Graham Lockwood
Graham Lockwood (photo from 2004)
Former organist and guitarist with The Zany Woodruff Operation.
In his own words……..
After ZWO became the relatively short lived Museum band with Alan Holdsworth, I headed over the border to Brighouse and joined Skin Deep. I became obsessed with the trio The Peddlars and formed The Graham Lockwood Trio which ripped off all their repertoire. 1968 saw me joining the resident 14 piece band at Bradford Locarno - The Bobby Brooke Sound. Thus began a long association with the Mecca circuit, where I formed a 4 piece band - Museum (again!). We played various resident venues for Mecca around the Midlands up to the mid 70s’. I had an offer to work on a cruise liner as solo pianist, and wanting to see the world, took up the offer. In late 1979 after seeing nothing but Madeira, Gibraltar and the Canary Isles for two and a half years, I got fed up and headed directly south – to Australia. The band below is a band i got together after The Graham Lockwood Trio, it was intended that we would work on the cruise liner circuit, however the band never actually gigged before disbanding, the members were Ricky Norton alto sax ,Richard Turner bass, Stuart Reynolds drums, Chrissie Holland female vocalist and myself on Hammond organ.
Unfortunately, nobody in Australia had heard of my prowess as a keyboard player and living an hour south of Sydney in Wollongong didn’t help much either. I became an organ salesman for a large music retail chain two weeks after arriving in Oz. I got married in 1983 and a son – James was born shortly after. After a failed marriage, I headed for the bright lights of Sydney and worked various day jobs in music retail, on the road as representative for Yamaha Music, and finally with the toy and gift trade, before I bought a music shop in partnership with a friend on the outskirts of Sydney at Richmond. During this time I re-married and in 1990 my daughter, Julia was born. The music shop proved to be short lived, and after closing it down I became restless for the pro musician scene again. It proved to be the downfall of my second marriage, my ex-wife citing that becoming a full time musician again would cause us severe financial worries. Well, I’ve been doing it now since 1994 and we have had no money worries to date, mainly because we have no money. But seriously folks…..presently my friend (vocalist Jeannette – we met on a gig in 1997) and I live in our modest three bedroom home 25 kilometres due west of Sydney. My time is split between gigging, recording clients in the studio and an obsession with collecting and playing boardgames and miniature wargames.
