Morgan Fisher
Stephen Morgan Fisher (born 1 January 1950) is an English keyboard player and composer, and is most known as a member of Mott the Hoople in the early 1970s. However, his career has covered a wide range of musical activities, and he is still active in the music industry. In recent years he has expanded into photography. Career. Music. Fisher was born in Middlesex Hospital, London. His parents were school teachers and until 1952 lived in Robert Adam Street, London W1, then until 1958 in a council flat in Bridgeman Street, London NW8, then until 1973 in Holly  Park, Finchley, London N3. From 1966 to 1970, he played the organ with the soul/pop band, The Soul Survivors, who in 1967 renamed themselves Love Affair. They had a number one hit single in 1968 with "Everlasting Love", while Fisher was taking a break from the band to complete his final year at Hendon County Grammar school. Between 1972 and 1973 he formed the progressive rock band called Morgan, with singer Tim Staffell (the lead singer of the band Smile, who later became Queen). From 1973 to 1976, after a brief liaison with Third Ear Band, he joined British  rock band Mott the Hoople. Meanwhile, Fisher contributed keyboards to John Fiddler's Medicine Head, and when Mott folded, Fisher invited Fiddler to join the remaining members of Mott in what would become British Lions. From 1977 to 1979 the Lions recorded two albums, and three singles: Kim Fowley's "International Heroes", Garland Jeffries' "Wild in the Streets", and Fiddler's own "One More Chance to Run". In 1978 in his home studio in Notting Hill, Fisher started an intense two-year burst of activity with four iconoclastic solo projects, all released on the new indie label Cherry Red Records . 1979's "Hybrid Kids - A Collection of Classic Mutants" featured art-punk arrangements of hit songs, posing as a dozen indie bands, who were in fact, all Fisher, playing keys, bass, guitar and singing. A sequel - a Christmas album called "Claws" came out in 1980. Fisher's first foray into ambient music came out the same year, the sublime "Slow Music" in which he looped and processed a performance by sax supremo Lol Coxhill. Also in 1980, Fisher conceived and produced the unique "Miniatures - a sequence of fifty-one tiny masterpieces" album (51 one-minute tracks by Robert Fripp, Gavin  Bryars, Michael Nyman, The Pretenders, XTC, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Robert Wyatt, Ivor Cutler, The Damned etc.) A sequel was released in 2000. "Miniatures 2020" - a 40th anniversary tribute album produced by other artists - was released in 2021. In addition he played with Queen on their 1982 tour of Europe, the first time they added an extra musician to their live shows. Freddie Mercury can be seen humorously introducing him to the audience just before the band's performance of "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", on the band's "Queen on Fire - Live at the Bowl" album. Fisher shared a flat  with Mott the Hoople guitarist Mick Ralphs in Rusthall Avenue in Chiswick in 1973, then in 1976 moved to Canada Road, Acton, London and in 1978 to Linden Gardens in Notting Hill. Burnt out after his two-year burst of solo recordings, he then took a three-year "sabbatical", spending time in India, Belgium, and the USA, studying meditation, vegetarianism and macrobiotics. This led to his 1984 move to Japan, where he still lives. There, he started to make ambient and improvised music, as well as becoming a successful TV commercial music composer, including songs written or arranged for Cat  Power, Karin Krog, José Feliciano, Zap Mama and Swing Out Sister. Japanese artists he has worked with include Yoko Ono, Dip in the Pool, The Boom, Heat Wave, Shoukichi Kina, and Haruomi Hosono from Yellow Magic Orchestra. He also scored the Japanese anime/live-action hybrid film, "Twilight of the Cockroaches" (1987) and the documentary, "A Zen Life: D.T. Suzuki" (2006). Starting in November 2003, Morgan performed 100 monthly solo improvisation concerts at the cutting-edge arts/music club Superdeluxe, in Roppongi, Tokyo. He called this concert series "Morgan's Organ", and has started to release live recordings of the  series as downloads. The series ended in March 2013 and has been continued as "Morgan's Organ At Home" at his personal studio in Tokyo since June 2013. There he also began to host a series of "Morgan Salon" events inspired by the Salon (gathering) events in Paris in the 1920s, featuring creative individuals from other disciplines such as photography, poetry, Japanese traditional music, and sake-making. In 2005, he collaborated with German musician Hans-Joachim Roedelius (of Cluster and Harmonia) on the ambient album "Neverless" (on the Klanggalerie label). Photography. Fisher has maintained a lifelong interest in photography and  in recent years has been holding an increasing number of solo exhibitions of his work in Japan and abroad. He has evolved a technique of abstract photography which he calls Light Art, influenced by the photograms of Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy, by pendulum-created harmonographs, and in particular by the abstract cinema of Len Lye, Norman McLaren and Oskar Fischinger. Unlike most so-called "light painting," where images are created by "drawing" with flashlights, etc., in front of a camera with an open shutter, Fisher's light artworks are in the main created by moving the camera in  front of various natural and man-made light sources (fireworks, sunlight on water, city illuminations, etc.). Many of his light artworks may be seen at his art website, and several were used in the booklet of his March 2009 album release "Non Mon", a collection of his most well-known TV commercial compositions (Japan, DefSTAR/Sony Records).