Spencer Cozens

Simon Wood Harris, by his own admission, has a basic grasp of the piano, enough to get the basics of a song down on tape (in Simon’s case, his trusted tape recorder which sits on his piano for those moments of inspiration). This project was never about Simon playing on any of the tracks, though he would be perfectly capable of handling much of the required piano work (as we keep on telling him!) and so he was always going to stick to his mantra about getting in a whole range of amazing musicians, stick them in a room together and let the magic begin.

Spencer Cozens has been a longest serving member of Unidentified Flying Project and has played on 6 of the tracks, a feat not achieved by any of the other musicians and he has survived the ruthless culling that Simon has made from track to track. 

Right at the beginning of this project, one of the first aspects that Simon had to do was to find someone to underpin the engineering and technical side, an area totally and utterly alien to Simon. In fact, to this day, Simon’s interest and understanding of all that is technical about the recording process, amounts to pointing towards buttons and knobs and asking what they do. It took 20 minutes to teach him where the on-off button was for a Fender Rhodes! After much searching, googling and list making, Simon got in contact with Matt Butler - the engineer for many greats including Paul McCartney, Deacon Blue, Rush, Luther Vandross, Slade & Madness. But more importantly for Simon, Matt was the engineer and producer and engineer of NO LITTLE BOY by John Martyn, one of Simon’s main influences in all of his writing and his most played album (he has gone through 3 vinyl copies because they are so overplayed!). 

Spencer played with John Martyn from 1990 through to John’s sad passing in 2009 and in our opinion, was an integral part of so much of John’s exceptional works during the 90’s. Matt hooked up with Spencer and persuaded him to come along to the early sessions at Yellowshark in Cheltenham and right from the moment he arrived, Simon knew he had found the perfect consummate musician to be able to live out the piano/keyboard vision and sensitivities that were in his head. 

Spencer is an incredibly accomplished pianist and keyboard player, having served many years not only with John Martyn, but also more recently with Joan Armatrading and Deva Primal and Miten. As soon as he sat at the piano, we all knew we were in for something special. What came out was just endless beauty, an ‘embarrassment of riches’ was how Butler put it. Having Spencer involved so early on in the project was a key to its progression and underpinning. It was not just have Spencer on board but it was what came with him - a real presence of all those years with John Martyn was embedding itself within the very DNA of Unidentified Flying Project. 

One hugely pivotal moment that Spencer contributed was during the time putting together ‘Dance The Rain’. We were on its 7th or 8th version by the time Spencer came to the fore and it was dying on its feet. We threw the track at Spencer and told him to have a go.  A little white into the session, he appeared to go into deep thought and then suddenly announced that he had an idea, which sounded considerably more odd that some of Simon’s ideas! It sounded ridiculous and we all looked at each other as if Spencer had been smoking something to remind him of the John Martyn days, but we have him the room to hang himself, just incase. He announced that he’d come up with a riff in 7/4 which, he declared, he was going to play relentlessly from the first chorus through to the end of the track. 

The result was astonishing. Everyone in the room was like “holy crap, what the hell was THAT?”. It was very repetitive, discordant in parts and clearly in the wrong time signature, considering the track was in 4/4, but for some reason it worked brilliantly. Finally someone else had started to understand Simon’s vision for UFP.

Spencer plays on ‘Dance The Rain’, ‘There Is A Dream’, ‘Because They Say So’, ‘Weather & Time’ & ‘Kiss The Sun’.

www.spencercozens.com