Rich City types are desperate to relive their musical youth — and they're hiring the likes of Bill Wyman to put them on a fast track to success
The posh summer party at the Serpentine Gallery, in Hyde Park, is not where you expect to be taken by a wannabe rock star yet to release his first album. Last month's event may have had a glamorous guest list — Naomi Campbell, Mario Testino, Lady Helen Taylor — but in truth it was a staid affair, attended mostly by bankers, financiers, CEOs and their designer-dressed wives.
Gavin Aldred goes every year. But the front man of the melodic rockers GTA is far from your average aspiring musician. For a start, he is 52. He is also a multimillionaire, having run a string of companies, latterly the fashion chain New Look. After semi-retiring to the south of France, Aldred installed a state-of the-art recording studio in his home and began making music. Or rather, began taking music seriously, having written songs as a hobby since his teens.
"I got my first guitar aged 10, and music has kept me sane ever since," says Aldred, a father of two twentysomethings who eschews the party's formal dress code for jeans and a quirky appliquéd jacket. "As kids, a friend and I played covers for fun, but I was always more interested in making my own music."
Aldred comes from a working-class family in Eccles, near Manchester, and insists that a career in music was never an option. At 13, he got his first job in a jeans shop; at 18, he joined Marks & Spencer as a management trainee. Despite his rapid rise through the retail ranks, he clung to his dream of rock stardom and is now using his personal fortune and business contacts to try to make it come true. GTA's first gig, two years ago, was at the Albert Hall, opening for Goldfrapp, after Aldred asked Roger Daltrey to add them to the bill at a Teenage Cancer Trust show. Their debut album, Songs for Sale (available from www.gta.la), was recorded in Dublin with Van Morrison's engineer and mixed by Robbie Adams (Beck, U2, Smashing Pumpkins) at Westlake Studios, in LA, where Michael Jackson made Thriller. Their first single, Feel, was stocked exclusively in M&S ("Stuart Rose is an old mate," explains Aldred), with all profits donated to the trust.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article4915562.ece
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