My guest in this episode is Mark Spickett who I have known for over 25 years as both a colleague and friend. in 2019 I had the pleasure of his company for 4 days at the Austin City Limits (ACL) Festival and given the 2021 ACL festival starts today it felt like a good time to have Mark on the show
I have known for many years that Mark’s story is an interesting one but as if often the case with Music Talks, I have only now realised exactly HOW interesting that story is, and how many facets there are to it.
My goal is always to keep episodes to a maximum of 75 minutes but in Mark’s case there was just too many great stories for me to do that and so this is a two-part episode.
In this part one we cover the first three decades of Mark’s life through to the end of the 80’s. In amongst making three great and diverse musical choices Mark talks us through:
· The story of his remarkable parents Bill and Marian
· Being born in Essex but then growing up, from the age of 2 , in Nigeria.
· At age 5, seeing a Nigerian soldier put a rifle to his dad’s head
· Suspicions that his dad was a spy!
· A family friend who had two company land rovers and two company camels
· Being sent to Boarding School in England as a 10-year-old
· How dealing with that culture shock has impacted him
· His lifelong passion for flying and almost becoming a BA pilot
· His 9-month trip around Australia and South Africa with his best friend Mike, where he almost died in a blazing car and was smuggled across a South African Border.
And that is only a selection of the stories in this fascinating and compelling episode!
I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did, and Part 2 will be out in 7 days’ time on October 7th