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One of the dangers of hanging around church halls all the time is that you might just get religion. Adrian did. Big time. It changed his whole way of looking at things, including his musical ambitions. Evangelical Christianity and Rock Music are both highly charged emotive experiences. To try and be part of both means conflict. Adrian found his sympathies drawn more towards the proclamation of the Christian message than to playing music. By and large the bands he was playing with didn't share his religious views.

It was hardly suprising when he dropped out of them and took up trying to be a Christian singer instead. As far as a musical career goes it was the ultimate wrong move. But to somebody who felt he had found something far more purposeful it didn't seem a problem.

The songs he started to write reflected his change in beliefs and eventually he found like-minded people amongst his circle of friends who were in the process of forming Christian bands. One of the first of these, involving Paul and Dave Maylor from Mr Grumbold days was called Celebration.

Celebration were mostly the child of local Anglican minister's son Tim Rawe. Their music was in a folk/rock vein, but they never really stayed together long enough to have any sort of musical identity.

Other Christian bands followed with pretty awful names like Ad & Co and Pratt's Badgers. Adrian found himself also being asked to perform solo. From out of these bands came a group called Bananas.

Bananas ended up as Rob Fisher, Gary Dean, Ely and Adrian. In their own insignificant way they proved quite succesful. Their main problem (aside from a lack of musical ability) was that they were to Christian for a secular audience and to secular for church folk.

The band gave Adrian a chance to play lead guitar.. previous bands had him as either keyboard player or on bass.

They lasted for a while but then

- Banana split.

What is this obsession with food? The next band Adrian became involved in was Salt, a Christian group based at St Mary's Anglican Church in Upton, Wirral.

Salt couldn't have been more different to Bananas. Abandoning brash punk/funk guitar thrashing music Adrian made a return to keyboard playing.

Whilst Salt did eventually perform a few Adrian songs mostly their material was penned by other members of the group, in particular the talented Les Parry.