Sky were an English–Australian instrumental rock group that specialised in combining a variety of musical styles, most prominently rock, classical and jazz. The group's original and best-known line-up featured two Australians - classical guitarist John Williams and electric guitarist Kevin Peek - alongside three Britons - bass player Herbie Flowers, drummer/percussionist Tristan Fry and keyboard player Francis Monkman.
History
Roots and prehistory
In 1971, John Williams released the fusion album Changes, his first recording of non-classical music and the first on which he played electric guitar. Among the musicians working on the album were Tristan Fry (an established session drummer who was also the timpanist for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and had played Timpani on the Beatles' "A Day in the Life") and Herbie Flowers (a former member of Blue Mink and T. Rex, as well as a busy session musician who, among other things, had recorded the bassline for Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side").
The three musicians became friends, kept in touch and continued working together on various projects during the 1970s. One of these was Williams' 1978 album Travelling, another substantially commercially successful cross-genre recording. As well as Fry and Flowers, the record featured former Curved Air member Francis Monkman (who, in addition to his progressive and psychedelic rock background as guitar and synthesiser player, was a trained and accomplished classical harpsichordist).
In 1979, Monkman performed on Louis Clark's album (per-spek-tiv) n., on which he collaborated with Australian session guitarist Kevin Peek. Peek was equally adept at classical guitar and pop/rock styles, having built a reputation both as a chamber musician and as a long-standing member of Cliff Richard's band, as well as from working with Manfred Mann, Lulu, Tom Jones, Jeff Wayne, Shirley Bassey and Gary Glitter.
First line-up, Sky and Sky 2: 1979–1980
The success of Travelling inspired Williams and Flowers to set up Sky, their own long-term cross-genre band. The band name Sky was suggested by flautist Pinuccia Rossetti, a member of the Carlos Bonell Ensemble, and a friend of Williams. Fry and Monkman were swiftly recruited, with Kevin Peek being the final addition. The band began writing and recording instrumental music drawing on their collective experience of classical, light pop, progressive and psychedelic rock, light entertainment and jazz. After a protracted search for a record company, Sky signed with the small European label Ariola Records.
Although Sky was run democratically (with all members contributing music and/or arrangements), the presence of John Williams in the line-up was regarded as the band's biggest selling point and was emphasised in publicity. Williams' concurrent solo instrumental hit – "Cavatina – Theme from The Deer Hunter" – also helped to raise the band's profile. The band toured the UK in summer and autumn 1979, particular triumphs being sold-out concerts at the Royal Albert Hall and the Dominion Theatre in London (the latter a five-night sellout). In 2024, Williams recalled "we'd really go places. We'd play the Apollo venues in London, Glasgow, and Manchester. Those were in areas you wouldn't want to find yourself at two o’clock in the morning on your own. A lot of the audience were rough and ready, but with hearts of gold.")
In 1980, Sky recorded and released their second album, Sky 2. This was a double album that built upon its predecessor's success, becoming the tenth highest selling album in Britain that year. The album included Monkman's side-long rock suite "FIFO", a piece inspired by computer information processing techniques ("First In, First Out"). It also featured four classical pieces including three established chamber music pieces (played entirely straight) and the band's souped-up electric treatment of Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor". The latter was released as a single (under the name "Toccata") and reached number 5 in the national pop charts, giving the band the opportunity of performing on Top of the Pops.
Other tracks on Sky 2 included a Williams conflation of Spanish folk tunes, a Fry-penned tuned percussion piece, a cover of Curved Air's "Vivaldi", Peek's Arabic-influenced "Sahara", the psychedelic faux-Spanish folk dance "Hotta", plus several cheerful Flowers compositions including his tuba showcase "Tuba Smarties" and the longer-form "Scipio". Flowers described the latter piece as "the first piece of music to have Parts I & II running simultaneously", although an unimpressed Monkman would later claim that it had been "motivated by a 'look, anyone can write a long piece' attitude". Notably, Monkman refused "point blank" to ever play "Scipio" live. In the same interview, Flowers added, more pointedly, "I think [he] felt a little bit that the music should all be completely original and serious... maybe by then the width of our material was too wide, you couldn't pin us down, and I think Francis might have felt that it was beginning to take a bit too much time." Like most of the other band members, Gray was an established session musician: he had previously played with Back Door, Quincy Jones, Henry Mancini, Michel Legrand, Lalo Schifrin, Peggy Lee, Sammy Davis Jr and John Barry. More recently, he had led WASP, a studio-based jazz-fusion band specialising in high-quality library music. Recalling Gray's recruitment, Flowers asserted "there aren't many musicians to my mind with whom everything they play and everything they write is beautiful... but Steve Gray was," adding "Steve was the gentlest of men, and when he rolled up it was just wonderful from the start."
The band drew from a more diverse "classical" catalogue than might have been expected, with the pieces recorded varying from better-known classical/Romantic/Renaissance compositions (the aforementioned "Fantasy", part of Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique", one of Ravel's "Valses Nobles and Sentimentales", and a Mubarra fantasia) to assorted twentieth century works by Khatchaturian, Villa-Lobos and Theodorakis. Although the band did record a tongue-in-cheek, mock-pomp version of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries", Flowers recalled the arrangements on the album as having been "quite thorough... Doing an arrangement of another composer's work, you have to pay deference to it."
Having previously hinted that his work with Sky had been intended as a five-year stint, John Williams parted company with the band in February 1984, returning to a full-time classical career. in 2024 he would reflect on a certain dissatisfaction with the group's subsequent direction and musical development. He commented "when I think about the repertoire, I think about one-third to one-half of it was really good. But I think a lot of it, especially when I was leaving, was becoming a bit tame, like library music... [A lot of the] stuff was just entertainment. I don't think many pieces transferred to a pure listening experience as a recording. They didn’t stand up that well. They're okay, but they're not great... For me, Sky was a question of being on stage and how I approached that... There were a lot of great things about Sky and the band did very good shows... For that generation of people in their twenties and thirties when we were doing Sky, I know it led a lot of people into the guitar. And in retrospect, I'm pretty proud of that."
Third line-up, The Great Balloon Race and Mozart: 1984–1990
Though Williams' departure had been amicable, his departure still came as a shock to Sky, since it happened just before the start of a scheduled, sold-out Australian tour. "John leaving did put us in a spot," noted Flowers, in 2015, "[but] we felt we couldn't let people down."
Following his own departure from Sky in 1984, John Williams continued his original career as one of the world's leading classical guitarists. He would also commission two guitar concertos from other members of Sky, performing and recording Paul Hart's "Concerto For Guitar & Jazz Orchestra" with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra in 1987, and Steve Gray's "Guitar Concerto" with the London Symphony Orchestra in 1989 (although the latter was not released on record until 1996).
After leaving Sky in 1991, Kevin Peek continued to work as a musician and producer in Australia. In his later years, he underwent two bankruptcies, the first of which resulted in a three-year prison sentence. In 2010, he was linked to a "Ponzi" style investment scheme. In November 2011, he was back in court, bailed on 227 charges of gaining benefit by fraud: a trial date was scheduled for 27 January 2012, but abandoned due to Peek's ill health. He died in Perth, Western Australia, on 11 February 2013, from metastatic skin cancer.
Following Sky's last known collaborative work in 1995, Steve Gray continued his career as a respected composer (which he had been carrying out in parallel to his work with Sky). His compositions include two operas, a requiem mass for jazz big band and choir, the guitar concerto for John Williams and the LSO, and a piano concerto written for French jazz pianist Martial Solal. Gray also provided a full orchestration of the works of Brian Eno (in collaboration with the original composer). From 1991, he worked closely with the North German Radio (NDR) Big Band in Hamburg (at the invitation of singer and composer Norma Winstone) and from 1998 he worked as guest professor of composition and arrangement in the Hanns Eisler jazz department of Berlin Hochschule für Musik. Steve Gray died on 20 September 2008.
As well as branching out as a light entertainment raconteur, Herbie Flowers continued to work as a high-profile session musician and collaborated with Jools Holland, Clannad, Mike Hatchard and Paul McCartney. He also played in the band for the first live tour of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds show (having performed on the original studio album) and again in 2018. He frequently collaborated with Sky's final guitarist, Richard Durrant, on various musical projects (including a trio with former Gentle Giant drummer Malcolm Mortimore). He died on September 5, 2024.
Post-Sky, Tristan Fry has continued his work as a classical percussionist. He still works with the Orchestra of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, as well as the Tristan Fry Percussion Ensemble.
Richard Durrant has continued to develop his own career as a classical guitarist, as well as composing film and television music and working as a record producer (notably for the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain). Durrant is also the founder of the acoustic record label LongMan Records.
Paul Hart went on to a career in film, television and commercial music and has written concert music for the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the King's Singers. His Concerto for Classical Guitar and Jazz Orchestra was revived for performance in 2008 by the Towson University Jazz Orchestra and guitarist Michael Decker.
Post-split releases and reissues
In 1993, Arista reissued the band's first five albums on CD, although cuts were made to certain albums to suit CD running times (a shorter edit of "Scipio" on Sky 2 and the complete removal of the twenty-minute suite "The Animals" from Sky Five Live). [The complete "Sky Five Live", with "The Animals", was issued as a double CD on Esoldun, with four bonus tracks from the four earlier studio albums. These were "Carillon" (Sky, listed as "Carillion"), "Toccata" (Sky 2), "Westwind" (Sky 3) and "Fantasia" (Sky 4).
In 2001, the band began a reissue programme of their back catalogue on Sanctuary Records, beginning with the Anthology compilation album. After four years wait, Sky reissued their debut album on the label in 2005 (with Sky 2 following on a different label, Castle Music). After this the reissues plan stalled (although occasional brief runs of the first two Sky albums would appear intermittently on small labels). It would be nine more years before a full Sky reissue programme was carried out properly.
In 2002, a live Sky album, Live in Nottingham, was released on Classic Rock Productions, drawing on the 1990 live-in-the-studio concert with the Peek/Flowers/Gray/Fry/Hart line-up, which had followed the band's lone Palladium concert in the same year.
In 2005, Quantum Leap Productions issued a live DVD, Live in Bremen, featuring the original Sky line-up and recorded at a German television show in either 1979 or 1980.
The entire Sky back catalogue was eventually reissued by Esoteric Recordings (a progressive-rock-friendly subsidiary of Cherry Red Records). On 27 October 2014, fully remastered versions of Sky and Sky 2 were released as CD/DVD packages, each containing a DVD of Sky's television appearances (in 1979 and 1980 respectively). Remastered versions of Sky 3 and Sky 4: Forthcoming were released on 26 January 2015, each with new sleevenote essays and companion live DVDs (the former featuring a companion DVD of the Sky at Westminster Abbey concert, the latter featuring the band's July 1982 live set for the BBC TV programme Night Music). Remastered versions of The Great Balloon Race and Mozart followed on 30 March 2015 (with new essays but no bonus DVDs). The reissue set was completed by 27 April 2015 release of the remastered Sky Five Live (as a double CD with new sleevenote essay and with "The Animals" restored to the running order) and Cadmium (as a double set with three bonus tracks, a new sleevenote essay and a DVD combining a previously unreleased BBC recording of Sky at Drury Lane and a rare performance of the piece "Troika" on the Val Doonican Show from December 1983).
In 2016, the band's entire output was reissued on coloured vinyl.