Peter Jones, renowned Australian keyboard player who has played on recordings for Little River Band, Crowded House, The Ferrets and John Farnham, has died.
Little River Band co-founder announced Peter’s passing on his socials stating:
David Briggs just called me with the news that Peter Jones passed away last night.
He had been very unwell for some time.His contribution to my musical life was immense.
• Kings Of The World
• It’s A Long Way There
• Reminsicing
• Take It Easy On Me
• The Night Owls
• Please Don’t Ask Me
and many others.His peerless musicianship was at the very core of so many Little River Band recordings.
Indeed… ‘the 5th Beatle’ has left the building.
Goble once cited the importance of Peter’s work on ‘Reminiscing’.
For Debbie Kruger’s book ‘Songwriters Speak’ he said, “I loved watching old black and white movies, and I always also loved the music of Glenn Miller and Cole Porter, that whole era of writing, and it was my attempt to write a song to depict the romantic era. It came out very quickly, I wrote it in about half an hour. Even though a lot of people think it sounds complicated, on the guitar it’s very simple to play. It nearly never got recorded – when the time came to record it, the keyboard player I wanted to use, Peter Jones, was out of town, so we cut the band track with a different keyboard player. It didn’t work. A few days later when we tried it again with a different keyboard player, again it didn’t work, and the band was losing interest in the song. Just before the album was finished, Peter Jones came back into town, the band and I had an argument because I wanted to give Reminiscing a third chance. Peter played on it, we cut it, and finished it, and sent the album to Capitol. Capitol said that they couldn’t hear any singles on the album, and didn’t know what to release. Five weeks later, someone at Capitol’s New York office said ‘You’re all crazy, Reminiscing is a smash.’ Capitol put it out, and it just immediately caught on fire, and became our highest chart hit.”
Peter played piano on Little River Band’s debut album on every track except ‘Emma’.
He was the piano player on John Farnham’s ‘Uncovered’ album. That’s him on the first notes you hear on Farnham’s ‘Help’.
He also played piano of pre-Little River Band band Mississippi.
In the 90s Peter took on production. Kate Ceberano and Her Sextet – Like Now’ was the first album he produced.
International work includes Morrissey ‘This Is Morrissey’ as well as Sandi Shaw and Prefab Sprout. He also played on albums for Skyhooks, Australian Crawl and Vince Jones.
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