Patrick Campbell-Lyons

Patrick Campbell-Lyons (born 13 July 1943, Lismore, County Waterford, Ireland), is a composer and musician who is one half of the cult symphonic-rock band, Nirvana - formed in London in 1967 and still sporadically active in 2006.

Campbell-Lyons was part of the West London music scene from the early 1960s playing in several bands. He was the vocalist and a founder member of a locally-popular R&B band Second Thoughts whose lineups included future record producer Chris Thomas, Thunderclap Newman founder/drummer Speedy Keen and two future members of prog-rock band Jade Warrior (Jon Field and Tony Duhig). Second Thoughts split up in late 1965 and after a year living in Sweden, Campbell-Lyons returned to London in late 1966.

In early 1967 he formed Nirvana with Greek musician Alex Spyropoulos. The duo (augmented in the studio and live by a floating line-up of session musicians) created a series of critically acclaimed baroque, orchestrated albums before disbanding in the early 1970s.

Campbell-Lyons then pursued a career in the music business as an A&R executive and producer - while continuing to occasionally record solo albums including Me & My Friend, The Electric Plough and The Hero I Might Have Been.

Campbell-Lyons' first solo album Me & My Friend was reissued on CD in 2001 in the UK by Market Square Records together with bonus tracks from one of Nirvana's later albums Songs Of Love And Praise.

In early July 2008 Patrick started to write a book, Psychedelic Days, about his life and times in 1960’s London and beyond.

Patrick recalled "I was remembering in great detail those “psychedelic days” of forty years before when I navigated my way on a voyage of music, freedom, adventure and self-discovery. The past had no distance and I was living it all over again. Thrill’s and pill’s rhythm and blues, the legendary Ealing Club, Island Records, Chris Blackwell Nirvana in Tin Pan Alley, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Guy Stevens, Mickie Most, Paris with Salvador Dalí, Rio de Janeiro with Jimmy Cliff, The Star Club in Hamburg, Stockholm, Belgium, Tangiers and the “happenings.” When I stopped writing four months later I had a book. I had been there and lived to tell the story. Today so many years on people fantasize and wonder about those crazy days and often ask me “What were the 'sixties’ like? It must have been a crazy time! I wish I had been there.”"

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