He is singer-songwriter, keyboard player and guitarist
born John Errington in Jarrow, England.He began his journey into music by learning the piano
while still young and while in high school his father bought him an
electric guitar after some persuasion.Taking further education at Art College he started
performing there with the group, The Influence, with Paul Thompson who
would end up in Roxy Music and Vic Malcolm who went to the band Geordie,
before they all went their own separate ways and later left college as the
group got more popular and gained his extra finance as working as an
apprentice engraver.Wanting
to concentrate more on his songwriting and performing his own material he
formed The John Miles Set, which became popular in the local clubs but
became frustrated when the audience often wanted to hear covers of hit
records.In 1971 he decided to
pursue his career as a solo artist, signing up with Decca and writing songs
often in collaboration with the bass player Bob Marshall, and in that
decade alone he released four albums and eighteen singles such as the chart
hits "High Fly" and "Remember Yesterday" with his most successful being "Slow
Down" and "Music" which achieved the No. 10 and No. 3 spots respectively in
the UK charts.Not having the
usual image you would see from a rocker, but after Decca had convinced him
to cut his long hair soon after they took him on and project a "James Dean image",
he was now in the limelight.His producers were Alan Parsons and then Rupert Holmes and he toured
the UK with David Essex and Jethro Tull and the United States with Elton
John.Changing to the Arista
record label he did not see the same success in the 1980s but went on tour
with Tina Turner, often duetting with her on "It's Only Love" in the
absence of Bryan Adams, and became her music director for the latter half
of that decade and early part of the '90s.1990 saw him performing the song "Where I Belong" which
gained second place in the UK heats of A Song for Europe where the
successful song would go on to become the British entry for the Eurovision
Song Contest. Later in 1999 he
wrote the music for the stage musical Tom and Catherine about the
novelist Catherine Cookson and her husband Tom.Often performing
with other artists in all genres of music as well as following his own solo
career, he has appeared on albums such as his own Miles High, Play On, Rebel,
Stranger in the City, Upfront and Zaragon as well as Romanza by
Andrea Bocelli, Night Caller by Joe Cocker, Siempre by Il
Divo, Outrider by Jimmy Page, Pyramid, Stereotomy, and Tales
of Mystery & Imagination by The Alan Parsons Project, Tina Live in
Europe by Tina Turner.In
the 2000s he has continued to be active in music with his John Miles -
Live In Concert DVD being released in 2002 and performing with the
German group Pur.
