. His most recent stage plays have been The Fight in the Dog, written for inmate performance in Winchester prison, and The Sword of Alex, presented at the White Bear theatre, London. As the Goodison Fellow 20018 -’19 at the British Library, he researched Holocaust testimonies held in the National Life Stories collection, resulting in the stage play Safe, scheduled for performance in 2023. For some years a lecturer on the MA Writing for Screen and Stage at the London School of Film, Media and Performance, Regents College (now University), London, Rib Davis is also a regular guest lecturer at De Montfort University. He has written two books on scriptwriting; Writing Dialogue for Scripts is now in its fourth edition. Rib Davis has run many oral history projects not connected to documentary theatre. He set up and then for many years ran the oral history programme at the Lightbox museum and gallery in Woking. In 2016 he finished working on the Pass It On project with young people at Chichester Festival Theatre; in 2017-18 he led the Protests of the 80s project on the Isle of Dogs; the following year he was oral history consultant on the For Walls with Tongues community murals projects and since then he has overseen oral history projects at Brooklands Museum, on Romney Marsh in Kent, and at West Horsley Place in Surrey. For many years Rib Davis has been an accredited trainer in oral history on behalf of the British Library and the Oral History Society. He has given training on the collection and use of oral history for scores of community organisations and major bodies in the UK, including The Science Museum, London, the National Army Museum and Oxford University Press. In addition he has run oral history courses at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar; in Sharjah, UAE; in Beirut, Lebanon; and in Kuwait. At the British Library itself he regularly presents four courses, including ‘Transcript to Script’, on turning oral history into theatre. See https://www.ribdavis.com ; contact: [email protected] or at www.unitedagents.co.uk |
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Sue Malleson
Sue Malleson was born in St Albans, moved to Stewkley as a young child and from thence to Bow Brickhill for the next 50 years, before becoming a resident of Stony Stratford, near her family. Sue worked at Milton Keynes Development Corporation in its early years. She then moved into industrial public relations in the 1990s and is now virtually retired. She has been folk singing and dancing for as long as she can recall. As a young teenager Sue was taken to Folk Camps, and she still attends their events; now not just with her children but with lots of grandchildren too. ‘After my first folk camp I decided to play guitar, but I stopped when I encountered the chord of Bm! It was time to learn the spoons instead…” Inspired by her brother Jonathan, a folk-fiddling legend, Sue has been learning folk fiddle for many years but she says, not improving much. “The tunes are all in my head already; I just need to find some way of expressing them.” Sue’s family was steeped in the pre- and post-war folk revival; her father, mother, aunts and uncles all playing a part, so it was inevitable that folk songs were the repertoire for her 1960s three-girl harmony group, The Cedarfolk. In the ‘70s she sang with Poachers Folly and ran a folk club. Sue has been a folk dance ‘caller’ for over 45 years. A memorable experience for Sue was at the new MK Theatre performing in Living Archive’s 1999 production All Change! – and she has been with the Living Archive Band ever since. www.bowbrickhill.com www.folkcamps.co.uk www.livingarchive.org.uk |
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Godfrey Yeomans
Godfrey Yeomans lives in rural Milton Keynes Borough – once North Buckinghamshire. He spends his time ‘walking in the countryside, drawing and painting and pursuing my main interest which is music.’ Godfrey is primarily a bass guitar player but he also plays ‘a bit of tenor guitar’. He is a songwriter too, for folk, folk-rock, country and ceilidh music. He has a small home studio set-up for creating and recording his music. Godfrey’s first musical efforts were in the sixties, briefly with drums before switching to bass. He played in local bands around Bucks and Beds and moved to London to play professionally in a blues band. ‘When that came to an end, for various reasons I gave up playing for quite a few years.’ He started again at the beginning of 2000, to achieve a long-held personal ambition: ‘Take music lessons and learn about bass and music theory properly.’ Inevitably, he was drawn into music projects, including for folk-rock and ceilidh. Godfrey performed with The Living Archive Band from 2010 and was involved with the composition of five songs for the 2015 LAMK project for BBC radio, The Horse and the Tractor, all of which are in the LAMK song archive, with four featured on the eponymous radio ballad CD. Hear the songs on the following website: Calverton: Songs from 'The Horse & the Tractor' | The Living Archive Band (bandcamp.com) Godfrey Yeomans is also a self-taught water-colour artist: ‘I'm quite literally an 'armchair artist'; so my pictures are always small, created with mediums that are not too messy - drawing pens, brush pens and watercolour pencils.’ |
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Jeremy (‘J’) Cunningham
J Cunningham took an early interest in the piano, in ‘easy classics like Chopin, Mozart and Strauss waltzes’, in opera and in the guitar. Inspired by 1960s’ singer-songwriters like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, he started writing his own songs, sang in folk clubs and discovered traditional English folk music. After university, he travelled in North and Central America and Japan, writing ‘about seventy songs, most of them pretty unmemorable’; he arrived in Milton Keynes in 1976 to teach at Stantonbury Campus. J was inevitably caught up in the excitement of Milton Keynes’ first-ever, home-grown, large-scale community musical documentary play then fermenting the Stantonbury Campus Drama Group under Roy Nevitt – All Change! The Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger workshop at the time was a formative experience when he learned the ‘building technique’ where each verse gets longer. The witty Wolverton Refreshment Room emerged from this - out of seven songs J wrote for the production. He used the technique again for Ambulance Train in Days of Pride – one of five songs he composed for the play. Three other shows – Your Loving Brother Albert, The Jovial Priest and Nellie inspired a further 13 songs; all 25 are in the LAMK song archive, and all are a delight. Roy Nevitt, Living Archive Co-founder, documentary theatre writer and producer, voiced what many feel about J’s songs for Living Archive productions: ‘J Cunningham is one of the most brilliant, prolific and reliable song-writers (whose) unmistakeable style, original and full of surprises and delights, readily adapted to the needs of the plays… J produced songs that were always disciplined, sharp, fresh, witty and unforgettable.’ The following two websites have access to J’s songs and stories: Stream J J Cunningham music | Listen to songs, albums, playlists for free on SoundCloud J Cunningham | People | Living Archive |
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Neil Mercer
Neil Mercer was Musical Director for Living Archive theatre productions throughout the 1990s. His shows included Worker By Name, The Pride of Wolverton, Days of Pride, Bigger Brighter Better and The Fabric of Milton Keynes. For these he has been composer, musical director, playing guitar, mandolin, trumpet and pipes. About composing for the shows, he says: ‘I read all the info from the interviews with local people and talked to the playwright. … Writing songs for Living Archive has been very satisfying. I’d always found it quite hard to write songs, because I never knew what to write about. The Living Archive resources give you plots, people, and key phrases, all ready-made.’ The personal perspective has been a hallmark of Neil’s LAMK songs – the young woman yearning for a home of her own in ‘I want a little more from life’; the excitement of a teenager in The Night the Stones Rolled into Town; the Stony Stratford resident who knows hardship but loves his time off in A Few Coppers. Neil grew up in the Lake District, which is where he first got involved in folk music. For his day job, he is Emeritus Professor of Education and Director of the centre Oracy Cambridge at the University of Cambridge [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Mercer]. Musically, he plays with Phil Riley [http://www.philriley.org.uk] as a duo and in the band Borderline Crossing. Musically, he again plays with the Living Archive Band ; and with Phil Riley [http://www.philriley.org.uk] as a duo and with others in the band Kites Collective: Kites Collective - YouTube Neil wrote the LAMK songs ‘I want a little more from life’ and ‘Rainbow’ with his wife, Lyn Dawes, who has also written many poems and books for teachers. http://www.lynwrite.com/ |
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Rod Hall
Born in Harrow, and brought up in Yorkshire and Liverpool, Rod Hall first joined the merchant navy, then Trinity House as a lighthouse keeper, including at Wolf Rock - the most remote lighthouse in England. Here, Rod taught himself classical guitar and music theory. Later, he settled in Stony Stratford and became a music student at Bletchley Park, studying guitar, mandolin and double bass, eventually acquiring a music degree. A primary school teacher in Milton Keynes in the 1970s Rod was involved in Living Archive’s first staging of Days of Pride (1981). He composed new songs and musical arrangements, conducting a large community-sourced orchestra for the production. More music was composed for The Jovial Priest in 1982; and even in 2012 after he returned to Yorkshire, Rod wrote music for the Calverton Manor Farm project, recorded for The Horse and the Tractor and Calverton, the Songs. All Rod’s 22 Milton Keynes compositions are in the LAMK song archive. In 1995, Rod joined Fourum Folk. Having become Deputy Headteacher for a North Yorkshire school where the band was due to perform a concert, he asked if he could play with them for the night. From their first rehearsal, ‘Rod became a permanent member of Fourum, with his Victorian double bass and adding extra harmony to some of the songs (and) some melodic playing on his old nylon string guitar or mandolin.’ (www.fourumfolk.co.uk) |
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Eileen Rafferty
Eileen Rafferty was born in London and went to school and University there. She became a Primary school teacher and taught for more than 30 years. Eileen has always loved and been involved in a wide variety of music genres including Classical, Jazz, Folk and Early Music. She also loves contemporary dance and folk dance. She has sung in choirs performing in London and in European concert halls. As a teacher, Eileen has written many songs for school productions. As a singer/songwriter, she has worked with numerous Folk and Jazz musicians. While living in Stony Stratford in the 1990s, Eileen worked on Living Archive’s production of Worker By Name, choreographing dance scenes, writing songs and singing with the Living Archive Band. Eileen composed three songs for this production – On the Breadline and Stony Stratford, a Country Town and Stony High Street – for which she was also the lead singer. In addition, Eileen was involved in a Living Archive co-production with BBC radio, The Fabric of Milton Keynes. This unique programme culminated in an unforgettable event at Christ the Cornerstone Church in Central Milton Keynes, recorded live on BBC 3CR. People from all over the new city came with their tapestries, dance, sculptures, paintings, and specially commissioned songs from the Living Archive Band – to celebrate the city’s varied communities. Eileen’s song was a celebration of the city’s working community at Camp Hill in Willen Park Milton Keynes, for adults with learning difficulties but ‘with sufficient independence to benefit from an urban situation’: she wrote and performed with the Living Archive Band the Camp Hill Blues. Eileen now lives in Sussex where she sings with a Jazz guitarist, performing her own songs. |