Terry Johns

Terry Johns, in these two important books paints a colourful, humorous and sometimes perplexing picture of British musical life and a distinguished career that spanned more than forty years in classical and popular music, recalling his early experiences in orchestras with Benjamin Britten, Leopold Stokowski and Leonard Bernstein. In pop music, with Deep Purple, Frank Zappa, Barry White and Paul McCartney, and as as a 'session' french horn player featured on many studio and television recordings with Peggy Lee, Barbara Streisand, Paul Simon and Tony Bennett.

Terry Johns played on dozens of film soundtracks with the great film composers of the day including the Star Wars trilogy, Superman and the Indiana Jones films which were written by John Williams - The Battle of Britain with Sir William Walton - A Bridge too Far with Richard Adinsall and A Man Born to be King by Maurice Jarre.

The author's musical life began in South Wales, with piano lessons at the age of eight from the local postman and then at ten, in the brass band of Tower Colliery in Hirwaun where his father worked as a miner.

These two books form a personal record of celebration and survival in the sometimes hostile and uncertain environment of professional music, where often the only security of employment s one's own skill and ability, and difficulties are greeted with the humour and resilience that has always characterised working musicians everywhere.

As well as their literary merit, they are an important chronicle of a generation of players who, as well as experiencing the golden era that saw London as the musical capital of the world, encountered the difficult challenges of the technological age, the acrimonious strike against the BBC in 1980, the diminishing of their union's power, the digital revolution and the decline of the recording industry.