Alderman Huggins Biography

B I O G R A P H Y

This is how it happened.

I was born in London to Eve and Reg, into a world where there were no satellites in the sky, parking was free, heating was a coal fire and many people - probably mainly Americans - were in a state of shock because Elvis was shaking his hips. My grandparents lived downstairs and my other grandparents – on my mums side – lived a short bus ride away. We could see Battersea power station from the bedroom window. I always found it quite disturbing, I don’t know why, I suppose it just looked kind of demonic, all sooty-black with thick smoke rising out of it’s four stacks. Actually, I don’t think they ran all four at once. That’s just reminded me of that song by Eels: “Smoke-stack spitting black soot into the atmosphere”. Within walking distance, was Battersea Park. In those days it was a magical place, with it's tree-walk, it's boating lake with islands (where you could cast-off in a rowing boat and float around until the man with the megaphone shouted "come in number 9"), it's man-made lake of multiple fountains - It's huge fixed fun-fair with enormous wheel and big-dipper, I can still hear the sounds of that thing, and the people screaming as it hit the water, wow! There's really never been anything else like that place, except perhaps Michael Jackson's garden.

Within walking distance in the other direction was Clapham common, a lovely flat green space with trees and swings, a slide and roundabouts and often the smell of fresh cut grass. Old men would sit playing checkers by the trees, just like in Jimmy Webbs "Macarthur Park", only we called it draughts because we.. were English. There was a lake where people could go fishing and another where you could sail toy boats among the ducks and swans...beautiful.

Music registered in my sub-conscious from an early age. I could hear whole orchestrations in my head and used to ride to the rhythm of them when I was out playing on my bike. A favourite was “Can Can"... Although music seemed to be part of my make-up, I didn't think anything of it until much later when I was about 14.

There was a song on the radio which seemed to me to be the most important song in the world, I’d never heard it before and I couldn't wait to find out what it was but my friend was messing around and trying to stop me listening to it. I got so desperate to shut him up that I punched him in the mouth - violence is not in my nature - but with my passion for the music running high, I snapped! The song was “Moonshadow” by Cat Stevens. Another song on the radio which really got me was “Walk on the Wild Side” by Lou Reed. Later, at 15 I heard “Slade Alive” from a school friend and after seeing a programme on TV featuring T. Rex (I think the show may have been "music in the round") I went into a record shop where there was a listening booth - some still had them in the 70's - and asked the guy if I could hear “Electric Warrior” He put it on really loud, and inside that booth, when when the dirt-groove waves of "Mambo Sun" started to enter my body that’s when I knew that I didn't just want to listen to music; I wanted to be able to play and write it.

I started work as an industrial photographer and met a lot of really cool people who were all music-heads, and this expanded my own musical knowledge. I was introduced to all the best bands and wow! It was like discovering a gold mine. A major find at this time was when I watched a Whistle Test special on TV: Van Morrison Live at The Rainbow. Just when I thought music couldn't get any better – I was totally blown away by Van Morrison and the Caladonia Soul Orchestra. Nathan Ruben on violin, Terry Adams on cello, Bill Atwood on trumpet...

The role-call seemed almost as cool as the music! Luckily, this wonderful band was captured live on the album "It's To Late To Stop Now" although this did not include their excellent version of "Here Comes The Night"

I got myself a Spanish guitar from Boots, and a bamboo flute from the shop next to Millets by the top end of Surrey Street market, we had moved to old town Croydon when I was 8, it didn't worry me in the slightest changing schools and leaving my friends behind in London. Just did not register as any kind of a problem at all. So with these instruments - I also had a Stylophone - I started to experiment with multi track recording using 2 tape recorders, bouncing between the 2 adding a fresh part each time. I recorded versions of "Walk On Bye" and "Moondance" and the Strawbs "Old Grey Man". I made my first venture into composing my own pieces. I was not a naturally gifted musician. I would struggle for hours and hours to play something right but I had the passion and the staying power to keep on until I did it.

So with this equipment, the Spanish guitar, the bamboo flute, the Stylophone and the 2 tape recorders, I made possibly the most bizarre music you could imagine.

Croydon was a great place for a boy when we first went there. Major construction was going on all over town. Many of the underpasses and underground car parks were unfinished. Me and my new friends became a pretty subterranean bunch, spending much of our time exploring the dark damp tunnels. It was adventure of the highest order.

Above ground, there were some great building sites where we would go climbing, running and jumping, burning up some of our inexhaustible energy. Nearer to home there were always dumped cars for us to play in at the local car parks - I think these were just flattened bomb sites from the war. I had the best of both worlds really. I could be a street urchin all day - well at least during the school breaks - and at night I could return to a nice little house and family...and FOOD!

There were some good parks in the area which I also used to frequent with my little pals. Duppas Hill - which had some steep slopes - good for bike riding. Wandle Park - which was the most boring one - maybe just go there for a change of scene and a kick around sometimes. Beddington Park - which was big and green with plenty of trees and a lake with rowboats for hire. It had another lake which was more wild, that's where I first saw things like Waterboatmen, big Dragonflies, Newts and Frogspawn. Out on the other side of town along the Coombe Road you came to Lloyds Park - big and open, but with a really good playground down in the dip - where the slide actually ran down the side if the slope. Beyond Lloyds Park was the mighty Shirly Hills, now you were really in the country. This was like a forest - big enough to get lost in - and we did sometimes. It could get a bit worrying if the light was fading.

One of my best friends of the time was Clive. Down in South Croydon there was Bramley Hill, this wasn't a park - it was just a very long street with houses and cars - but as the name suggests, it was a hill. We used to take our go-carts up there (the kind you make out of boxes and planks and an old set of pram wheels) and we would get on and fly down the hill at incredible speeds, hoping that the need for brakes did not arise. Brilliant fun! We also got into stilt walking, our dads made us the stilts and we became pretty good at it, we could even walk up and down steps. That's impressive for me because balance is not one of my strengths.

So at 15, school was out forever (or at least for the next 30 years). I already had some records when I left school. I remember in my final year walking into the technical drawing class one afternoon with the CCS album under my arm, which I had bought at lunchtime. It positively empowered me. Yes, owning music actually made me feel good, seemed to give me an extra dimension. Made me feel more cool, and more defined. The album itself was (and still is) a wonderful record. Released on the RAK label, CCS was a large collective of musicians who came together on this ambitious project to combine Big Band Jazz with Rock, Blues, Soul and Jazz Combo sounds. The result was a powerhouse of excitement. The name CCS I believe stood for Collective Consciousness Society.

Another thing I got into before I left school was photography. I had a good knack for taking pictures and I loved the whole darkroom thing, with the red lights, the smell of the bromide paper and all that. When I did leave school I was lucky enough to get a job working in photography. This meant that I could now spend all my days either in the dim red "safelights" or in the strong halogen, mercury or pulsed zennon lights that were used to do the exposures. Excellent! I had landed right where I wanted to be. Most of the people who worked in this job tended to socialize in the evenings as well so it was more a way of life than a job. We worked hard, we messed around, we played cards, we got drunk, we had parties, we went to gigs and films. There was plenty fun to be had, both at work and away from it.

When I turned 18 I got a credit card. This enabled me to purchase an Akai 4000ds stereo reel to reel tape deck. It had a sound-on-sound mode which let you layer sounds over one another without erasing what was there to begin with. The more layers the worse the sound quality got but you could certainly work with this machine and get some pretty good results.

By now I had also fixed myself up with a bass guitar, a cheap electric six string with tremelo arm and a Fender Princeton Reverb amp. I was kitted out and ready to start writing songs as a serious prospect. I quickly hit a snag...although music was flowing out of me like a fountain of delight, my lyric writing was awful...it was embarrassing. So what to do? I checked out the classifieds in "Hit Songwriting and Recording" magazine. I found a girl who was churning out pages and pages of pretty good lyrics and all I had to do was turn them into songs...easy peasy!

We went on to write about 50 plus songs together. Her name was Crystal Ridgers. I'm never going to be a great singer, but out of necessity I tried my hardest and sang on all the demo's. Meanwhile, I was developing my own lyric writing skills and found it allowed me to write different kinds of songs, so me and Crystal kind of just drifted out of working together but to this day I am happy we made that body of work.

To be continued...

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