Steve recalls John Lennon comment

Not that Steve got hear about it for 30 years.

Steve. who plays The Chichester Inn, Chichester, on Wednesday, October 12 at 8.30pm, turned professional in 1970 and brought out his first album in 1971.

He was just making his way in music when he was interviewed by an alternative music magazine called ZigZag.

“I was asked whether, if I had untold riches, I thought it would affect my song-writing. I said that self-evidently it would be detrimental to it.”

Steve’s words prompted a response from Lennon who apparently read the article: “He said he had been very poor and very rich and that it hadn’t changed his writing, and the same with Yoko.”

Bizarrely, the editor of the magazine sat on the letter, and it was only 30 years later that it finally surfaced. It even had Lennon’s home phone number on it.

Even more bizarrely, the idea of a lost letter from Lennon turning up is now being made into a Hollywood film.

As for Steve’s answer, it remains the same 40 years later. In hindsight, he’s glad that untold wealth didn’t come his way.

He’s pleased with where he is, as his recent album The Reckoning indicates: “The Reckoning is one of the tracks. It is just me taking stock of things, looking at where I have been, where I am.”

Originally, Steve was a graphic artist: “I was working for an advertising agency. In the end, I jumped before I was pushed. I started to get a lot of (music) work, and it was paying me more than I was getting at the advertising agency. A couple of times I was falling asleep at the desk. I was swinging the lead, as my father would have said!”

Inevitably, he entered a music business very different to the business it is today.

Steve admits it would have been great to have had the facilities back then, the internet to promote yourself, the equipment to make your own recordings rather than having to go through the companies.

But it was still a good moment to start out on his career: “I had a great time.”

Tickets £10 from 01243 774641 or direct from The Chichester Inn or www.wegottickets.com).