Prog

Larry Fast

- By Dave Cousins (Strawbs)

“Imet Larry Fast in 1977 when I got invited to be a singer on an album called The Intergalac­tic

Touring Band. It was like a rock version of star Wars, released at colossal expense and featuring people like Frances rossi, Meat

Loaf, rod Argent and the London philharmon­ic Orchestra. Larry was the keyboard player and co-producer of the album, so we became friends.

“Larry has this astonishin­g pedigree. He helped rick Wakeman out with the keyboards on Tales From

Topographi­c Oceans, was involved in the switched On Bach ensemble, which is the first time synthesise­rs had ever been used in a classical music situation, and had his own group, synergy, which was just him playing all the keyboards. He was involved with Nektar in Germany. He worked with Bob Moog on the early synthesise­rs, but decided that he couldn’t afford to buy the stuff, so he made the synthesise­r modules himself! He then went to become peter Gabriel’s keyboard player for 10 years, bringing a lot of different sounds and effects to his albums.

But the curious thing – as he acknowledg­es himself – is that he’s not really a musician! He’s a synthesise­r expert, and he works things out very methodical­ly.”

 ??  ?? SYNTH EXPERT AND COMPOSER LARRY FAST.
SYNTH EXPERT AND COMPOSER LARRY FAST.
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