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David
Mead Biography Born and educated in south west London, David Mead began playing guitar at the age of fourteen, early influences being the progressive rock bands of the 1970s. His fascination with jazz began after seeing a concert on television featuring guitar legend Joe Pass. ‘I was hooked. I always knew that it must be possible to play melody, harmony and bass together on the guitar from my coming into contact with the playing of classical guitarists like John Williams. Joe proved that it was possible to do the same sort of thing but with a contemporary edge to it and this set me on a whole new course of discovery and study…’ After a few years with his head buried in theory books, David emerged to turn pro in the early 1980s, dividing his time between teaching, leading his own quartet and playing solo. Along the way he was privileged to work with some of the legendary figures on British jazz scene - players like Pete King, Lol Coxhill, Dick Heckstall-Smith and Harry Beckett. Around the same time he played with a band that became something of a local legend in East Anglia during the 1980s - The Jazz Mothers, who played music from a wide range of sources including Sonny Rollins and Frank Zappa. ‘That was an intense band. At one gig, someone from the audience came over and requested Zappa’s King Kong which is a fifteen minute long piece of highly structured music. We couldn’t play it, but I made damn sure we put some of Frank’s music in the set so that we were ready in future. So the audiences were pretty left field and so was the music.’ Meanwhile, having built up a successful guitar teaching business, David’s career changed course at the beginning of the 1990s when he had the chance to put his writing talents to good use by joining the editorial team at Guitarist magazine. ‘Music journalism was a real eye-opener. I went straight from teaching and playing in clubs to being invited backstage at Clapton gigs and spending time on the road with Pink Floyd… It was an incredible experience.’ In 1995, David was asked to take over as editor of Guitarist, moving over to the editor’s chair in Guitar Techniques some time later. The latter magazine concentrated more on teaching guitar and so, in many ways, things had turned full circle. Only this time, instead of teaching one-on-one, David oversaw material aimed at teaching the magazine’s readership of 21,000! During this time, live playing was taking something of a back seat as his writing career continued to blossom. In 1997 he was invited to write his first guitar tutor for Sanctuary Publishing, which was to lead to a string of best-selling books, including 10 Minute Guitar Workout, Chords and Scales and 100 Tips For Guitar. He also became a regular member of the teaching faculty at the International Guitar Festival’s annual summer school in Bath, later being asked to sit on the board of trustees. It was a collaboration with Martin Taylor that proved to be another turning point, however. ‘I co-wrote Martin’s autobiography in 2000 and when it was published, we were asked to go on a book-signing tour. It meant a lot of travelling, but we played every night at the book stores and it just occurred to me that this was what I wanted to do - and that I needed to get back to playing again…’ He left Guitar Techniques with the intention of concentrating on writing books and making a return to performing. Plans were put in place to make an album - in between writing no less than six books in the ensuing twelve months! Recording began in earnest in January 2005, with studio sessions fitted in around David’s writing commitments, culminating in the release of Nocturnal in July 2006. |
