Spike Wells

Michael "Spike" Wells (born on 16 January 1946) is an English jazz drummer and priest.

Born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, Wells was a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral Choir School. He became interested in jazz after coming across a recording by Dizzy Gillespie, which he found "very exciting".

He took up playing drums in his early teens: "I suppose the thing that really knocked me out about jazz was the rhythm, so I thought if I'm going to be in a jazz band I want to be the drummer." He later had lessons from former Miles Davis drummer Philly Joe Jones, who lived in London in 1967–9, and Wells was also very influenced by another of Davis's drummers, Tony Williams.

He read Greats at Oxford University, where he put together a quartet with tenor player Pat Crumly and pianist Brian Priestley that played with visitors including saxophonists Bobby Wellins, Tony Coe and Joe Harriott, and blues singer Jimmy Witherspoon.

In 1968 he began a PhD course in philosophy at London University, living in a house that was also home to bass player Ron Mathewson, alto sax player Ray Warleigh, trombonist Chris Pyne and pianist Mick Pyne. Mathewson was then playing in the quartet of tenor player Tubby Hayes, and asked Wells if he would be interested in joining the group. He arranged an audition with Hayes and guitarist Louis Stewart, at which "We played a blues, and Tubby looked at Ron and Louis and then said, 'Do you want the job?' Want the job. With the greatest jazz quartet in England?" Wells abandoned his PhD and became a professional musician.

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