In the early 90’s I was playing in local bands on the pub and club circuit. In that time I stumbled upon many great performers who generally had ego’s that matched their talent. Most had brushed closely with fame, everyone had stories of people who had been in bands with them in the 80’s who had gone on to bigger and better gigs. Personally, I just felt very fortunate that I could share the stage with some of these exceptional people and enjoy a little bit of the limelight for myself. 
In 1992 I joined a duo that was experiencing a good deal of exposure by playing covers on the ‘premium’ pub circuit of the day. The band was called Tomm Tomm and consisted of Joe Corke on guitar and John Neild on vocals. When I say ‘premium’ what I meant is the higher end of pubs that were big enough to justify large PA systems and lighting rigs. Our regular gigs were the likes of ‘Plummers’, ‘Sullivans’, ‘The Jawbone’ etc.
When I joined, the duo was expanded to a trio and we used self produced backing tracks in the form of midi files that we played on a Yamaha QX3 sequencer. Very high tech for the day!
After about a year, John Neild decided to leave the band due to concentrating on his own material and wanting to move away from covers.
This left Joe and I with a dilemma as we had a full diary of bookings to fulfil. We knew that we would need an excellent front man and we started to put the word out that there was a vacancy. We had many offers but nobody seemed to be strong enough to keep the reputation of the band and most importantly keep the gigs we already had.
Out of desperation, I began to make a list of all of the singers who I had seen in Liverpool pubs and clubs that had impressed me in the past. Top of this list was John Cosgrove.
John had first come to my attention when he used to sing in a band called Drama in the 80’s. This band had a massive local following that used to pack out Daley’s in town on any occasion that they played. Although the whole band were excellent musicians, the majority of people (including myself) that used to go to see them, were there to hear John’s voice. His renditions of Genesis and Gabriel used to be so uncannily like the originals that the hairs would stand up on the back of your neck. 
I had not heard anything about John since the 80’s, but luckily for myself and Joe, a mutual friend (Brian Marriott) passed me John’s number and I asked him if he would like to join Tomm Tomm? 
In our initial meeting, I was astounded at how unassuming John was. As is sometimes the case when you meet somebody that you admire, I expected him to have an ego that matched my own estimation of his talent. This could not be further from the truth; John was the most down to earth person that I have ever been fortunate enough to meet.
We had one rehearsal in my house and then we did our first gig. This was hard for John as the audience were used to hearing the songs and voice of our old front man. This did not matter, by the end of the gig the audience were blown away by John’s voice and we began a new era for the band.
As the gigs were going well, we decided to produce a tape (remember those!) to sell at the shows. I was beginning to build my own studio and we used this to put together some tracks. John was far more experienced at recording than me and gave me lots of guidance with regards vocal techniques and using tape effects to enhance the recording.
The tracks here were recorded in one afternoon. We had already produced the backing tracks to use live. Lots of the keyboards and synths are played by john with me looking after the MIDI side of the production. 
One thing that I will always remember during the sessions is John not being too keen to polish the performances. His words were actually ‘it’s only for a jarg tape Col!’
When you listen to the tape, it is all more or less live; there was no Autotune in 1994. So much so, that the words are completely wrong in ‘Love really hurts’ and John refused to correct them. In hindsight he was right though. Even though we sold about a thousand of the tapes, nobody once mentioned that the words are wrong!
One of the things that I liked best about being in a working band is the time you spend and the relationships that you build with the other band members. When you spend hour upon hour in the back of a Transit van going to gigs all over the country, you get to know each other very well. Working with John Cosgrove was an absolute pleasure and I feel immensely privileged to have known him. His wit and wisdom will stay with me forever. When playing back these songs, listening to his amazing voice, I am immediately transported back to the day in the nineties when we recorded them. It makes me smile.

Colin Heron 8th March 2012






In the Air Tonight

Love is all around

Relax

Wherever I lay my hat

Colin_Heron

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