Alistair Griffin ought to be a household name if singing and songwriting talented counted for anything in today’s music business. He first came to national attention when he came second to Alex Parks in the second series of ‘Fame Academy’. More recently his song ‘Just Drive’ was used by the BBC as their Formula One intro music, and that’s how I first learnt of Alistair. It was one of those moments when you hear and song and think ’I’ve got to get that’. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I then got hold of all of his back catalogue, and became a real fan.
Twitter is a great thing for bringing people together and over the last few years Alistair and I have met up once or twice and I helped him on a project by introducing him to Boris. He’s a great guy and that’s why I went along to a one-off concert he gave last night in the George IV pub in Chiswick High Road. They have a concert room which has a fantastically intimate atmosphere, even with a couple of hundred people there.
I dragged my partner John along, who, shall we say, is usually a fairly reluctant concert-goer, and I suspect he was regretting agreeing to come when we got stuck in terrible traffic on the way to West London from my LBC studio in Leicester Square. Anyway, we arrived literally two minutes before Alistair took to the stage. Most of the songs he performed were his own compositions, but he also did a few covers – a Springsteen song, an acoustic very slow version of ‘She Loves You’, and towards the end a fantastically haunting acoustic version of Coldplay’s ‘Fix You’.
Alistair is a very self-effacing chap, and his introductions to each song built a very intimate atmosphere with his audience, who you could tell, were all diehard fans. I think everyone left wanting to evangelise about Alistair and his massive talent as a singer songwriter. He’s had a couple of top twenty hits and his albums have received glowing reviews. But in the end, success is all down to airplay, and if you can’t get on the radio it’s so difficult to get traction. Radio 2 have taken on a couple of his songs, but if there are any music radio planners reading this, for goodness sake have a listen to Alistair’s latest work and get behind it!
And for the rest of you, download his latest album ‘From Nowhere’. Promise you won’t regret it!
