Peter (drums)
The trigger for Peter becoming a drummer was meeting during the 1970s. At that time Peter was running the Motor Racing School at Goodwood and Cozy was brought along for the day by a friend who was undergoing driver training.
That led to a deal for sponsorship being concluded with Hitachi for Cozy to race a Mazda RX3 in the Radio 1 Saloon Car Championship which was a nationwide series and coincided
with Cozy being on tour. That was an interesting experience!
By the time Peter got round to doing anything about learning the drums it was the mid 90s! He was very fortunate to find Martin Ashton as a teacher as Martin had been a big band drummer in the 50s, 60s and 70s for a good number of the bands around at that time and had done 13 Royal Variety Command performances for singers such as Ella Fitzgerald, Julie London etc.
After a year Martin decided to return to his family who were in South Africa so Peter put an ad in the Friday-Ad and found some fellow musical fledglings to start a band with. That went ok until the singer left for Sheffield and the guitarist fell for the girl singer, ditching his fiancée who he was due to marry in 6 weeks!! Rock n Roll...
A couple more bands came and went. Peter was then invited to join ‘Spiral’ who wrote all their own material. A following was building nicely but unfortunately there were performing issues that meant the band came to an end, which was a shame.
Then Peter met Steve, again from the Friday-Ad, and subsequently Brian and Andy. A format for material was quickly agreed and the band has since gone from strength to strength.
Andy (keyboards)
Andy started playing keyboards at the age of eleven - self taught. He took music GCSE at school, achieved a reasonable grade and started writing instrumentals after leaving, making five albums in three years. He learnt to play guitar at 19, again self taught - rhythm only. Also at that age he started writing songs with a song writing partner.
He has made six albums to date - all original stuff - three solo, three with a partner. Andy met Pete on holiday in 2002 and he asked him if he wanted to join a band. He had never been in a band before but decided to give it a go and is still there now, four years later! Andy is still writing songs alone now and hopes to make another CD next year.
In 1993 he formed the well-known funk and soul band, The Soul Providers, to raise money for children's charities. For the last four years he has been with the Pickford Five, getting back to his blues/rock roots, and having a lot of fun in the process. Along with the other guys in the band, Steve believes in doing everything on a professional basis, from the admin all the way through to the music.
Steve loves 70s rock such as Free, Bad Company, Bryan Adams, ZZ Top, basically anything with guitars in it, and can often be seen having one of those "Paul Kossoff moments" when cranking it out with the Pickfords!
Brian started performing in bands at the age of about 15 as a drummer, but didn't like it so moved to bass guitar because no one else wanted to. He played rock music for a couple of years, influenced by Free, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath and then found more work on the cabaret circuit in a three piece harmony band which lasted on and off for some 23 years.
He played a lot of pubs and clubs in Liverpool as well as a few residencies but has ruefully never played The Cavern (sad or what). Brian joined a sixties band in the eighties which was a lot of fun and he then played in a fourpiece band in the nineties which he left when he moved down south. There he met up with Peter and Steve, becoming a Pickford and the rest is history.