Transitioning from the role of backing musician to centre stage as a solo artist with his 1990 album Reveillez-Vous, he has since released a total of 17 albums, the latest being Light of Day, which has just come out as you read this. He has also performed on nearly 200 albums for other artists, including Dave Koz, Euge Groove, Richard Elliot, Gerald Albright, Kirk Whalum, Matt Bianco, and Al Stewart.
I caught up with him in late 2024 and talked about his musical influences, his background, playing style and his creativity.
CF: Guitars have their own sound, but guitarists such as George Benson, Larry Carlton, and Carlos Santana have distinctive voices and styles. How did you find yours?
PW: I don’t think any of those individuals sought out their sound. It simply occurs. You could hand George Benson’s guitar to anyone else, and it wouldn’t sound like George Benson. The sound originates not from the instrument, but from him.
There was a day that changed my life in the late summer of 1975. I’d just done a US tour with Al Stewart, which was a fantastic experience for me as I’d never done a world tour before. A year before I was living with my mum in Letchworth wondering how I was going to get into the music business. Al Stewart had hired me as piano player for the tour (he already had a guitar player).
During the tour, he discovered I could play guitar and brought me into Abbey Road studio and asked me to play acoustic guitar on the Year of the Cat album. There was a song called ‘On The Border’ and it talks about Spain in the lyrics. He wanted to hear the sound of a Spanish guitar and asked if I could do that. I said yes, and he let me borrow his Spanish guitar to record that song. That was a nylon string guitar – the same kind of guitar I play now.
That has become my sound and if Al Stewart had not handed me that guitar, on that day, I don’t think I would have been looking for that sound and I would have been playing electric guitar, piano or accordion. He gave me that sound in my hands. It was the greatest gift anyone had even given me.
Which guitarists have influenced you as you were developing your own style?
I would say Hank Marvin. My dad had some of The Shadows’ LPs when I was growing up. Very melodic. Each note has a place and an importance. Not a whole lot of improvising. The song was more important than the playing, whereas in jazz, the playing is more important than the song. That probably influenced me most in the music I play today.
How did you get together with Al Stewart?
I started answering ads for auditions in the back of Melody Maker and joined a psychedelic band called Principal Edwards Magic Theatre, who were looking for a multi-instrumentalist, and I played piano and guitar. I shared a flat with them in north London. I was 20. That band was managed by Miles Copeland, who soon after started IRS Records and the Police and was managing Squeeze.
One day I answered the phone to a guy who had a strange half-English, half-American accent. It was Luke O’Reilly, Al Stewart’s manager, and he was looking for someone to play piano for Al’s band. Miles had told him about me. I went to audition for Al Stewart in January of 1975, and that became my job for the next 20 years. If I hadn’t been in, I wouldn’t have taken that call, and they’d have given it to someone else. So that phone call changed my life.
Was that association with Al Stewart very formative in your musical composition?
Oh yes. It really helped me because I had never really thought of myself as a songwriter. The melody is not usually the first thought for me or Al. I’d come up with an instrumental motif, and he’d sing the melody on top. And I still do that today, like the title track on Caravan of Dreams. I had a keyboard with a drum machine built in and came up with the intro and bass line; then, coming up with the melody was really easy because I already had the basis of the song. It’s very hard to explain because this is not traditional songwriting. It’s instrumental songwriting. Al Stewart always said he needed a good instrumental ‘bed’, then he could come up with melody and lyrics easily.
Was moving to the States pivotal to the development of your musical career?
Absolutely. I moved there to keep my gig with Al and finish the Time Passages album, and I have stayed ever since. I met all the people that would later help me, including my manager Steve Chapman. He was the drummer with Al Stewart for a while. I also met Cliff Gorov, who is in radio promotion and had a company called All That Jazz. I met him through Basia, the singer with [my brother’s band] Matt Bianco. Basia did a huge world tour in 1990, which I played in, and that was the time when my first album [Reveillez-Vous] came out.
Cliff arranged for me to go to all the radio stations in all the cities we played. He is an enormous part of my background, as he got my album played on the radio. Cliff also found me a small record company in Los Angeles that agreed to a P&D (pressing and distribution) deal. I paid for that first album with the money I earned from Basia’s tour, and that’s how I got started. It put me on the map.
Do you regard yourself as a ‘jazz’ musician?
I play instrumental music, but it’s not necessarily jazz. It’s worse for a sax player. Try to convince anyone that a sax player isn’t playing jazz, as the saxophone is so associated with jazz. At least I play a nylon string guitar, which is not so heavily associated with jazz.
I have never felt that I am a jazz player. I am a rock-and-roller. I grew up listening to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix. Through all of them, I became a guitar fan.
There was a rock radio station in Los Angeles called KMET, and one day in 1987 they changed format and all of a sudden, I was hearing instrumental music, like Acoustic Alchemy. I’d never considered a career as an instrumental soloist. I was just trying to find my place in a band.
When I started in 1974 as a professional musician, what I am doing today didn’t exist. But 15 years changes a person, and I started to think, “Is there anything more than this?” I was hearing my guitar on the radio on Al Stewart and Basia songs, but nobody knew who I was.
And now I was hearing instrumental music, which was a new format and became known as smooth jazz, and I thought, I could do this. It never even occurred to me before 1987 to write solo guitar music. That changed everything and I resolved that I was going to record my own music, take some of the songs that I’d been trying to push to singers and make them into instrumentals. That’s how I recorded my first album, Reveillez-Vous [1990].
You clearly enjoy showcasing your love for and mastery of the guitar, but you combine that with compositions that are melodic, memorable and accessible…
I am a song fan. I don’t believe the show is about me. It is about a shared experience. I play my own songs and songs from the 1960s. People have come up to me and said that song from Caravan of Dreams has helped me through a hard time. We’re all sharing the experience of remembering when we heard this song.
You enjoy writing your own music, but you have also done three albums devoted entirely to cover versions. Why was that?
By 1994, I had done three albums and I wanted to get an album out but I knew I was going on world tour with Basia, and if I didn’t get one out before I went, I might miss a whole year. I realised I didn’t have enough songs and so I decided to make a whole album of my favourite songs from the 1960s and 1970s – songs that really touched me as I was growing up. I think that recording a cover song is almost the epitome of artistry. It’s great when you can take someone else’s song, that’s already been popular, and play it your own way, in a way that people actually forget the original.
How do you go about making those songs your own?
I remove the arrangement from the song. The song is the melody, most of the time. I don’t want to copy their backing. I start by thinking what if the song had never been recorded and I just heard the melody? How would I do it? I make sure it is not anywhere near the original. We are artists. We can add whatever we want. What’s the point of copying a song note for note? The thing that holds musicians back is not our ability or talent, we have all this, what we lack is imagination. Using your imagination can make music special.
In 2019, you did an album of music for Starlux Airlines. How did that come about?
One day I got an email from a guy who worked for Universal Publishing in Taiwan, who said he had a client who wanted me to write some music for the airline he was starting. It turned out the airline’s chairman was a big fan of mine. He went to college in southern California in the Nineties and probably heard my music on The Wave. He wanted to get his favourite artist, me, to write songs for people to listen to when boarding and de-planing. He didn’t want any drama. He wanted peaceful, happy, relaxing music. It’s probably the most ‘smooth jazz’ album I have ever recorded.
And you have a new album…
My 2025 album, Light of Day, is completely different. All the drama that was missing from Starlux is on the new album! I have done a song with Rick Braun, one with Vincent Ingala and one with sax player Ernie Watts, who’s a legend.
My imagination ran wild. Sometimes I asked myself what would The Beatles do here? Like Sgt Pepper – what I loved about that was the sheer variety of the music. Every song was unexpected and different and that’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t want anyone to say, ‘I’ve heard this before’.
And finally, what are your views on streaming?
A couple came up to me at my show the other night and said they’d found my music through Spotify. There are the endless arguments about the artist only getting a tiny percentage on streamed songs, but it’s often only one person listening to it one time. Once the life of a CD is over – which is three to six months, when it will get promoted on radio and is in the public eye – then it’s gone, and how will people find it? Whereas now, with streaming, people will find it. No one is playing “Caravan of Dreams” on the radio right now, but you can hear it on Spotify. You can become a fan without ever buying a CD. So I am not really worried about streaming.
https://peterwhite.com
