Working in the music industry for more than forty years gave me something I never expected when I first started messing around with sound equipment. It gave me the chance to meet people whose names I had seen on records, posters, and concert bills.
Some were already famous when I met them. Others were still finding their feet. A few became friends. Many simply passed through my life for a night, a tour, or a brief conversation that somehow stayed with me for decades.
That is one of the strange things about working behind the scenes. Audiences see the finished performance. They see the artist walk onstage, hear the songs, and watch the lights come up. I often saw what happened before and after all of that.
I met Phil Lynott when Thin Lizzy were still a three piece. Years later, I worked around artists including Ian Hunter, Martha Reeves, Carl Perkins, Nina Simone, Ray Davies, Bo Diddley, The Yardbirds, The Blues Band, The Kinks, The Stone Roses, Faith No More, Simply Red, UB40, Benny Gallagher, Dennis Locorriere and Rod Smarr (Dr.Hook), Strawbs and many others.
The names sound impressive when you put them together, but the memories that stayed with me were rarely about fame.
They were about people.
A musician asking for help before a show. Someone telling a joke backstage. A conversation over a drink. A ridiculous problem with equipment. A long drive after a gig. An argument nobody expected. A friendship beginning in the middle of an ordinary working day.
That was the music business I knew.
There were no carefully managed social media moments. No phones recording every second. If something funny, embarrassing, or completely ridiculous happened backstage, it usually stayed with the people who were there.
And plenty happened.
Some musicians were exactly how you imagined them. Others were completely different once they stepped away from the stage. The biggest lesson was simple. Fame might change how the public sees someone, but backstage, people are still people.
They get nervous. They laugh. They complain. They make mistakes. They get tired. They can be generous, difficult, funny, unpredictable, kind, or all of those things in the same evening.
Those encounters became part of my own story.
That is what My Life in the Mix is really about. It is not a list of famous names. It is a look at the people, places, tours, friendships, disasters, and unexpected moments that filled a lifetime in music.
If you have ever wondered what famous musicians were like away from the stage, My Life in the Mix opens the door to the world behind the performances, where some of the best stories happened long after the audience had gone home.
