Sky - Sahara
I've been hard at play here, splitting apart stereo files like ripe coconuts and imbibing of the sweet, separated juice within, but I'm taking time out from what I'm doing to smash up two musical superbeings who just happened to have been born on consecutive days during WWII.
The first is John Williams. You know, John Williams.
No, no. Not that John Williams. He was born in February and is gonna be 95 next year, a milestone he will likely celebrate by scoring his 4,801,884th major motion picture.
We'll get to the movie music John Williams another time. This John Williams is from Australia and plays Classical guitar. Well, he started off doing only that, but then other things happened.
Mainly what happened is he was interested in more than just the Rodrigo repertoire, and after establishing himself as a leading Classical player in the early 1970s, he started dipping toes into other areas and different contexts for his music to inhabit.
He branched off to play with Pete Townshend of The Who and write music that ended up in successful films with lyrics added. But perhaps his flagship project was as the main architect of Sky, a kind of Classical Rock instrumental supergroup that was active and fairly huge for a decade, beginning in 1974.
It was as a member of this extraordinary band -- which also featured Francis Monkman from Curved Air and 801, as well as orchestral drummer Tristan Fry and Walk On the Wild Side bass legend Herbie Flowers -- that this other John Williams came to most prominence.
Nowadays, he's a Royal Academy scholar and venerated guitar teacher, famous for his ensemble-based approach to instruction.
Back at the end of 1979, he was helping pilot Sky through a 5-night, sold-out run at London's Dominion Theatre.
These were recorded, and a composite of the residency aired on the BBC. Thankfully someone had their FM signal dialed in and their tape recorder in position, so we can hear what happened when these five mammoth musicians took the stage and headed for the sky as one unit.
Sky
Dominion Theatre
London, UK
10.16-20.1979
01 Westway
02 Danza
03 Cannonball
04 Dance of the Little Fairies
05 El Cielo
06 Sahara
07 Hotta
08 Carillon
09 Toccata
10 Vivaldi
11 Where Opposites Meet
12 Tuba Smarties
Total time: 1:16:28
John Williams - guitars
Kevin Peek - guitars
Tristram Fry - drums, trumpet & percussion
Herbie Flowers - bass & tuba
Francis Monkman - keyboards & drumbox
Tracks 01-10: Dominion Theatre, London UK 10.16-20.1979/from an off-air FM cassette master of the original BBC broadcast
Track 11: Wembley Arena, London UK 11.22.1979 "Year of the Child" concert/from an off-air FM master cassette of the original BBC broadcast
Track 12: Dominion Theatre, London UK October 1979/from the 2018 remastered CD of "Sky 2" on Esoteric Records
assembled, edited & remastered for unity by EN, April 2026
544 MB FLAC/direct link
544 MB FLAC/direct link
I took the liberty of adding another FM jam from a little later in the tour, from when Sky played the end-of-decade "Year of the Child" benefit at Wembley, plus the encore song they used to do, where they broke out brass instruments and did a little march tune. The latter appears on their second studio record for some odd reason as the lone live track, but I included it as it was from that same series of London Dominion Theatre concerts.
I'll be right back with part two of this double birthday bliss blessing in 24, as we groove deeply to April 1941, a month that will live in whatever the opposite of infamy is.
Don't sleep on the other John Williams though. He's 85 today and although he's never scored a Marvel movie, his immaculate musical pedigree and lengthy career legacy -- as you'll see from these stunning live tracks captured 45 years ago -- are still Sky high! --J.
