In 1984, when they were all only 5 years old, Paul Coates, Dave Richardson and Matthew Kik began playing music together. They have since been joined by Kim Street, Jimmy Medway and Mark Littlewood to become West Tangleyam...
Paul was only three when he first started playing the guitar, practicing
hour after hour on his Fisher Price 'You Can Be A Toddler Hendrix Too!'
model guitar. Mastering such pieces as Crossroads as performed by Cream in
1969 and the incredibly fast piece of guitaring from Valerie by The Monkees,
he was the rock legend of the neighbourhood.Paul never took school seriously at that age, saying it distracted him from what was truly important. Paul could already count to four as he could carry a beat and at that age, it was all he needed to know. When asked if he could read, he pulled out some Chuck Berry sheet music and started playing away saying 'Does this count?'.
In more recent years, Paul has taken to playing the guitar with only his armpit hair while quoting 'Playing with your teeth is for babies'. He later said that his inspiration for this quote was his childhood.
Dave, who is the most ingenious of the band, constructed his first harmonica
at the age of two out of his dummy. He wasn't happy with it at first as it
was in the wrong key but as he was only two, it didn't bother him after he
took his afternoon nap.Dave also began learning the guitar at the age of four, already an accomplished harp player. He studied the works of his father who had been a roadie for the Beatles and learned all the Beatles songs.
Dave is now best know, apart from playing with West Tangleyam, for being able to play the harmonica, the guitar and sing and clap at the same time. He is currently learning the drums, hoping to bring a new meaning to 'The One Man Band'.
Coming from a great musical background, it was surprising to learn that
Matthew did not playing any instruments until his fifth birthday, just two
weeks before meeting Paul and Dave and forming the band.For his fifth birthday, he received a guitar and didn't sleep for the next week while he learned to play it. In just two days, he was already playing so fast that the fret board was smoking and during the second week, his parents had to replace his old guitar with a custom built model that would take him a lot longer to wear down.
Matthew also learned the keyboards because he thought it looked easy and when he was playing pieces by Beethoven, Mozart and Jerry Lee Lewis just two months after starting to learn, we can see he was right.
From that moment on, Matthew continued to learn to play various instruments at a geometric rate and can currently play three-hundred and forty-seven different instruments including the jaw harp and the ofter dangerous South Brazillian Spider Fiddle.
Matthew is still using custom guitars to this day, and has also been practicing weight lifting. This is the only way he can play his guitar as he has to have them hand made from iron. He is also still playing the keyboards and does not require custom built models as long as he uses a very sturdy stand.
Kim actually began playing the keyboards before she was born so even though
she is younger than the original three members of the band, she has been
playing for just as long, if not longer.While she was growing up, her parents discovered her amazing talent for singing and encouraged her to follow a career in music. Unfortunately, Kim did not want a showbiz life so she dropped out of junior school and became a refuse collector instead. When she was nine, she realised that there was no money in council work and decided she wanted a job.
As she had no qualifications, smelled of garbage quite a bit and was only nine, no-one would employ her so she auditioned for West Tangleyam instead. As they all smelt of refuse just as much, had no qualificaitons, and were all under twelve, they brought her into the group as their keyboard player and singer at the start of 1991.
With a father who worked in a military navel shipyard constructing anchor
cables and a mother who had a tendancy to hit him a lot, Jimmy yearned for
a career that mixed both of these talents into one. When he reached the age
of five, he had a custom guitar shop create him a bass guitar with super
thick strings and he proceeded to learn slap bass (not one of the sharpest
knives in the drawer really, he could have just become a brutal navel
officer).As a child, Jimmy had an unusually deep voice which ruined all his aspirations to sing (he was a big Beegees fan) but when he was seven, he had an unfortunate accident involving a fall from a great height and a bike with no seat. After that, he could sing as high as he wanted but to this day, he still can't sit down.
Jimmy joined West Tangleyam after seeing them perform at the Albert Hall in 1990 just before his ninth birthday and meeting them backstage after the show. Dave was especially pleased after Jimmy joined as it meant he no longer had to play both guitar and bass at the same time.
Ian was a student of the 'Cory Bogtrotter School for Insane Drummers' and after only one lesson there was already more than competant to drum like Cory himself so he was more than happy to join the band.
Mark joined West Tangleyam very late on when the band were already well
established. It was early in 1999 when the band finally decided to look for
a full time drummer and with the gushing musical talent in Matt's family,
they turned to his cousin, Mark.He had never played the drums (or any other musical instrument) before that day so he had the job of learning to play within four and a half hours for the band's next performance which was at a local arena (and that includes the time it took to drive into town and buy the drum kit!).
He managed this by employing a combination of watching old Ginger Baker videos on high speed and munching his way through enough caffine pills to actually make New York the city that never sleeps.
As the weeks passed, Mark became more and more popular with the fans until one day, he was kidknapped after a performance and has never been seen to this day. A randsom demand was received but the band dismissed it as fan mail.
Ryan's mother allowed him to follow in his fathers footsteps for the day as he joined West Tangleyam on drums to give Mark a break but after that night, his fingers were sewn together so he could never use a drum stick properly again, fear of what would happen to him if he tried.
Some of the more major events they have played at since then include supporting various acts as they toured the UK such as Huey Lewis and The News, REM and The Monkees as these bands were some of their greatest influences. They have also played at Glastonbury although they were not allowed to play on stage as they weren't actually old enough to be there.
They instead, played behind a curtain as filler music between acts that patrons later described as 'Better than the actual show'. One festival goer was quoted as saying 'We spent most of the time booing the acts offstage so they'd play that tape again. We had no idea it was a band.'