David "Dave" Morgan, also was born in England and was ELO's backing vocal, vocoder vocalist and acoustic guitarist on stage from August 1981 to September 1986. Dave Morgan plays bass and guitar and has written songs since his early days in rock music, when he played together with Richard Tandy in Paradox and The Chantelles. During the 60's Carl Wayne became enthusiastic about his talents and invited him to work in Carl's Penny Music Publishing Company, and so it was no surprise that The Move recorded two Dave Morgan songs in 1968 "Something" and "This Time Tomorrow". Dave joined the Steve Gibbons group The Uglys, because they needed a bass player and he recorded with them. Soon The Uglys changed their name to Balls, but they only managed to get one test gig together. Dave left Balls in summer 1969.
Dave Morgan got more into songwriting and Lou Reizner signed him as the song writer for the group Wishful Thinking for whom Dave wrote two complete albums, but wasn't actually credited as a group member. Dave's biggest hit with them was "Hiroshima" which made No. 1 in several European countries. In 1970 Dave released his eponymous album "Dave Morgan" which was produced by Lou Reizner. During his related work with Wishful Thinking Dave joined the Birmingham based rock group Magnum in 1972. In 1977 Dave Morgan and songwriter Jim Cleary together recorded one album as Morgan Cleary Band for Jet Records with Richard Tandy as producer. The album was never released though.
When Jeff Lynne decided to get rid of those "mad jumping cellists" on stage, who could not be heard in the final live mix and had to be supported by keyboards and basic tapes, it was Richard Tandy who recruited Dave Morgan for The Electric Light Orchestra. ELO wanted to play without backing tapes, and apart form Louis Clark's string-synthesizer, they needed someone who sang all the famous ELO vocoder parts (by singing and pressing the right chords on a synthesizer), and a second vocal backing for Jeff and Kelly. During some songs he played the acoustic guitar as well. During ELO's "Time Tour", Dave Morgan performed with Kelly Groucutt by miming the bass in a German TV show called "Musikladen". The year 1983 saw Dave Morgan together with the so-called ELO studio section singing additional background on the "Secret Messages" album, in the recording studio in Holland, to learn some recording and production techniques from Jeff.
In 1984 Dave and Richard released their first record "Berlin" as R And D. The track had been inspired by Dave's visit to the Berlin wall during ELO's 1982 "Time Tour". The R And D project developed into Tandy And Morgan who released the album "Earthrise" in 1986, for which Dave had done many of the recordings on his own. The foundation of The Tandy Morgan Band followed, with the line-up of Richard Tandy, Dave Morgan and Martin Smith, and the "Action!" single. All tracks on these projects were composed by Dave.
In Spring and Summer of 1986 The Tandy Morgan Band members were on a promotional and concert tour for The Electric Light Orchestra's "Balance Of Power" album. At the live shows, Dave Morgan became ELO's first backing vocalist and he also played the acoustic guitar and the vocoder as well, Martin Smith became second backing vocalist and, of course, played the bass guitar. ELO also did a lot of TV shows to mime the ELO single outtakes. Here you could see Martin Smith mime backing vocals and bass guitar and Dave Morgan and Louis Clark together miming the cellos. In fact they all had nothing to do with the "Balance Of Power" recordings.
Dave could also be heard as background singer on four songs as a member of the choir on Jeff Lynne's first solo album "Armchair Theatre" in 1990. During the following year Dave Morgan recorded Christian music for his performances at churches. After the shows he sold "All God's Blessings", his privately produced tape, containing 11 songs, to the church goers. The tape had a plain title sleeve made up on his computer and featured "God's Good Time", a track which was produced by none other than Jeff Lynne alias "Otis Wilbury" who was also in the choir on that track. Later that year, Dave extended the tape to 16 tracks and sold it exclusively through the ELO Fan Club/ Fanzine "Face The Music". He also released a charity single titled "Betlehem Town". When "Earthrise" was re-released on CD in June 1992 Face The Music Fanzine suggested to Richard, Dave and Martin to produce "The B.C. Collection" with unreleased tracks from 1985 to 1987 by Tandy Morgan Smith, which was only available through FTM.
Letzte Änderung: 26.02.2000