Every month we get inside the mind of one of the biggest names in music. This issue it’s Dave Sinclair. A former member of The Wilde Flowers and Caravan co-founder, his CV reads like a Who’s Who of the Canterbury scene with stints in Camel and Hatfield And The North. This keyboard player and songwriter is also a solo artist in his own right and, for the last couple of decades, has been living in Japan. His latest release, Hook Line & Sinclair, collates unreleased home and studio recordings from the last 40 years and includes guest appearances from his old bandmates Robert Wyatt, Pye Hastings, Jimmy Hastings and Richard Sinclair. He discusses his career so far.

Words: Malcolm Dome

Current album, Hook-Line & Sinclair, is out now.

Dave Sinclair is one of the cornerstones of the Canterbury sound. Not only was he a member of The Wilde Flowers, the band who began it all, but he played a vital role in Caravan during the late 60s and early 70s when theycreated much of the music that’s defined their storied career.

Aside from being in and out of Caravan five times across the decades, Sinclair has also been involved with Matching Mole and Hatfield And The North (the latter with his cousin, bassist Richard Sinclair), as well as very briefly being in Camel. He’s also been prolific as a solo artist. In 2003 he issued Full Circle and Into The Sun, and has also released Pianoworks I (2010), Stream (2011), The Little Things (2014) and Out Of Sinc (2018). Last year, he put out the latest in the line, Hook Line & Sinclair, on his own Dsincs Music label.

For more than two decades Sinclair ran his own piano shop in Herne Bay, but in the mid-2000s he moved across the world to Kyoto in Japan, later relocating to the Kamijima region of the same country. He celebrated his 74th birthday last November and Sinclair shows no signs of slowing down, but with a career that now spans seven decades he has a right to be viewed as one of the doyens of a scene and sound which has played such a key role in the progressive world.

No holiday: Sinclair and Caravan in ’69 during the first of his five stints.

PRESS/CARAVAN ARCHIVES

For me the magic in Caravan was always about those first three albums and what we did together. It was still there when we did Back To Front.

What music do you recall listening to as a child?

My father was always playing classical records and loved composers like Vaughan Williams and Elgar. My mother was more into the pop music of the day, singers like Frankie Vaughan. I loved Russian composers when I was growing up. Borodin’s Polovtisan Dances really appealed to me. Not only because of its power, but also the beautiful melodies. I realised early on that people are drawn to a great melody, whatever the musical genre.