Take a musician who, having led and tasted the sweet success of a good band, now decides to go alone.
Does he change his repertoire to work on songs that a soloist can handle? Does he go into partnership with a drum machine and hope for musical miracles every night? Does he really go back to John Denver?
Alexander Lesley Peters, 26, decided he would ‘have it all’ instead.
Around 1980, when he left Stratosphere, which began as a promising band, but closed shop as a trio, Peters turned the situation around and decided he had actually found his wings.
Whereas previously the band had walked up and down the Top 40 lists every month, occasionally venturing out into ‘progressive’ rock, Peters decided that as a soloist, he could do Pink Floyd. Yes, Dylan, Hendrix, Jethro Tull and yes, yes, reggae.
Of course, it helps if you have access to a 4-track recording machine on which you can record parts that will ‘play’ and ‘sing’ with you. Which is what he did.
‘HOT SHOT’
Today, at Treffpunkt in Damansara Utama, Petaling Jaya, where the tall, lean soloist works Thursday nights, he has most of his repertoire on ‘Minus 2” tape (without lead vocals and lead guitar), and he’s included almost half of Dire Straits’ Brother in Arms pat in his pocket, along with the favourites of yore.
“It was torment,” Peters said, remembering his days with Stratosphere. But he was not speaking in terms of their music. The band had their day – they had grown to the ‘hot shot’ - with two keyboardists, lead guitarists, six-part harmonies .. the works.
There was a lot that Peters had ‘given’ to Stratosphere. Trouble was his band mates thought they were being forced to ‘take’.
After his elder brother, Matthew, had left as band leader, Peters naturally took over. He would work out parts for everybody else. Vocal harmonies, music parts. Finally, they would try and put both together.
Four hours later, everyday, every week, Peters would just begin to feel he was warming up, comfortable in the knowing that the guys were getting used to their lines. But the others would want a break.
“Maybe I pushed too much discipline,” he offers today, looking back at how it got jaded and faded away. “I think when they got to a stage when everybody thought we were pretty good, they felt they didn’t need anymore ‘lessons’. All those layers of limelight and glory worked to block out reality sometimes.”
But he admits that, maybe, “I was indirectly telling them they were still not good enough.”
By late ’79, Stratosphere were working as a trio and Peters had already found his solace. And it was in God and Church.
In 1978, Peters was leading a choir called The Good Shepherd on his acoustic guitar. In the year until now, he has led The Revelation, also a Church group, which made the switch to electric music and a rhythm section, and formed Rose of Sharon, a duet with keyboardist Alan Pereira, who now works with the band Forever.
Today, he is at the helm of Children of the King, a four-piece group that also uses pre-recorded music on the 4-track.
TURNING POINT
All these groups were Gospel-oriented, and more often than not, sing Peters’ compositions. “All the songs I have written” – there are 25, he says since he starting writing in 1976 – “ are Gospel.” They include numbers like Gloryland Express, Winged Creatures, The Day The King Died, The Lion of the Tribe of Judah and Winds Don’t Have a Systematic Way of Dying Down.
The last of these was a turning point for Peters. “It was about struggle. When you feel you are going somewhere, something hits you hard. You want to curse. But you go forward. Then ‘the wind’ hits again and you’re whacked hard. But you keep going and, eventually, you will make it”.
When re reasoned this out for himself, he realised that that was all there was to it – winds. They just come and they go.
One particularly bad gust hit Peters around ’84. By this time, alone, he too was ‘hot shot’. Wherever he played – The Underground, Moonraker, Peter’s Key and numerous other drinking holes – he packed them in. If you could take the smoke and the squeeze, Peters would play till the early morning. And he often did.
This was the loneliness of the long-distance singer. “I would play for three, four hours non-stop. Then go on again about 11.30 pm for the last set. At home, about 4 am, I would record parts for new songs. Sometimes, I would have a few hours sleep in a whole week… then be a normal person on weekends and really sleep.”
After a few months of this routine, something had to give. In Peters’ case, it was a muscle in his throat that simply lost its elasticity. The doctors told him to quit singing, or else. He took a break for 15 months.
A hop here and a skip there, and Peters is still doing those three-hours, non-stop sessions at Treffpunkt. And what sessions they are sometimes. A more than capable lead guitarist and very seasoned singer, Peters thrills his crowd every night with a range of contemporary music that would stump almost any other pub singer in town.
Nothing seems too tough for Man and Machine.
Not Toto, not Jethro Tull, not Mark Knopfler, or Bob Marley, or Police. And the list could go on.
He even has a devout, but small, fan club of sorts. Collectively, they are the Gravediggers, a group of dancers and many things besides that follows him around to practically every venue he has played at.
“We met one night at Moonraker when these guys walked in, and wanting to get attention, they began calling out ‘in’ songs, like Africa and The Wall. They were running a disco machine at the time, and they were in touch with the new songs. But they didn’t expect a soloist to do any of them. When I did, they really got jolted.”
“We’ve been great friends since.”
He still misses the band. “We were quite good,” he allows. When a particular number would really swing, “we’d look at each other and smile and know…”
Still, music is not ‘everything’ to him. Although he can’t understand “why, when people list the Seven Wonders of the World they leave out Music,” nothing takes the place of his God.
In Alexander Lesley Peters’ mind, it’s quite simple. To him, ‘everything’ is – and here he quotes one of his own choruses – “revolving upon the hinge of the Lion of the tribe of Judah.. With ease I swing, ‘cos I am oiled… with the blood of the Lamb.”
And between the Lion and the Lamb is everything that matters.
