Space Elevator

From Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire - Rock and Roll!

Who are you?

We’re Space Elevator. We believe the music should go stratospheric but don’t want to be limited to just taking over the world and its surrounding atmosphere so why not pick something that even reaches out to alien life forms?! Our first album ran with the space theme slightly with songs like Gallifrey Dreams, a ballad that explores the tricky aspects of being infatuated with a Time Lord what with his two hearts and all that, and also, We Can Fly. We’re not really space nerds though. We write songs about everything, from Chantelle and Ziggy in Big Brother 8, the Irish sexfest, Normal People, Georgian ghosts, and Meghan Markle!

Roll Call?

David - David sold his soul to the devil to play guitar solos to make a grown man weep, Duchess - Vocal powerhouse and Jagger swagger, Brian - The thinking woman’s Manu Katché if Manu Katché had patter like a 70s Saturday Night entertainment host, Chas Maguire - If you fused the bass dexterity of Duff McKagen with Norman Watt-Roy and zipped it into a Dermot O’Leary wearing motobike leathers - you’d get Chas, Mike Bramwell - Our keyboard player on gigs, with us as the latest album is packed full of his exquisite flourish.

Journey So Far?

David and Brian were school mates who stumbled into a band with Stuart Copeland’s ex missus Sonja Kristina. David also did the odd bit of writing with Duchess including a shock-rock musical based on a high-school serial killer. Space Elevator originally had Whitesnake legend Neil Murray on bass and obviously that did get people talking (if to start with in a slightly confused way - Classic Rock were “flabbergasted”.) Our first gig at the 100 Club was a sell-out and David Coverdale tweeted Duchess to send his best to “Mrs Murray’s finest”. Neil proved to be a busy and in-demand guy, so Chas Maguire filled those esteemed boots very capably for the second album which went Top 30 in the rock charts and Top 16 in the indie charts.

The Space Elevator trajectory has taken us on some very interesting detours including teaming up with Thoth, a Canadian company who are building the first Space Elevator. The ThothX tower will reach 20 kilometres above Earth with hotels and an observation deck. Space planes will take off in a single stage to low Earth orbit and return to a rooftop runway for refuelling. Thoth use our song Elevator in their promotion, and we recorded a video for We Can Fly on their own personal satellite dish in Algonquin Park in Canada. If that’s not rock and roll, we don’t know what is!

2020 saw us poised to start a European tour with rock royalty Russ Ballard but Covid scuppered that. Lockdown meant that our third album was recorded almost completely remotely. Somehow it seemed to creatively free us up and Persona Non Grata is definitely our most ambitious and best album to date. It feels like now we’re emerging back into the world fully formed like a butterfly from the cocoon. We can’t wait for everyone to hear the album, get on the road, and gig the new songs.

Influences/sound?

A veritable smorgasbord (they said, desperately trying to avoid “melting pot.”). A big old chunk of Queen for the theatrical elements, the writing both on piano and guitar but also the eclecticism. Queen in themselves are so diverse in their influences, hence how long it took them to be taken seriously as a rock band. David is the world’s biggest Kiss fan so he’s not afraid of going over the top. Also influences of Genesis, It Bites, Kate Bush, Alice Cooper, Thin Lizzy and a dash of Fleetwood Mac.

Biggest gig/proudest moment to date?

Recording a song (“Queen For a Day” from Space Elevator II) with the great Mike Moran who wrote Barcelona with Freddie Mercury was quite a moment. He was a big Freddie collaborator and brought that into his interpretation of the song. After filming a live performance of him and Duchess at the piano he played us an unreleased (at the time) recording of Freddie singing Time Waits For No One. To hear that voice accompanied just by Mike’s piano blasting out the speakers was truly spine-tingling.

Our performance on the satellite dish in Canada for the We Can Fly video was pretty special too. The Duchess climbed all the way up the focus cabin on the very top of the dish and had drones flying round filming her at a range of 3 and 6 thousand feet. The results were spectacular. The plan is to broadcast a live gig from the dish at some point and of course when the Space Elevator itself is constructed we’ll be there at the opening. First band in Space? Very possibly!

What does the future hold for Space Elevator?

We really believe Persona Non Grata takes us up another several few levels from Space Elevator II. All the response it’s getting so far is positive so it’s a case of reaching a wider audience and getting out there and playing. We’re itching to gig and especially with Mike joining us on keys now, we’ll sound bigger than ever. Another European tour was pulled this year due to venues still catching up with a backlog after covid. We have a UK tour starting in June and looking at more dates in October.

Photo Credit: Press/Supplied