A Short Bio:

David Sinclair is one of the most well-liked musician of the Canterbury scene, both as author of some of Caravan's classic epics ("For Richard", "Nine Feet Underground", "The Dabsong Conshirtoe", "Proper Job/Back To Front"...) and as master of the typical Canterbury organ sound/playing. He has been in and out of Caravan for the last 28 years, interrupted by brief stints with bands such as Matching Mole, Hatfield and the North and Camel, and various - mostly aborted - solo projects.

David Sinclair was born in Herne Bay, Kent on November 24th, 1947. He was of course educated at the now legendary Simon Langton School, which was also attended by future Canterbury figures such as Robert Wyatt, Hugh Hopper, Brian Hopper and Mike Ratledge. Although he did take a few piano lessons at age 8, Sinclair is for the most part self-taught. And although he became famous as a keyboard player, he actually started his musical career playing bass guitar with local bands, then with the Wilde Flowers (at which point Hugh Hopper had switched from bass to sax, shortly before leaving). In March 1967, he eventually opted for organ.

There are unfortunately no recordings dating from the period of the Wilde Flowers when Sinclair was in the band, as their repertoire at the time consisted mainly in cover versions of r'n'b hits. But of course he plays on the first three Caravan albums, which witness the slow maturation process of his organ playing. By the time of In The Land Of Grey And Pink, Sinclair perfectly mastered the instrument, and his solos on "Winter Wine" and the epic "Nine Feet Underground" are stunning and classic stuff.

Maybe Sinclair felt he had achieved his original aims, as he left Caravan shortly after the album's release. "I felt the whole thing was going a bit stagnant and that I needed inspiration from different people", he said later. Two weeks after leaving the band, he met John Murphy, a singer, guitarist and songwriter who was to become his songwriting partner for the next decade. Together with drummer Pete Pipkin, the formed a group which rehearsed for a few weeks. "We did some amazing playing", Sinclair remembers. "We were just jamming, really, we weren't working on particular songs".

The previous year, Sinclair had guested on Robert Wyatt's first solo album, The End Of An Ear, a successful collaboration for both. It was logical that, when Wyatt decided to leave Soft Machine in August 1971, he should call upon Dave's services. In the autumn of 1971, Matching Mole was formed with Sinclair, Wyatt, Phil Miller (guitar) and Bill MacCormick (bass), and the newly formed quartet immediately went into the studio to record its first line-up. Very soon it became apparent that the style of music played by Matching Mole didn't suit Sinclair, who was less and less keen on improvising and jazz-oriented stuff. After the first few gigs the band became a quintet with the addition of pianist Dave MacRae from Nucleus, before Sinclair finally decided to leave after a European tour in March 1972.

He then resumed his songwriting activities with John Murphy, until he was once again asked to take part in a new band venture. This time, the call originated from his cousin Richard, who was in the process of forming Hatfield and the North with his ex-Matching Mole colleague Phil Miller and drummer Pip Pyle. Once again, after a few weeks, the combination proved incompatible and Sinclair left once again, to be replaced by Dave Stewart.

At that point, Sinclair was in urgent need of money and was happy to be asked by Pye Hastings to temporarily rejoin Caravan for a tour and studio session, which he did. The result was the album For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night, which marks a dramatic change in Sinclair's playing, in terms of both sound and style. Gone was the dominent fuzz-organ work, in favour of less aggressive sounds, with the introduction of synthesizer. Eventually, Sinclair decided to stay in the band and recorded two further albums with Caravan, the Live With The New Symphonia (1974) and Cunning Stunts (1975) albums. For the latter, David was very involved in the composition work, co-writing both the opening song "The Show Of Our Lives" and the sidelong epic "The Dabsong Conshirtoe" with John Murphy.

Yet once again David Sinclair left Caravan, but this time musical reasons were only secondary. "Things were getting very bad with management, and I was advised not to do anything contractually for about a year or so. So I just had some time off...". Sinclair went down to Majorca and spent some time there with his cousin Richard who was also staying at Daevid Allen's place following the break-up of Hatfield and the North. Back in Canterbury, both cousins attempted to form a band together, which evolved into Sinclair & The South, also featuring John Murphy and (for just one gig) drummer Bill Bruford.

Yet Sinclair's main project during the years 1975-77 was a solo album. "Jeremy Darby, a friend of mine who worked for the Gulbenkian Theatre in Canterbury, persuaded me to record some songs. I had plenty that were just there doing nothing really, unrecorded, so we decided to put them down on tape in a demo form". Unfortunately, two years of hard work eventually came to nothing, as the projected album remained unfinished. The demos were eventually released in 1993 as the Moon Over Man CD : a mixture of introspective ballads, more commercial, up-tempo songs (recorded by a band line-up featuring Mark Hewins, Graham Flight and Pete Pipkin) and a couple of humorous songs co-written with John Murphy.

This Moon Over Man sessions led to the formation of The Polite Force, a local gigging band which was quite popular in Canterbury in the period 1976-78. The core of the band was Mark Hewins (guitar), Max Metto (sax), Graham Flight (bass) and Vince Clarke (drums), with Sinclair on electric piano during the first year or so. The Polite Force's musical legacy is now available on CD, thanks to the Voiceprint label's Canterbury Knights release. In November and December 1976, he briefly rejoined Caravan when a tour was set up to promote the double-LP compilation Canterbury Tales. For this occasion he shared keyboard duties with Jan Schelhaas, which he did again two years later when both joined Camel for the world tour promoting Breathless. Once again, Sinclair's main motivation for that was financial, so he left again upon completion of the tour, in March 1979.

When Pye Hastings reformed Caravan for a tour in late 1979, Sinclair was again involved, and took part in the subsequent sessions for The Album. The latter included a new version of "The Piano Player", previously recorded for his aborted solo album. The following year, he also contributed to Back To Front (1982) which featured the original Caravan line-up together for the first time since 1971.

In the 1990s, Sinclair was again involved in the sporadic activities of Caravan. In 1990-91 the original line-up (plus Jimmy Hastings) played numerous gigs in the UK and Italy. He also took part in his cousin Richard's band Caravan Of Dreams whenever possible, playing on the band's eponymous album. In November and December 1994, he joined Pye and Jimmy Hastings in an augmented line-up of Mirage, the band formed by former Camel members Peter Bardens and Andy Ward. The Mirage concerts for that tour included several of his classic compositions - "For Richard", "O Caroline" and a shortened "Nine Feet Underground".

David Sinclair performed with Caravan on the band's comeback album The Battle Of Hastings (1995) and also added bits of his playing on some tracks of All Over You (1996) and All Over You Too (1999). He was going to contribute the bulk of Caravan's new album when he departed the band in mid-2002 following creative disagreements with leader Pye Hastings. In the end, Caravan's Unauthorised Breakfast Item features one Sinclair composition and his contributions to this and another track have been left intact.

Since leaving Caravan, Sinclair resumed work on his long-awaited debut album, which finally appeared in December 2003 as Full Circle, a song-orientated venture featuring contributions by various members of Caravan, In Cahoots' current rhythm section, and vocalists Richard Sinclair, Jim Leverton and Roxane. More albums are planned - in 2001, Sinclair said he had about six albums' worth of material in his cupboards. He made his solo live debut with two Japanese dates in April 2004, backed by members of the Japanese band SixNorth. This was followed in the autumn by a series of gigs with his cousin Richard, performing Caravan classics and more. In fact he has enjoyed Japan so much that he has now decided to move there permanently.

A Short Bio:

Since the early days of Caravan, through the days of Hatfield and the North, Camel and his recent solo efforts, Richard Sinclair's singing and bass playing have been a constant source of delight for lovers of Canterbury music. A deep, low voice, a talent for memorable melodies few can match, an imaginative and fluid technique on the bass (and Sinclair is an excellent guitar player as well) : there are many reasons to be a fan of Richard Sinclair.

Richard S. Sinclair was born in Canterbury in 1948. Although he was the youngest of all future founder members of Caravan, he was the first to play in a band of any significance. And this was not just any band : The Wilde Flowers, founded in late 1964, also featured Robert Wyatt, Hugh and Brian Hopper, and Kevin Ayers. Our 16-year-old aspiring instrumentalist and occasional vocalist was then playing rhythm guitar. But this didn't last long, as Sinclair left the following summer to study industrial design at the University of Kent. During the following couple of years, he didn't play much, although he kept in touch with the other members of the Wilde Flowers, including Pye Hastings, Hugh Hopper and Robert Wyatt.

When The Wilde Flowers folded in mid-1967 and the remaining members - Pye Hastings, David Sinclair (Sinclair's cousin) and Richard Coughlan - decided to form Caravan, their former bass player Dave Lawrence was to be involved, but Sinclair eventually joined them. His influences at the time were Soft Machine (of course!), Jimi Hendrix, Space Oddity-period David Bowie, The Beatles, and jazz in general. Caravan's music would be a mixture of them all.

Richard Sinclair remained with Caravan for the first four albums. He contributed two songs the first one, none to the second, three to the third, and one to the fourth. In The Land Of Grey And Pink (1971) remains the most 'sinclairesque' of all Caravan albums, featuring as it does three essential Sinclair classics : "Golf Girl", "Winter Wine" and the title-track, all still among the most requested songs at Caravan and Richard Sinclair concerts. And Sinclair also sang the second song ("Disassociation") in his cousin David's sidelong epic, "Nine Feet Underground". When David Sinclair left Caravan in the Summer of 1971, Sinclair brought in a keyboard player he knew, Steve Miller (the elder brother of Phil), aware that Miller's jazzier playing would radically change the band's sound. Ultimately, the idea didn't work, and Sinclair and Steve Miller both left upon completion of the subsequent album, Waterloo Lily (1972), with the idea of putting together a band with Steve's brother Phil, at the time guitarist of Robert Wyatt's band Matching Mole.

What was to become Hatfield and the North started as a reformation of the Miller brothers' old band Delivery, with the return of Pip Pyle on drums. But the combination didn't work, and after a few changes in the keyboard departement, the line-up stabilised with the arrival of Dave Stewart, formerly of Egg and Steve Hillage's Khan. Hatfield subsequently toured Europe extensively and recorded two albums until its breakup in 1975. Although he's only a minor contributor in terms of composition ("there was so much exciting stuff coming out with the other three"), Sinclair's bass playing solidifies the whole and interacts superbly with Pyle's drumming on the constantly shifting time signatures of the music. And his vocals are a delight again : the duet with Robert Wyatt on "Calyx", his own suite of songs on side 2 of the first album, his superb interpretation of Pip Pyle's whimsical lyrics on "Share It", "Let's Eat (Real Soon)" and "Fitter Stoke Has A Bath", and the moving farewell song "Didn't Matter Anyway", all these have remained classics.

According to Sinclair himself, Hatfield was too demanding for him as a player in those troubled times and eventually he couldn't cope with the combined stress of his family life (he had a wife and a young son) and the complexity of Hatfield's music. This difficult situation directly led to Hatfield's split in June 1975. He then went on holiday in sunny Deya where Daevid Allen had retired following his own departure from Gong. Originally the plan was to record a solo album there for Virgin, but in the end that didn't happen.

Returning to Canterbury, he stayed with Rick Biddulph, who had been Hatfield's roadie and would later be Sinclair's accomplice in Caravan Of Dreams. In 1975-76, he led several line-ups going under the name of Sinclair and the South, a humorous reference to his previous band. The first line-up included David Sinclair and his songwriting partner John Murphy (both providing the bulk of the band's repertoire), violin player Dave Arbus (formerly of the progrock band East of Eden) and, for just one gig, Bill Bruford on drums. Later line-ups were based on the duo of Sinclair and young guitarist Mark Hewins. In late 1976, Sinclair formed RSVP, which also included Richard Folds (guitar), Perry White (keyboards) and Vince Clarke (drums), and did several demo recordings with them, including an early version of "Keep On Caring".

During that period, Sinclair was not earning his living playing music : "I followed in my father's footsteps. He was a carpenter in Canterbury and a musician at night. So I made tables and stuff, having the same sort of skills". At one point, though, Sinclair auditioned to become Peter Gabriel's bass player, but was turned down in favour of Tony Levin. Eventually, in April 1977, he received a phonecall from Andy Ward of Camel and was asked to join the band, which he did. The line-up of Sinclair, Andy, Andrew Latimer, Peter Bardens and Mel Collins (who'd joined before Sinclair, but had a sort of "guest" status) recorded two studio albums, Rain Dances (1977) and Breathless (1978). Although both contain some great tracks, Camel was not at the peak of its creativity at that time, although it possibly had its best live line-up ever, as documented on A Live Record (1978), half of which was recorded during the 1977 tour. In early 1978, Sinclair briefly rejoined Caravan to help in the recording of the Cool Water sessions, during which some of his own songs were recorded, although none were included on the CD released in 1994 ("Uncle's Farm", an early version of Camel's "Down On The Farm", was included on the self-released Live Tracks in 2003).

When Peter Bardens left Camel after the Breathless sessions, he was replaced by two former keyboard players of Caravan : Jan Schelhaas (who would stay until 1981) and Sinclair's cousin David. The resulting line-up toured Europe, the United States and Japan. Upon completion of the tour, though, David left and Richard Sinclair found himself more or less excluded from the band, and returned to play locally in Canterbury, mostly with Mark Hewins, in bands such as T-Mit (also featuring Pip Pyle) and The Looters.

Sinclair was not active again until 1981, when he successively took part in the recording of the Gowen-Miller-Sinclair-Tomkins album Before A Word Is Said, National Health's D.S. Al Coda and Caravan's Back To Front. The latter was recorded by the original line-up and featured a couple of Sinclair tunes : "Back To Herne Bay Front" and "A.A. Man". And Sinclair also contributed vocals to his cousin's tribute to the movie industry, "Videos Of Hollywood". In 1982, he was a founding member of In Cahoots, Phil Miller's band, with Elton Dean and Pip Pyle. With the addition of Peter Lemer, that band toured Europe and recorded demos and radio sessions, but eventually the combination didn't work. "People loved the music, but the band felt we were getting the music wrong, and I think I was probably the one getting it most wrong, being the most technically inept... I really loved the music and tried, but I didn't come up with the goods. I came up with it in more my own stance, so I didn't fulfill the role, which was a problem for Phil".

Sinclair was replaced by his old friend Hugh Hopper, with whom he'd recorded a long-planned duo album late in 1983. That album was originally supposed to feature Robert Wyatt singing Hopper's compositions, but Sinclair ended up doing all the vocals. The project remained unfinished, and the demos weren't released until 1996, on the Somewhere In France CD on Voiceprint. The subsequent five year period (1985-90) was very quiet, although he took part in Caravan reformation concert at the October 1984 Canterbury Summer Festival, toured Holland in April 1986 with an ad-hoc band (featuring Geoff Leigh, Wim Pop, Henk Weltevreden and Coen Delbaerts), guested on a track of Phil Miller's Split Seconds (1988) and briefly joined violonist Anthony Aldridge's band Skaboosh! (which included Andy Ward on drums), playing on an album which was only released several years later.

1990 was a very busy year for Sinclair : Hatfield and the North reformed (with Sophia Domancich replacing Dave Stewart) for a one-off TV show on the private Central Television channel; Caravan did the same (with Jimmy Hastings now augmenting the quartet on a permanent basis), although they remained together for subsequent series of gigs. And Sinclair reunited with Hugh Hopper in the shortlived Going Going, which also featured Mark Hewins on guitar-synthesizer, Andy Ward on drums and Vince Clark on percussion. The live repertoire of this band included Sinclair's songs from the unreleased Hopper-Sinclair album, Caravan classics (among which was a brilliant rendition of "Where But For Caravan Would I" from the very first album), an original Hewins instrumental ("Led It Lay") and even covers of two Soft Machine classics, "Hope For Happiness" and "We Did It Again".

Going Going was the precursor to Caravan Of Dreams, which consisted of Richard Sinclair on vocals and bass, Mark Hewins on guitar and Andy Ward on drums. The new band was named after a venue in Fort Worth, Texas, where Sinclair and Hewins had gigged in 1989 under the banner of the London/Dallas Quartet/Quintet. Eventually, Hewins was replaced by bassist Rick Biddulph with Sinclair taking up the guitar parts, and the basic trio was augmented whenever possible by David Sinclair on keyboards and Jimmy Hastings on sax and flute. A self-titled album by this line-up was recorded from mid to late 1991 and released on HTD Records in April 1992. It was a great collection of songs written over a period of 15 years : "Going For A Song" was an unrecorded Hatfield tune, "Emily" was first recorded with Caravan in 1977, "Keep On Caring" was a live favourite since 1978 and was featured on the unreleased Hopper-Sinclair album from 1983 as well as "Cruising" and "Only The Brave" (the same recording was used for the COD album). More recent compositions included "Heather", "Plan It Earth", and "Felafel Shuffle", a jam piece dating back to the Sinclair & The South days, its main riff later also recycled by Phil Miller into In Cahoots' "Final Call".

Things took a slightly jazzier turn with R.S.V.P., released in June, 1994. This time, there was no real 'band' concept, with a different combination of musicians on every track. With the exception of Andy Ward and Jimmy Hastings, all the participants were new : Didier Malherbe, the sax player from Gong, Kit Watkins, the fabulous keyboard player from Happy The Man and later Camel (where he met Andy Ward), Tony Coe (famous jazz clarinet player, from Canterbury, whose father used to play music with Sinclair's), drummer Dave Cohen, a friend from the States who had played with the band on their late 1993 European tour, not forgetting older friends, Pip Pyle (who contributed lyrics to the opening song, the great "What's Rattlin'?") and Hugh Hopper (who played bass on a beautiful improvised piece with Tony Coe on clarinet). The pieces ranged from jazzy songs to pure progressive rock (the epic "Out Of The Shadows"), and from light bossa-nova ("Over From Dover") to a 'world'-influenced song ("Bamboo", featuring Malherbe's famous bamboo-flute). The result was arguably one of the very best releases from a Canterbury figure in the 1990's.

Between 1995 and 2002, Richard Sinclair took a break from music, although he keeps doing solo tours, notably in the Netherlands, where he mostly resided during the next five years. In September 1996, he was the main act of the 'Canterbury Music in Harlingen' festival in the Dutch town. With a large line-up - Patrice Meyer, Tony Coe, David Rees-Williams and Hans Waterman (ex-Solution) - he played most of the material from R.S.V.P.; and in a series of alternative musical combinations, he also played the classics to an enthusiastic audience. This was Sinclair's last major live appearance until his return to action in 2002, which began with a series of concerts in Japan (backed by an excellent group of local musicians) in March 2002, followed by a superb duo performance with pianist David Rees-Williams at the Progman Cometh festival in Seattle in August. In 2003, ex-Gong sax/flautist Theo Travis was added for a concert in Paris and Travis has remained a regular collaborator since (although Tony Coe still joins Richard and Dave for the odd gig).

Further good news included his renewed partnership with cousin David for the latter's solo album, 2003's Full Circle, which featured his lead vocals on three tracks and his bass playing on one. Sinclair also contributed vocals and guitar to three tracks on Theo Travis's Earth To Ether album, released in late 2004. Two of those have lyrics by acclaimed writer and longtime Hatfield fan Jonathan Coe. There were also occasional on-stage reunions with Phil Miller, which led to the latter joining Sinclair's live band alongside Theo Travis, Alex Maguire and percussionist Roy Dodds. This in turn led to a Hatfield and the North reunion in early 2005, with a line-up of Sinclair, Miller, Maguire and Pip Pyle.

A Short Bio:

Although his name is still predominantly known because of his 10-year stint with Camel (from 1971 to 1981), Andy Ward has since become a fixture of the Canterbury scene, working extensively with Richard Sinclair and Mark Hewins among others, his solid and sophisticated drummer lending itself perfectly to the mix of jazz and rock idioms that is so typical of the scene.

Born in London in 1952, Andrew John Ward started playing music at a very early age : first guitar, then drums. By age 14 he was already playing covers of Shadows, Kinks and Rolling Stones hits with a school band. His first serious band, in 1966-67, was Misty Romance with two ex-members of John's Children (T-Rex's Marc Bolan's first band) : "It was a hopeless band, basically a soul band with touches of Hendrix, Cream and Julie Driscoll". After a change in the line-up, Doug Ferguson joined on bass and thus was the future Camel rhythm section formed. After Misty Romance split up, Ferguson moved to Guildford and met Andrew Latimer. When both decided to form a band, Andy was of course asked to join. The Brew started gigging around Portsmouth, doing blues covers and a few blues-oriented originals penned by Latimer.

After a brief period backing ex-Circus singer Philip Goodhand-Tait, which resulted in the trio appearing on his I Think I'll Write A Song (1971) album, The Brew started looking for a keyboard player, and eventually got together with Peter Bardens, already a legend on the blues scene for his work with Peter B's Looners, Shotgun Express, Them and Love Affair, not to mention his solo albums. "Pete had about half a dozen gigs booked for his former band, Peter Bardens On, and we did these gigs under that name. Then we changed to Camel. It was the first name we found that was acceptable to all four of us".

Andy Ward stayed in Camel through many line-up changes and eight albums, until a hand injury made it impossible for him to participate in the sessions for The Single Factor (1982). By that time, Ward was well acquainted with Richard Sinclair, who had been Camel's bass player for two years between 1977-79, and was gigging locally in Canterbury with various line-ups featuring Sinclair and guitarist Mark Hewins.

For a brief period in 1983, Ward was also recruited by the British neo-progressive band Marillion ("I went to pick up some drums from a studio they were in, found out they needed a drummer and joined the band"), but this didn't last long as musical differences soon appeared between Ward and the rest of the band.

Back in Canterbury, he teamed up with Mark Hewins again as The Music Doctors with ex-Wilde Flowers vocalist Graham Flight on bass. He then joined Skaboosh!, a band led by violonist Anthony Aldridge, previously of Barbara Thompson's Paraphernalia. When Skaboosh!'s bass player left, Ward summoned Richard Sinclair to Germany where some gigs were booked. This was the start of a renewed collaboration.

After a one-and-a-half year period of working in a factory, Andy Ward came back to music as the drummer in Going Going, a band led by Richard Sinclair and Hugh Hopper, and also featuring Mark Hewins and percussionist Vince Clarke. Although it lasted only for three gigs, it was the precursor to Caravan Of Dreams, a Sinclair-led band which recorded an album and toured all over Europe and United States between 1991 and 1994. During the same period, Ward also forged a musical relationship with Todd Dillingham, playing on several of his albums, and Bevis Frond, with whom he still tours Europe extensively.

In late 1994, Andy Ward helped form Mirage with his old Camel colleague Peter Bardens and took part in the band's first British/Dutch tour, resulting in a live double CD. When the band failed to get off the ground, Bardens however decided to form an American-based line-up with Dave Cohen on drums, which marked the end of Ward's involvement (Mirage eventually broke up in 1997).

In the last few years, Andy Ward has been busy playing sessions and touring Europe with Bevis Frond and Yukio Yung. He has also assembled a lot of compositional ideas which could result in a solo album. Most recently he contributed drum parts to the second solo album by ex- Mirage guitarist Steve Adams, Vertigo (1999), and in summer 2000 recorded a further album with Bevis Frond, which he said "has more of a band feel". More recently, Ward teamed up again with Richard Sinclair for live appearances in Britain and Spain.

A Short Bio:

It is somehow logical that Mel Collins' path crossed the Canterbury scene, as it would be almost impossible to find one 70's band or solo artist who hasn't called upon his talents on saxophones, clarinets and flutes for a record or a gig. Mel Collins played on albums by Camel and Caravan, as well as with Canterbury-related musicians like Keith Tippett, Nick Evans and Mark Charig during his stint with King Crimson.

Melvyn Desmond Collins was born in 1947. His first band of note was the Stormsville Shakers, a local Guildford outfit which eventually changed names to Circus and recorded an album in 1970. It was during this period that Mel became acquainted with Andrew Latimer, his later Camel colleague. In the Spring of 1970, he replaced Ian MacDonald in King Crimson. Because of constant personnel changes, he almost quit several times before the line-up stabilised in 1971 with Boz Burrell (bass/vocals) and Ian Wallace (drums) supplementing Robert Fripp (guitar/mellotron), Peter Sinfield (words) and Collins (sax/flute). Collins was featured on In The Wake Of Poseidon (1970), Lizard (1970), which featured a hot jam between KC and members of the Keith Tippett Group, and Islands (1971). The band broke-up in the Spring of 1972 after an American tour which was documented on Earthbound (1972).

After backing Alexis Korner and Snape, Mel Collins joined Kokomo, an r'n'b outfit which also backed singers like Joe Cocker, toured with Alvin Lee, and guested on King Crimson's final album, Red (1974). At that point, his name was becoming well-known in the session world. Collins' name would eventually appear on litterally hundreds of albums. Yet, in early 1977 he accepted Andrew Latimer's offer to join Camel. He lent his talents to the band for several tours and two studio albums, Rain Dances (1977) and Breathless (1978). Although he left Camel in 1979, he later guested on I Can See Your House From Here (1979), Nude (1981) and Stationary Traveler (1984).

After his departure from Camel, Mel Collins worked as backing musician for Roger Chapman, Dire Straits and Roger Waters among others. In 1981, he guested on Caravan's Back To Front album. And in 1984 appeared as guest at Camel's London concert at the Hammersmith Odeon, documented on the Pressure Points live album and video. Since then, he's kept busy as a session player, albeit with less public impact, although his recent appearances with Clannad retained the critics' attention.

In the early 00's, Collins is finally back in the spotlight as a member of the 21st Century Schizoid Band, a congregation of former King Crimson members fronted by Jakko Jakszyk and including Ian McDonald, Peter Giles and Ian Wallace (who replaced Mike Giles).