Peter Howell Inspires With A Lifetime Of Music, Theater, And Creativity
Photo: Peter Howell: A Visionary Artist Who Continues To Inspire Through Decades Of Innovation In Music And Theater
Breaking Boundaries Across Music And Theater
Peter Howell’s innovative journey spans music, theater, and storytelling, showcasing his groundbreaking creativity and timeless contributions to the arts and beyond.
Peter Howell is nothing short of a creative force, a luminary whose pioneering contributions have left an indelible mark on the worlds of music, storytelling, and artistic collaboration. From his early days mastering The Shadows’ guitar instrumentals to his experimental compositions that pushed the boundaries of sound recording technology, every step of his journey speaks to an insatiable curiosity and a commitment to original artistry. Howell’s expansive body of work—ranging from the critically acclaimed Cherry Red Records’ reissue of his collaborative LPs to his innovative theatrical productions with the Whizz Theatre Company—captures the spirit of creativity unrestricted by convention.
In this interview, we are thrilled to present an in-depth conversation with an artist whose career has seamlessly bridged disciplines. Peter Howell’s ability to transform raw ideas into music, experimental theater, and even fiction demonstrates the boundless possibilities of imagination. Whether composing intricate soundscapes, crafting timeless melodies, or bringing stories to life on stage, Howell’s artistry resonates with authenticity and ingenuity. His reflections on a lifetime of creativity—now spanning decades—offer a treasure trove of inspiration and insight for creators across mediums.
Through his passion for breaking new ground and his enduring reverence for the creative process, Peter Howell serves as a reminder that art at its core is about joy, exploration, and connection. Let his story encourage you to embrace your own creative pursuits with the same devotion and passion. We hope you enjoy this conversation with an artist whose work continues to spark wonder and admiration.
Can you describe your experience learning to play guitar and your fascination with The Shadows? How did that influence your musical style?
Like a lot of people around that time, I first learned the guitar by using Burt Weedon’s Play in a Day book, but the tunes that you ended up playing were traditional and sometimes rather boring, so I looked around for something different and came across the Shadows. I immediately got attracted to them because of the way they dealt with music itself. Their tracks were always very melodic and I learnt a lot of my music theory from teaching myself Shadows instrumentals.
“The early music was genuinely creative moments, recorded for posterity.” –Peter Howell
Another advantage of playing their music was that they often did cover versions of standards which featured more complicated harmonies and chords. And that way, I taught myself more than just the basics. Later on, that sort of knowledge came in really useful as I developed an interest in plays and films. Without my early interest in the more complicated music that the Shadows produced, I don’t think I would have been so well equipped to produce the material that was asked of me later in my career.
What was it like to transition from learning instrumentals to composing your own music? Can you share any specific challenges you faced during this process?
Obviously, there was a time when I started to write my own music on the guitar, when I got interested in technology. Ever since that point, I’ve been equally interested in the arts and the sciences, something that would eventually inspire me to write a novel.
Around about that time, there were one or two stereo reel-to-reel tape recorders that were capable of recording on the top track which was the left track, and then play it onto the bottom track whilst adding something new. Having done that, you would take the bottom track, which had two items on it, and play that onto the top track again and add something new again. And so on. Therefore, you were able to build up a band, or even more than a band, and I found really exciting, being able to compose and produce in a playable form, an entire track.
And I don’t suppose I’ve ever got over it. I’m still excited to this day at being able to have a musical idea and then be able to produce the entire idea in finished form.
How did you feel when you first listened to the recordings of your early pieces? What emotions or memories do they evoke for you now?
As I have said, it was very exciting to be able to produce all your musical ideas without outside help. I didn’t realise it at the time but I was putting together a sort of musical memoir, because now I can ask Alexa (or any other smart speakers) to play music that I composed. and recorded when I was 16 or 17 years old and I’m now 75. It’s really strange.
I feel very lucky to be able to have lived at a time when my interest in composition happened at the same time as new technology allowed me to record everything I created.
When I look back now at the early material, I’m still quite pleased with a lot of it. I know that record collectors these days are interested in music that was composed without a record company looking over your shoulder, and all of that early music was just that, and I think it’s for that reason that those early recordings are quite sought after. They were genuinely creative moments, recorded for posterity, if you like.
Could you elaborate on the significance of the Cherry Red Records box set release? What does it mean to you to have your work compiled in this way?
When John Ferdinando and I received the first copies, of Cherry Red Records’ box set. We were bowled over. It was quite an emotional moment. It had been put together with such obvious affection for the material with some really original production ideas, such as making each CD look like the centre label of the original LPs, and producing a booklet that is so much more than a simple list of tracks. When we received those early boxsets, it was quite a humbling experience, really. It’s wonderful to think that after all this time people are still valuing music that was made such a long time ago.
For me, the box set is also an opportunity to look back to a time when I was part of a duo. John Ferdinando and I felt we were breaking new ground, using some new tape techniques and finding exciting new percussion and instruments to use to create the effect we wanted. I may not have gone on to do any of the other music without his commitment and enthusiasm. We were excited by the challenge of producing LPs of our own. In all, we produced five albums that we’re still very proud of.
What inspired you and John to form the amateur dramatic theatre company ‘Whizz,’ and what are some of your fondest memories from those performances?
After John Ferdinando and I had produced the music for Alice Through the Looking Glass and made a small number of LPs to sell to members of the audience, we were rather keen to repeat the experience. It so happened that I met somebody who wanted to make an amateur film and was looking for someone to write the music. This would eventually lead to our second LP, Tomorrow Come Someday. Two albums had been made from music originally written for a stage performance and a film, and my interest in writing applied music was born. Since no further opportunity came along, we decided to try and write our own stage shows and to produce music for them. The first of these was Whizz and was performed at the local Village Hall that had staged Alice Through the Looking Glass. Perhaps it was more to do with there not being very much on the television at the time or the fact that the village was very supportive, but that first show was a great success, and so there were now two strands to our output: the original music composition continued for the five albums, but now also we decided to produce more shows under the umbrella company name of Whizz Theatre Company. Over the next few years, four more shows appeared; Fizz, The Official Banana, Cock-a-Doodle-Doo, and Rock ‘n Rot. As the titles suggest they were all very light-hearted sketch shows with music, but as we produced more, our standards improved, as is clear from the music that you can find on Spotify.
It would be difficult to choose my favourite moments from the shows, there are just too many. They were enormously enjoyable to produce and the members of the cast had a great time losing all their inhibitions! We all still remember it fondly to this day.
What initially drew you to writing plays instead of pursuing music, and how did that passion evolve over time?
Before I ever thought of playing the guitar I had already been writing plays for puppet shows. I was very young at the time and the standard was very low, but it did spark my interest in writing. But when my interest in the guitar took over and subsequently my involvement with John Ferdinando developed, the writing side got channelled into the Whizz Theatre Company shows for which both John and I wrote all the material, and any other writing fell by the wayside.
When I landed a job at the BBC and then a post at the Radiophonic Workshop, I had little time for anything else and so my literary output was frozen, apart from a programme I wrote for Radio 3 during that time that was an adaptation of Dante’s Inferno.
It was only in my final years at the BBC and immediately after I left, that I had the opportunity to revisit writing again, and had the idea for a sci-fi comedy novel that I worked on during the late 90s and early 2000’s. Its central idea was to take the reader to a world where artists had been separated from scientists each being forced to realise how much they missed and resulting in chaos on a grand scale. This had, no doubt, been inspired by my experience over the years of being called on to be both creative and methodical at the same time! I had always been involved in producing short material, my music was rarely longer than 2 1/2 minutes, and so the daunting length of a novel was hard going, and I shelved the idea.
Many years later, after the advent of AI, I suddenly realised that the novel that I had started so long ago, was inadvertently about very modern issues, and so I went back to writing it as well as researching the subject in detail. The novel is now almost complete. I have not turned my back on music but I felt I owed it to my younger self to try my hand at writing again.
What has become clear to me over the many years that I have been involved with creativity, is how every creative discipline has such very similar issues to deal with. It is only when we come to realise what we have imagined that we have to decide the form the output is going to take. In that way, writing and composing, have both used the similar urge to create that everyone working in the creative industries will recognise. Despite its many challenges, one of which is the difficulty in thinking about anything other than your current project (!), it can be rewarding on a very personal level, especially as we get older and can look back on an unbroken sequence of work that will endure.
Peter Howell’s BBC years
Peter Howell’s first day at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1974 was an eye-opening introduction to experimental sound creation. Witnessing John Baker skillfully splice and edit tape among a chaotic yet creative studio filled with cigarette smoke, dangling tape reels, and even a mischievous puppy, Howell was instantly captivated. He observed the unique artistry made possible by tape recording technology, where composers could craft entire works independently without relying on musicians. Inspired yet overwhelmed, Howell realized he had much to learn about this innovative and transformative approach to music creation.
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