Matt started playing drums at age six. His father, an accomplished accordion player, taught him the basics of playing and reading music before taking him to lessons with Graham Willeard of Drumland in Dartford. After four years with Graham, Matt studied with Bob Cleall from Rochester. Amongst other things, Bob taught him how to transcribe drum music. Years later Bob was commissioned to transcribe a selection of Steve Gadd's performances for a tutor book and got stuck on a particular solo from Steve's 'Up Close' video. Matt was able to help him out and he kindly made sure he got a credit.
By the age of twelve Matt was playing with a local progressive-rock band called 'Sindelfingen' which was fronted by a guitarist called Richard Manktelow and also featured Matt's brother Mark on bass. This involved playing long complicated pieces of music in all manner of time signatures. Matt also developed an interest in playing guitar at this time.
For his thirteenth birthday the members of Sindelfingen clubbed together to buy his first guitar, a 'Hofner Verithin', which he still has. Richard soon had him playing various guitar parts in songs without drums.
At fifteen Matt spotted an advert in Melody Maker... the London Youth Jazz Orchestra were looking for players and his father took him to the audition in Wandsworth. He passed, as did Duncan Gaffney and so they shared the drum chair. He was a natural jazzer whereas Matt leant more towards the rock and funk side of big band drumming - it was a good balance. Each week there were guest conductors, all highly respected musicians such as Barbara Thompson, Kathy Stobart and Eddie Harvey. Matt's time with LYJO culminated in a week-long tour of Holland in early '77, just when Matt was supposed to be taking his mock O'levels. He remembers his school was not exactly thrilled when his father asked for special leave for Matt to go on the tour... in fact they said no. But his father had no illusions about Matt's academic ambitions and to his credit insisted he'd go. The tour was a great success but he failed all his mocks.
Around the same time Matt's drum teacher Bob recommended him for a local dinner/dance residency at a motel called the 'Inn on the Lake'. This was playing in a nine-piece show band every Friday and Saturday, reading lots of charts. Extra gigs came in and he was often doing four or five nights a week. Matt's mother (incidentally a flute player) was also his roadie and driver, sometimes picking him up from school and taking him straight to gigs.
On leaving school in the summer of '77 the show band gig soon came to an end but Matt stayed with the bandleader as part of his backing band for his cabaret floorshow. He did fire eating, juggling and allsorts.
Needless to say that didn't last long but he put Matt forward for a band called 'Flint', whose drummer had just left. They were doing a residency at 'La Dolce Notte', a restaurant in Jermyn Street, six nights a week and a club elsewhere on a Sunday. Still too young to drive, his Mum, was now chauffeuring him from our home in Gillingham to London seven days a week in their blue Austin Mini-Van. Before Matt joined Flint they had already passed an audition to appear on the TV talent show 'New Faces'. In the January of '78 they won the show and secured a recording contract with Mickie Most at RAK Records. Unfortunately the single only reached 47 in the charts but the band worked pretty much non-stop playing all kinds of clubs, summer seasons, air force bases and the like.
Matt started getting hired for sessions at a local studio in Rochester and after five years with Flint, in the autumn of '82; he decided to go it alone. This was quite a step as he had not long been married, bought a house and acquired a mortgage! Fortunately before long he got a call to do a tour of Spain with folk/rock band Magna Carta.
It turned out to be the first of many tours to come... and with many different artists.
http://www.mattletley.com/
