David Longdon

Big Big Train singer, instrumentalist BORN 1965

With his serious spectacles and shortage of flowing locks, David Longdon never looked like a classic frontman. But in progressive rock it is, of course, the music that matters, and Longdon was full of it, helping turn Big Big Train from a Dorset-based studio project into a UK Top 40 band with a debut American tour in the offing. Success had come late to the Nottingham-born musician: in 1996 he reached the last two in auditions to replace Phil Collins in Genesis but the job went to Ray Wilson (a tantalising ‘what if’). Longdon began to fear his musical career would never take off but then he joined Big Big Train to record their breakthrough, The Underfall Yard (2009). A series of ambitious releases and a sprinkling of live shows turned them into prog favourites. At the time of Longdon’s tragic death, from a head injury after a fall, he was working on a solo album.

John Bungey