ANDI D BAXTRE

Band timeline:

Fat Alice

The Buster James Band

Possibly Peanuts

Solo (score composer)

Andi was born in Clacton-On-Sea in 1961 but relocated to Norfolk with his family when he was 13.

"I started playing the Piano when I was about 2 years old, my father (in his younger days) spent 12 years at The Royal Academy of Music training to be a concert pianist so I guess I inherited his music genes, I could hear a tune and play it back without too much effort, I realised from the word go this was going to be something I wanted to do forever and hopefully end up being my career. I had a couple of Piano lessons when I was about 6 which totally bored me so I decided to teach myself, in the early 70's it was Elton John who influenced me the most, his music taught me all about melody and chord structures. My first band was a local band called Fat Alice and then Buster James when they reformed with Busters guitarist Buzz Hunt and 3 new members Alan Jones, Ian Jasper Woodthorpe and Del Fletcher which lasted about 3 years, however, at the time I was more interested in studio work and composing / producing my own material so I left the band to pursue this further. In the early 90's I spent a year in France recording an album of my songs with a French singer who sang in English, on my return to the UK I sent the demos to a few Record Companies, Arista Records called a few days later and were keen to sign us up if we could get a band together, we showcased at the Oval in Norwich, they weren't too keen on the drummer or bass player, can't remember which now, Arista were taken over by Sony who at that time were more interested in signing dance acts so we were dropped, shame really as a year later Oasis, Blur and Supergrass crashed onto the scene at this point I got a 2 day-a-week freelance job at JMS Studios composing Jingles and Promos, several commissions from ITV, SKY and Channel 4 followed,  writing the title music for a lot of regional and national Programmes. Currently I freelance for Global Media and more recently have been asked to do a couple of film scores, which are currently in production." AB 29/09/2020