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Paul Walden and Derek Nicol celebrate 30 years of bringing musical icons back to centre stage with Flying Music
ABOVE Flying pioneers: Derek Nicol and Paul Walden receive 2011’s Sunday Times International Track 100 Award as FM is named the 19th fastest growing company internationally
ABOVE Brothers in arms: Serge Pizzorno and Tom Meighan (centre) have known each other since they were 11...
06.07.12 MusicWeek 25
LIVE BY TOM PAKINKIS
N
ostalgia is a powerful thing and music is perhaps its most effective vehicle. It snares the senses with a sonic hook and drags
its wistful victim back through the ages to a time since forgotten. Live producers and promoters Derek Nicol and
Paul Walden know this better than most as they’ve propelled their company Flying Music into its 30th year by looking back. Nostalgia is Flying’s key product, with a range of music shows purpose built for children of decades gone by. Whether it’s a live coupling of legends that have
left the limelight, a star-studded line-up of genre defining pop groups or an all-singing, all-dancing cast production prepped to recreate an iconic era, a Flying Music show is an experience you thought you might never have again. Today, Thriller Live is the company’s flagship.
Take a stroll through London’s West End and it’s hard to miss ‘Michael Jackson’ strutting from
billboards at the Lyric Theatre, Billie Jean point and all. The show itself is a journey through the
life of one of music’s most important figures - from the child star to the King Of Pop. It’s a tribute, but it goes well beyond a meager impersonation. It’s been praised for its high production values, charismatic leads and careful but energetic recreations of Jackson’s most defining works and moments. If it’s not showcasing cast productions of musical
legends, Flying Music is bringing the legends themselves together. Whether its coupling Ray Charles with Van Morrison, pairing two former Bluesbreakers in the form of Peter Green and John Mayall or managing the unenviable task of reuniting The Monkees, Flying Music has been behind concert bills that most would only dream of including putting Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino together for the first time. The defining first line-up from Flying, however,
featured Gerry And The Pacemakers, The Searchers and Peter Sarstedt.
“The company started in 1982 and
originally promoted club nights with the independent local radio network at that time,” remembers Walden. “The local radio stations were keen to be
ABOVE
Birthday beats: Flying Music is 30 years old on July 8
seen to be doing things in the community so we started putting on club nights and the odd concert for them - primarily disco nights and concerts with artists like Amazulu
and Bananarama.” Nicol adds: “We worked with artists that had
either had a couple of hit records or some credibility in the market that we could take out, but a lot of them were up-and-coming acts who were just bordering on the charts. They were up for it because it was a radio station night so they would get the promotion on air in addition to the live opportunity. “In fact I think we were one of the first into the
PA circuit, where artists would go out and play to their current tape,” he ponders. “That’s what we did up and down the country. We created tours for these artists and they became like concert tours.” In 1984 Flying Music worked on its first concert
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