Peter Moss (composer)
Peter Moss is an English composer, musician, arranger and MusicAL director who might be best known for the previous theme tune of Grange Hill which was composed in 1990.
Early days
Born in the Central Middlesex Hospital in Park Royal, London on July 23, 1948. ("Six minutes into being a Leo)" , Moss, a NATURAL musician, had a classical upbringing, learning to play the viola, the contrabass, the piano, the guitar, as well as percussion. Born with a good voice, he also sang both solo as well as in choral groups.
When young, Peter's working class family lived at Kensal Rise, North London. His father was a gifted musician, but frustrated in his ambitions. Although he could play virtually any instrument, he had to earn his living as a fireman to support a wife with three children (two boys and a girl, Peter is the oldest child). Peter's mother was not musical. "My mother had no career but sang extremely badly, so she was banned from singing to the wireless before breakfast."
He attended a nun's Catholic school in Harlesden until the age of eleven, then went on to the Willesden County Grammar School which was not a specific music school but did have a musical reputation due to the drive of its music master, W. H. Madin. Within two years, Peter had found his talent and his calling. "I became a musician because it chose me!"
London in the sixties
Finding himself a teenager in the Britain of the early 1960s, Moss, like so many others formed rock and roll bands. His first attempt at his own band was called the Waik. Another band playing at the same time was the Tribe, which included the guitarist Frank Torpey who went on to join Sweet. Playing bass in the Tribe was Dennis Cowan, the brother of a boy Peter had attended school with. (It was through Dennis, who would become a member of the Bonzo Dog Band, that Moss would find his career opening out into musical arranging and directing as well as playing.) Meanwhile, Moss's most successful band was called the Rednik Smith Band, which toured Europe. He also backed visiting American soul artists like James & Bobby Purify whose big hit was "I’m Your Puppet", and The Flirtations, an all-girl singing group whose greatest hit was "Nothing But A Heartache".
Rocky Horror
By 1973, Moss knew everyone (London’s musicians were a tight-knit group with a number of cross-overs). Around that time an unknown actor named Richard O'Brien was cobbling together the first version of The Rocky Horror Show which was put into the 63-seat studio Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court Theatre at the Sloane Square end of Kings Road, Chelsea. This first attempt was a failure. Moss called it: "...a disaster!" After a few very difficult months, it was transferred "downmarket" to the wrong end of Kings Road and shoved into an old cinema, and from then on it took off spectacularly. Dennis Cowan was the bass player in the musical's orchestra while at the same working with the Bonzos. But Cowan was ill (he would die at the age of 28 from a heart attack) so asked Moss to stand in for him as bass player. Within a short time, Cowan was too ill to play for both the musical and the Bonzos so Moss was not only the bass player, he also played guitar and piano, then became the musical director of Rocky Horror.
To this day, Peter Moss often oversees touring productions of the show all over the world.
Abbey Road Studios and the seventies
When Dennis Cowan died, Moss got a call to meet Vivian Stanshall, who was looking for a "weird instrument man." The two got on famously and did their first session together one Sunday morning on a converted barge in Little Venice belonging to Elton John's music engineer, Tom Neuman. On that day they recorded Stanshall's version of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine". Moss played double bass, Nic Rowley played piano, Moxie played harmonica, with Stanshall (backed by Moss and Rowley) on vocals, ukelele, and euphonium. It's possible Bubs White played guitar. Moss would go on to working closely with Stanshall on his radio series, Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, the LP recorded version for Charisma Records, and the film of the same title.
Moss played bass for the Alan Parsons rhythm section at Abbey Road Studios with Pete Wingfield on piano for Dexys Midnight Runners and Paul McCartney, with Steve Ferrone on drums for Eric Clapton, and others, and Tim Renwick on guitar for the Sutherland Brothers, Al Stewart's Year of the Cat, and Pink Floyd. He also backed Dean Ford (solo after Dean Ford and the Gaylords and Marmalade), and Terry Sylvester.
Working with Ben Findon, he was an arranger, an assistant producer and musician on the late seventies and early eighties hits of Billy Ocean, The Dooleys, and The Nolans.
The Eighties
In the eighties, Peter was the long-time producer, arranger, musical director and player for the Irish singer Dana.
Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera
Having met and become close friends with Vivian Stanshall, Moss found himself often working on Stanshall’s projects, whether albums or touring. (He was Stanshall’s musical director when Stanshall toured with Procul Harum as well as for the solo Rawlinson End tours and the last tour: Dog Ends.) Unable to read music, Stanshall would constantly hand Moss a tape of his humming along to a ukulele then asking Moss to “write down the dots, dear boy.” In 1985, while working with Dana, Moss was called in to help Stanshall and his wife, Ki Longfellow-Stanshall “whip into shape the “awkestra” of a musical they had written titled Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera. Arriving at the Old Profanity Showboat in Bristol, England, he was confronted by a raggle-taggle band of frightened local musicians and street buskers. Standing six feet seven inches tall, over the course of one day he terrified them into an orchestra. For the second staging of Stinkfoot in 1988 at the Bloomsbury Theatre, Moss was the sole musical director.
Moss was one of Stanshall’s closest friends until the end of Stanshall’s life. As such, he is the artistic executor of Stanshall’s estate.
Television
Moss has also made a career in television, writing, arranging, and producing jingles for companies in both Germany and England. He’s worked on dozens of products, including lego and Cadbury, plus produced and musically directed Eartha Kitt, Hazel O'Connor and Kiki Dee. At the BBC, he’s been involved with a host of TV and radio shows in many capacities, including writing and musical direction of a special with Dusty Springfield.
Peter was the composer and musical director for the BBC series The News Huddlines with Roy Hudd, June Whitfield and Chris Emmet. The News Huddlines ran for 27 years.
Music around the World
Beginning in the 1990s Moss began working all over the world, conducting, arranging, and musically directing talents ranging from the German tenors Peter Hofmann and Rene Kollo, the Jamaican soul singer Precious Wilson, the American singer Katrina Leskanich (of Katrina and the Waves), to the actress and singer Faith Brown.
At an open-air concert in Worms, Germany he conducted the Johann Strauss Orchestra & Rock Rhythm Section with the soprano, Deborah Sasson. He’s also conducted the 137 voice Gimmeldingen Choir & 30 piece Orchestra in a Concert in Neustadt an der Weinstraße.
Currently he is the Artistic Director for the touring Phantom of the Opera, the "12 Tenors," the Cliff Richard Golden Anniversary concert tour of the UK, and working with the Chinese on a concert.
He is also working on a 2009 major revival of Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera with Vivian Stanshall's widow, Ki Longfellow-Stanshall, in a theatre somewhere in Great Britain.
Private life
Peter has eight daughters: Alison 42, (once worked for Vivian) Harriet 40, Victoria 32, Elizabeth 30, Rosalind 28, Alexandra 23, Noemi 8, and Georgina 5. He is married to Rebecca Moss nee Kalisch who was a purser for British Airways when they met.
He lives in Dorset and has a company in Germany, the Public Sound Factory.