In 1992 the divide started life.... The original members were: Elliot Bass Guitar, left to go to university, works in some 9-5 job in the lakes now. GizMo Drums, left for a medical procedure which lets say... changed his gender? Terry Rhythm Guitar and Keyboards, now works stacking shelves in Tescos. Billy Vocals and Rhythm Guitar, died aged 34, drug related, he was my brother in law. Paul Vocals, Songwriter and Lead Guitar - Yours truly and the only member remaining from the original line up.
We originally played rock/blues covers, but a couple of the guys in the band had heard a couple of my songs and suggested we try those as well. I brought along a couple of songs and played them for the rest of the band, most of whom liked them. From then on we played more and more of the songs I had written. Billy had a couple of good songs, and used to help me write the lyrics for mine, he had his own songs but never felt they were good enough. I disagreed, but he would prefer me not to let the band play them, so we didn't. I will record a song in his memory one day. (I recently did this, it's called 'I remember you in the songs page').
In and around 1996 we had gone through various line-ups and settled down to a solid 5 these were in no particular order
John
Bass Guitar, current bass player
'little' Paul
Drums, still the same gender, with apparently no wish to change.
Terry
Rhythm guitar and keyboards
Billy
Vocals and Rhythm Guitar
Paul
Vocals, Songwriter and Lead Guitar, Yours truly
With this line we played several gigs around our local area, and built up quite a following, people would come, make noise and listen to us play, some great gigs were had, some fun times.
Then in 1997 Paul and John left to go to uni for three years. This put the band on hold, Billy was getting heavily into drugs, and Terry really wasn't that interested any more. I sat around, played at home and wrote a couple of songs, but generally took a break from music.
Anyway, once Paul and John returned from uni around 1999 they called me up to ask if I would be interested in reforming and playing again. I wasn't at all sure but I decided I would start again, this time without Billy and Terry.
John's girlfriend Sue came along and we decided that we could use her vocals on some of the songs, and she was prepared to play a little keyboard, so we are now a four piece band, this line up currently is as follows:
Paul - John - 'little' Paul - Sue. It is my intention to record as many songs as I can over the winter, and then once the weather gets a little warmer we will gig again in the summer time.
I have now updated my website and should perhaps update the history too, it is now January 2014 and so I have been creating and playing my music for 29 years. I have approximately 20 songs created so I am quite slow at writing them I guess! Currently I am in the process of re-vamping this website and of re-recording and uploading all of my music here. JW (John Watkinson) my bass player who like me is a surviving member of the original band I started many years ago The Divide still comes around to help me out in recording the songs and adding his creative input to the bass lines the song structures and lyrics at times. I will add more information here as time allows, thanks for reading and visiting my site.
PS - February 1st 2014.