Mike — ​“I was playing and homeless at the same time”

Music runs deep in Mike’s blood. Mike’s grandfather was in the Royal Artillery during the Great War but was also a very talented piano player. While on service, he was taken out of the trenches to the Entertainment to play piano to help boost troop morale. Later, living in Hornchurch during WWII, where an air base was stationed, Mike’s grandfather joined the Hornchurch Home Guard Band in 1942 to entertain the airmen. Around the same time, Mike’s grandmother sang with Vera Lynn.

After the Great War ended, Mike’s grandfather built a life in music by performing as a silent film pianist. Accounts of his career – including pieces in the Kent Courier and later the Romford Recorder, where his daughter was interviewed shortly before her death – describe how he became a familiar presence at the Epping Empire in Waltham Forest. There, he accompanied some of the most beloved silent films of the era, playing live to the work of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and to the hugely popular cowboy features starring Tom Mix and William S. Hart.

This period of steady work came to an abrupt end in 1930, when the arrival of talking pictures brought the silent movie era to a close. Like many musicians of his generation, he was made redundant almost overnight, marking a sudden and difficult turning point in both his career and livelihood. 

Mike’s early years

Despite a lot of uncertainty during his childhood following the divorce of his parents, Mike found a creative outlet as a drummer. His tutor was the formidable Bob Armstrong, who taught above a drum shop and became a local legend thanks to his role in Roy Castle’s band on Record Breakers. Mike remembers him fondly: ​“Bob was brilliant but could be a strict tutor. You had to know the rudiments or risk getting told off.”

By the time he reached his twenties, Mike was gigging across the UK, playing theatre shows and touring with various bands. At the Queen’s Theatre in Hornchurch, Essex, where he was the in-house drummer, he says, ​“We had some great times on the stage. I met a lot of stars.” His band was even mentioned twice in the Romford Recorder in 1986 – a detail he still recalls with pride. 

Ten years in New Orleans

In the 1990s, a friend opened the door to an entirely new chapter: a decade in New Orleans, drumming in blues bands across the French Quarter. The tips came in through a large barrel at the front of the stage, and Mardis Gras brought music pouring from every bar until morning. ​“It was a very special time,” he remembers. One particularly fond memory of his time in the US is the time he got to play with Humphrey Davis Jr, a Jazz and Blues musician, and a big name on the Jazz Circuit in the French Quarter. 

The dream ended abruptly after the catastrophic 2005 floods because of Hurricane Katrina. Returning home left him unmoored.

He also watched the UK live music landscape change. The 2006 smoking ban, he says, ​“killed the pub gig scene as it put many people off going.” 

A sudden descent into homelessness

Shortly after coming back from the US, Mike moved in with his mother in South Hornchurch to care for her while she was ill. When she sadly died, the council refused him the tenancy – and overnight, he became homeless.

“I was moving everywhere, I kept moving, I was moving so much,” he says. ​“Some of the people I met around that time were coming out of prison or coming off drugs… I wasn’t brought up like that. I saw another side of life that I didn’t really like.”

He moved around constantly — ​“I must have moved over 30 times” — staying in bedsits with help from Crisis Skylight. The Salvation Army, just off Oxford Street, eventually found him a place in Tunbridge Wells. ​“That’s where I was when I first contacted Help Musicians.”

Through his aunt in Chingford, he was later offered social housing in Leytonstone.

Amazingly, through all of this instability, he kept playing: ​“I was playing and homeless at the same time.” At the same time, he also studied Etching & Painting at university during those first 3 years back in the UK. 

Creativity, craft and the will to keep going

Despite everything, Mike carried on developing his talents. He studied Fine Art at the University of East London – while homeless – and graduated with a 2:1. ​“I’m quite proud that I completed it. Mum died in 2009 and I graduated in 2010. I still went to the cap and gown event in my mum’s memory.”

He also picked up extra work as a film extra to make ends meet. A lover of cowboy movies, especially those featuring John Wayne, he enjoyed the social aspect of the days on set.

His life is full of remarkable encounters: drinking with Oliver Reed in Wimbledon (“he wouldn’t let me buy him anything”), unknowingly moving into Danny Dyer’s old house in Canning Town, even playing bongos impromptu on stage one night in Tangiers as part of the hotel entertainment. 

Life now and the support that keeps Mike connected

Today, now 67, Mike still plays – though less often, as both of his bandmates are unwell. He feels the quietness keenly and hopes to connect with new musicians, but even apps like Bandwagon haven’t yielded much luck for him yet. He misses the old pub scene, many of his local venues now closed.

Still, he keeps learning. He recently bought a second-hand keyboard and old sheet music from eBay. He’s been teaching himself In the Year 2525: ​“It’s as if a prophet wrote that song,” he says. He also plays piano at Age Concern, performing the old war songs his grandmother once sang. 

Help Musicians: A lifeline 

Help Musicians now provides Mike with a small monthly allowance, something he doesn’t take for granted. ​“It’s helped me a lot, helps me pay my bills, which go up every year.”

But the support that means the most to him isn’t financial. It’s the connection.

Mike receives regular home visits from Help Musicians staff. He looks forward to them, cherishing the sense of being seen and the chance to share stories with a fellow music enthusiast. The visits cut through the occasional isolation of living alone, a far cry from the bustle and hustle of the gig circuit. 

The charity has helped with small essentials too – white goods, and even a new suit. Those gestures, like the home visits, have given Mike something he’d been missing for a long time: stability. 

Carrying on

Covid was a particularly hard time – financially, emotionally, socially. But his outlook remains resilient. He’s lived a life full of music, movement, serendipity and survival and he’s still creating, still learning, still getting out there and connecting.

Mike has, as he says, ​“lived everywhere – London, Kent, Cornwall.” But now, thanks in part to the steadying presence of Help Musicians, he finally feels rooted again.