A Filmic Rhapsody: Gary Husband Waxes Lyrical!

While Leeds-born Gary Husband may have initially made his mark in the ’80s and ’90s as a drummer with the likes of Allan Holdsworth, Level 42, Gary Moore and Jack Bruce, he more recently showcased his considerable pianistic skills in the company of John McLaughlin & The 4th Dimension Band, Billy Cobham’s Spectrum 50 and Time Machine bands and Bill Evans & the Vansband All-Stars, as well as on his own recordings as a leader.

On Postcards from the Past, a retrospective of studio, demo and live recordings from his personal archives spanning five decades, Husband reveals all those musical aspects and more in this extraordinary 2CD archival set.

Culled from early cassette recordings of experimental improv jams with his early musical partners, guitarist Steve Topping and bassist Paul Carmichael, a demo he had made in 1979 with guitar god Allan Holdsworth, and DAT board tapes from live performances with his jazz quartet at Ronnie Scott’s in London and his Force Majeure septet at Turner Sims Concert Hall in Southampton, Postcards from the Past runs the gamut of Husband’s musical expression.

I sat down with Gary and we discussed everything from his new album, how he sees himself as a songwriter, on through to reminiscing about certain album tracks and, oh yeah, even his daughter’s love for penguins!

Being that Postcards from the past is actually a 2CD collection of previously unreleased tracks from 1978-2021, I am initially wondering where you had stored them over the years and in such a way that you could easily access them all now? - “Well, the material has existed on a plethora of different audio formats and has been stored in a big mixture of places - old boxes, home and work storage, with colleagues, various engineers and suchlike. A lot of the material I had made digital copies of a good few years ago, but sadly it did happen to be the case that some of the stuff I would have loved to include there I wasn’t able to retrieve or even locate.”

And with that said, and given they go back to 1978 and that there were different storage options back then for music, what were some of the biggest obstacles along the way to bringing some of these tracks into modern day? And was there a song or two that kicked and screamed their way out of storage before you were able to wrangle them nicely for this set? - “Yes a few things did, and I guess a few of the said favourites from the older days I did have workable enough copies of. The challenge with a lot of the surviving stuff was really to try to sonically, qualitatively bring all the items into line somehow. I mean, in the case of a few items there was the fact they existed only on cassette tape … and it was material that was originally recorded on a cassette tape! Monumental challenge!”

“Even worse of a challenge with mp3s though, and we did manage it, but it was a big, big work. I had the help of a few great engineers that brought about considerable audio restorations to the really low grade sounding things whilst not stripping it of it’s original sonic character.”

“That was really important to me. I actually love to hear the age, the inherent wear associated with the passage of time in old material. I don’t like all this super cleaned up, really enhanced thing some do where all the authenticity of the time and period is gone. I like old to sound as it is.”

Were there older, late ’70s/early ’80s tracks that you would have definitely wanted on this 2CD set that were sadly left off due to them not having stood the test of time when it came to airing them now? Maybe they were not as complete as you had always assumed them to be or they were damaged recordings due to late ’70s storage methods, or you just didn’t feel them in the way you once believed you did, perhaps? - “Yes, there were certainly things I’d remembered as being quite special back in another time, but on present day review it was clear they no longer had that same spell on me or even really stood out anymore - qualitively, or most importantly, musically. It’s strange how we can maintain an idea of these essences attached to things from the past. I guess sometimes it’s remembering through the old “rose tinted spectacles” factor isn’t it!”

As for the new collection, Postcards from the Past, I understand that it is always your driven hope that you are releasing something that provides an intriguing journey for the listener with regard whatever material you have collated and deemed the right time to release, so can you please explain just what these rhythms and patterns mean to you within the context of how you work (and have done over the years), both thematically and musically. - “Well I really just rely on instinct with all of it to a large extent. My instinct and intuition… in much the same way as we do when performing and improvising … and I still really love making albums! It’s just so very special - the whole trajectory of it, from the writing stage where you work from the original impulse right through to the the process of structuring an order for the pieces and choosing how you would like your music to reveal itself to listeners. It’s a magical adventure, and I’m proudest of the albums I’ve made when I’ve got that side of things right.”

Also, why was now, here in 2025, the right time to release all these older tracks in this collection? - “I don’t know! We never really know things like that as artists. You can just wake up one morning with an idea. Sometimes a very complete and vivid one! Then comes the work!”

Indeed, a lot of words and terms have already been used to describe your music over the years, but how would you yourself sum up your sound on this Postcards from the Past double album ... and in just five (5) words? - “A perpetual sound of surprise!”

Please tell us (in a couple of sentences or less) a little more about what these tracks noted below mean to you and how you approached reworking them at that time:

500 Miles High - “Well, “500 Miles High” is a cover of a piece by the late, great Chick Corea … though quite an untypical one. It’s more of a completely new design on it than a cover version actually, and it’s dedicated to him.”

Bing of the Vale - “Bing of the Vale appears here as a demo performance… but I liked it. I wrote a series of pieces to feature on an album I made with guitarist Alex Machacek, and for each of them I made an audio demo.”

Cinema Lullaby & City Nights - “Bing was one, Cinema Lullaby was one and the piano and guitar arrangement of City Nights was another.”

And was Postcards from the Past always going to be the album’s name or was there another that nearly won the race come the time to take your hands off the project? - “No, actually the title Postcards from the Past had come to me a few years before even the thought of this compilation had taken shape, so that was always going to be the album title for this. Also, I’m a keen photographer and one day on a walk by a long canal that runs through London I took a shot from under a bridge. Right at the moment I took it a bird flew into the shot, and on reviewing the photo later something about the way it looked just gave me the feeling that this little messenger had flown in from the past maybe bringing some of it along with it into the present. So when the idea for this album came up I pressed for that shot to be my cover photo”

And given you are a most wonderful multi instrumentalist, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you to please explain more about this comment you made recently: “I can’t claim to have ever considered myself a guitar player, but I can say I have always greatly aspired to be one”? - “Well yes, a bit of obscure way to say it maybe, but I stand by that comment. In truth I was never even semi-accomplished as a guitarist … but I knew what I liked and I knew what I wanted out of it, so I worked hard in my spare time to get some semblance of facility together on it so as to be able to get near to what I wanted to attain. It’s an advantage I do think though, to have reached a level of accomplishment and evolvement on another instrument - in my case of course, piano.”

Listening back to the songs now, as you must have done to put the set together, did you find more influences from other bands you have worked with - Level 42, Gary Moore, Allan Holdsworth, John McLaughlin, Jack Bruce, et el - within your music than you expected to? - “Not that I feel conscious of, no not especially, though it stands to reason some of what I experienced (and still do experience) being involved in the music of those artists and many others I have worked with that some of their “way” in music rubbed off on me to whatever extent. It’s a fact though that well apart from all my associations with others, when it comes to my own projects and writing I have always gone into a very separate, private zone where I guess influences may well be somewhat apparent here and there, but it’s really me being completely me.”

Being that we’re not called Exclusive Magazine for nothing, is there a hidden message, a secret notation or an easter egg to be found amongst all the tracks assembled for this recording? - “Not as such, no, but I guess I am in a way already revealing a good bundle of former secret messages via this album, and the releasing on it of material that hasn’t ever been aired or heard by the listening public before. Also, there’s a backstory behind many of these tracks which are pretty interesting I think. With Song For My Father for example you hear a take we recorded in Los Angeles of a song which was tipped to be the original final track on Allan Holdsworth’s album (of ‘84 or so) called “Metal Fatigue”. Just after the first sung section of the song you hear the chords of the whole first part of the song’s sequence played plaintively on piano.”

“These in actual fact were routined to be the piano backing accompaniment to an acoustic guitar solo Allan was to to do later, but he never did do the solo, and the song never got released either. So here it is for the first time - just myself on piano with my old Paul Williams singing. It was remastered for this album from a monitor mix cassette copy I just happened to have taken home from the studio that day, and it’s probably the only audio evidence of it in existence now. So there’s sentiment as well to some of this stuff, in addition to a good few other tributes.”

What are some of the last albums (CD, vinyl, cassette, et al) you physically purchased (vintage and/or new releases) and which one have you already gone back to listen to more and why? - “Well first off, I still buy music, always. I’ll research artists or composers on Spotify and Apple sometimes (if they have what I’m looking for) and then pay for a physical copy or download. As to some of the music I’ll listen to… hmmm. Difficult, as the range is so wide. I was introduced to an incredible epilogue to a violin concerto by (Estonian) composer Rasmus Puur recently, I revisit a lot of Sinatra and Miles Davis quite commonly, I loved Tina Turner’s interpretation (with Herbie Hancock) of Joni Mitchell’s Edith And The Kingpin, I’ve seen Arto Lindsay live and love a good few of his albums. I revisit a lot of my favourite big band stuff from over the years, I love all John McLaughlin’s work from the ‘70s, I like Kneebody (a contemporary jazz group from NYC) and I listen to a lot of Hindustani and Carnatic Indian singers and instrumentalists.”

“I saw Simply Red the other night and Mick Hucknall knocked me out of the park. Unbelievable soulfulness. Today I heard again Simon & Garfunkel’s America as well. My god, what a song and performance that is! I have to be captivated & moved by what I’ll listen to, and there’s a lot out there from the past and the present that’ll do it, one way or the other.”

What would you like all the readers of this interview to know about the new album and what to expect? - “I’d like people that might be drawn to listening to this album to come to it with an open mind. There’s a lot of variation and diversity to what’s featured on it, and in a big way it’s a strong and vivid reflection of who I am, since I love diversity, socially, in terms of food and definitely in relation to music. On a personal level, what I also enjoy about this record is that it reveals a lot about my more complete life in music - the diversity of what I do from the compositional, the arranging, the varying styles, the band leading, the expression through drums, piano, keys … and yes even a little acoustic guitar in places.”

You hail from Leeds in the UK so I am wondering if you are a Leeds Utd fan? - “Nope! Never was any kind of football fan… though I’m sure it’s a great team. Just give me Formula 1 and tennis and I’m very happy!”

We here at Exclusive Magazine love Penguins and so we were wondering if you had any love for them and/or had a story of one (soft toy, zoo, chocolate bar, relative, etc.) that you could share with us? - “Look at the photos I have just emailed you for this interview!”

And finally, we asked Gary to kindly provide a never-before-seen photograph or two of himself. Ones that perfectly personified his readiness for the world to hear his new musical endeavor. And kindly, this is what he sent.