Hello
Hi...welcome to Chris Baylis Guitar. I am a UK based guitar player of many years. Passion and presence are the cornerstones of my playing. The value of 'a single note', space and feel are the things that are important to me. I play mostly instrumental guitar music. I cannot play a guitar without a floating trem arm, such is it an integral part of my playing style. I play Strats, with volume control and delays. My early heroes were Hank Marvin, Paul Kossoff and Peter Green...but then I discovered 'the chief'....'Jeff Beck'.
My Story
I started playing guitar at an early age and began proper gigging in 1971, starting with village halls, dances etc and playing my first 'pro' gig with original material supporting' The Mick Abrahams Band' at Abingdon Technical College in 1972.
The following year I enrolled at Surrey University, Guildford, where I formed the group 'Moonmouse', playing gigs at Surrey and other colleges. In 1975 I played for the first time at The Hammersmith Odeon, with 'Moonmouse', supporting 'Steeleye Span'. The music was kind of 'prog rock' in the genre of Genesis, Camel and other bands of the time.
In !976 'Moonmouse' morphed into a more jazz rock style as 'The Brains Trust' playing some 70+ gigs over the next two years, including 'Ronnie Scotts' in London.
Sadly 1977 saw the demise of the band, ending a 5 year collaboration with my friend and keyboard player Dion Barker.
Picking up the pieces, I started writing more 'direct' pop / rock songs and after auditioning some very talented drummers, I discovered the amazing Al Hodgson, only 13 years old at the time, but already a 'phenomenum'! We worked together for around a year and then formed a partnership with keyboard player John Pethers and vocalist Jacqui Brookes. Within 9 months we had a deal with A&M Records, who at that time, were one of the UK's hottest labels with a roster including,' The Police', 'Quincy Jones', 'Squeeze', 'Supertramp', 'Joan Armatrding', 'Split Enz', etc. We had not played live at this point, but when we did, it was a revelation. Great reviews followed gigs at 'The Marquee' and the circuit of the time, including 'The Nashville', 'The Greyhound', 'Dingwalls', 'The Rock Garden', 'The Hope and Anchor' etc, with supports at The Hammersmith Odeon and Hammersmith Palais (one time supporting 'The Ramones'!!). At some point the gig schedule became too much for John and we recruited Pete Bartlett on bass and Simon Lawrence on keyboards and the band became a veritable power house, eventually headlining our own UK tour.
3 singles however did not set the world on fire and management machinations saw Jacqui Brookes head off for a short lived solo career....an opportunity lost!.... The rest of the guys formed 'Helter Skelter' and I was on my own again!
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Life after Siam
During the Siam era, I had started to get into recording and had invested in my first 'multi-track' tape machine...a 4 track Teac machine, on which I would record the band's demos. These were the demos that I used to 'hawk' around the London based record labels, in search of the 'elusive' deal.... They must have sounded 'ok' as one demo was actually used as a 'B'' side on one of our subsequent single releases! We had interest from several major labels and then signed with A&M Records and their sister company Rondor Music for publishing. The deal was clinched by a demo of our first single 'Deja Vu' that we re-recorded with Mark Lusardi in his 16 track studio. The 24 track recordings that we subsequently made with Siam, including sessions with Duran Duran producer Colin Thurston, sowed a bigger seed of interest in the recording process and a path was set.....
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Post Siam, I decided to pursue a 'solo'route and wrote and recorded under the name 'Naked in Paris' releasing 'Caza' on my own 'VM' record label in this country and securing deals for release in Holland and France. The 'B' side 'No-No, Heh-Heh was a 4 track 'epic' recorded in my home studio. The 12'' version is featured on Youtube upload by a 'fan' 2 years ago! When I listen back to that track now, with access to as many tracks as I want in my digital studio / recording method, I can only marvel at what my younger self achieved with only 4 tracks to play with!
It was after the release of 'Caza' that I upgraded to an 8 track machine using half inch tape. The demos were getting better and I started recording other artists, notably Dicken (of Mr Big and 'Romeo' fame). This was the start of a long collaboration which saw me recording many tracks with and for him, (mainly after upgrading my studio to 24 track) as well as playing on sessions with him at Battery Studios, produced by legendary producer 'Mutt' Lange. These tracks appeared as the 'Rainbow Bridge' album and on numerous 'Dicken', 'Mr Big' and 'Broken Home' re-packages, for me the most special being the 1986 release on Phonogram: 'Solid Gold' (Dicken).
I then joined a band called 'Sport' with songwriter / drummer Nick Trevisick and vocalist Ginny Clee. We recorded an album with producer Hugh Murphy (of 'Baker Street' by Jerry Rafferty fame), did endless 'showcases' at Nomis rehearsal studios, but despite good 'omens', the elusive 'deal' never came through....although subsequently Pat Benatar covered one of the songs off the album.
But I digress ... successful 8 track recordings led me to question why I was spending good money to record in commercial 24 track studios, so in 1885, I took the massive leap to upgrade my home studio to 24 track 2'' tape. At the time the tape machine alone cost over £11,000, the mixing console another £9,000 and an AMS digital reverb £4,500. Nowadays you can achieve multi-track recording, with as many tracks as you like, with an unlimited array of effects on pretty much any lap top!...albeit this is 'digital' recording as opposed to the art of 'analogue' (magnetic tape) recording. I will talk about the difference between the two elsewhere at some later date!
One of my first recordings in my 'home' 24 track studio resulted in the release of a single and 12" single 'Heart of Stone' released under my own name, but then I became 'sidetracked' by recording for other artists. I worked with numerous artists in an engineering / mixing / producing capacity, including 'Red Box', 'Dicken', 'Maddy Prior', 'Automatic Dlamini' (inc John Parish and PJ Harvey), 'Chatshow', 'Big Vern' and a host of others.....all by recommendation. Interesting times ...but diverting me from pursuing my own music.
1986 saw me forming a band with Nick Holland (currently playing keyboards with Barbara Dixon). 'Telling Stories' was a a very slick soul / rock outfit and we signed early on with a major London agency who were convinced we would sign a major record deal...................which, despite interest, never came to pass. Gigs and several appearances on German TV with Dicken followed. I spent a very enjoyable two weeks recording an album with 'Big Vern' at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios with John Cale producing.....(and that's another story!!).....but ultimately I was keen to get back to my own music!
The Guitar Orchestra years
I became more and more focused on my own guitar work, gave up on singing and decided to record an album on which everything apart from percussion would be played on guitar..... and thus 'The Guitar Orchestra" was born. I recorded the first self titled album mostly on my own, with contributions from the wonderful 12 string guitar player Tony Poole (TP), Simon Edwards (Fairground Attraction, Billy Bragg etc etc) on bass, with Ricky Edwards and Egyptian wizard and 'percussion mountain' Hossam Ramzy on percussion. The recordings took forever, as frequently I 'tracked up' countless
layers of guitars and 'flew them back in to the multi track' (again, I will explain that process another time!). It was indeed an 'orchestral' process. The album was finally released in 1991...received critical acclaim and was released in Germany and France as well. The project became a 'live act' after the album release, sometimes with ten of us on stage, playing arts centres, HTV television with Mal Pope, The Barbican Theatre and The Purcell Rooms, via gigs in Berlin and Holland as well. I recorded and released a second album 'Interpretations', which featured indeed 'left field' versions of pieces by The Beatles, Aker Bilk, Peter Gabriel, Toto and The Blue Oyster Cult. Both albums are available now on digital streaming platforms under 'Chris Baylis and The Guitar Orchestra'.
Our final gig in 1995 was at the prestigious 'Purcell Rooms' in London......after which I experienced a 'fallow' period in my musical life, as financial issues, dwindling income from the recording studio etc all took its toll.
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In the Wilderness
Life became more about 'furniture' than music (a whole other story...) and music took a back seat. I am eternally grateful to my friend Nick Holland for offering me the opportunity to get back 'into it', by joining his 'covers band' on bass sometime around 1999 and then subsequently asking me 'up to the stage' to 'blow some guitar' with his duo with wife Katie Humble, ('Darwin's Wish') on 'rock out' versions of tracks such as Gary Moore's 'Parisienne Walkway'. I had not played 'covers' since age 17, but this got me back into 'enjoying playing guitar' again!! It seems incomprehensible to me now that I had turned my back on it!!
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tp and woodman
My friend of many years 'TP' (Tony Poole) had been an integral part of 'The Guitar Orchestra' both live and in the recording of 'The Interpretations' album. We went to see a concert by Indian sitar player Purbayan Chatterjee in 2006 and it was truely 'inspirational'. I had long flirted with elements of Indian raga music and this concert set me on a path of experimenting with variations of Indian tunings and TP and I got together to create what we initially called a 'raga and light' experience, featuring a pyschedelic light show. Our debut performance closed the inaugural Witney Music Festival in 2006 with enormous shadows of ourselves playing over the rear wall of the marquee as the light show played through us...and 'tp and woodman' was 'up and running' as a duo. Various duo gigs followed, notably a performance from the main entrance of Woodstock's Town Hall as a musical accompaniment (with fire eaters and dancers) to the lighting up of the architecture of the town for 'Woodstock in Lume' and an appearance at 'The Cornbury Music Festival' which 'Paul Simon' headlined that year. We intended to record an album in 2009/2010 with a track titled '2012', aimed at the forthcoming Olympics in London.... but of course, it never happened. Roll on 2012 / 2013 and we recruited Ricky Edwards (from The GO) on percussion, Peter Morgan on bass and long term collaborator on 'Dicken / Mr Big' projects Paul Gibbon on keyboards. Notable gigs included appearances at Chipping Norton Theatre and various collaborations with artist 'Rod Craig' (www.rodcraig.com) on interactive 'Art to Music' evenings. Roll on 2020....(the years pass quickly!!) and finally work started on an album, designed as a 'solo' album, as TP was planning his own solo album, 'True to Yourself' (as well as the third 'Starry Eyed and Laughing' album, both available from : www.starryeyedandlaughing.com). We started the recording (digitally) at TP's studio and then the pandemic 'hit'. If we had known what we now know, we should have 'motored on through', but with TP's particular health history, we decided to pause....and so it was that I was forced to get my head around the art of 'digital recording' in order to continue on my own. The album has been 'almost finished' for quite a while, but actually, having prevaricated for 'so long', the final body of work is beginning to 'hang together' much better than, had I released it in 2025...tracks have been discarded (to fight another day, maybe) and new tracks have been recorded. Snippets are available on my Insta and Tiktok (chrisbaylisguitar) and FB (chrisbaylis) and I will post (in January 2026) a video of my track 'For Jeff', written as a tribute to my 'guru'....the late, great 'Jeff Beck'.
If you have made it this far...'well done!'.....and I hope you will enjoy 'Trem' when it is finally released....it's been a long journey, but hopefully one that will turn out to be 'worth the wait'.....Many thanks to TP for keeping the faith and pushing me to get this 'over the line'!
Chris
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