Other livesPop and rockObituaryAlan Griffiths obituary
Alan Griffiths, who has died aged 57 from cancer, was a gifted musician, songwriter and producer, working with Roland Orzabal of Tears for Fears as well as performing in his own bands and writing music for film and television.
Born in Bristol to Clifford, who worked for Bristol Aircraft Corporation, and his wife, Joan, Alan attended Stockwell Hill school in Downend, then Soundwell Technical College. He left aged 18 to work for four years at Wessex Electronics. But for Alan the day job was secondary to a driving ambition to make music, which started with the band Apartment in 1978.
Their track The Alternative was included on Avon Calling (1979), a compilation of Bristol bands, followed by the release of a double A-sided single The Car/Winter (1980), both on the local Heartbeat label.
In 1981 Alan formed the Escape with the drummer Emil Joachim and the bassist Stuart Morgan. The band were tipped to break through by Sounds magazine in 1982 and in the same year released a single, No-Go, and video on their own imprint. They toured nationally and were featured on BBC Radio 1 and TV. In 1983 they signed a recording contract with Phonogram.
The label put them together with the record producers Alan Rankine from the Associates – a favourite group of Alan’s – and Nigel Gray (producer of the Police and Siouxsie and the Banshees). Two singles, Amsterdam and Russian Lady (both 1984), were released, but made little commercial impact.
Nevertheless the Phonogram connection led to Alan touring worldwide with the band and their label mates Tears for Fears. He began working regularly on writing and producing projects with Orzabal at his studio near Bath.
This yielded the Tears for Fears albums Elemental (1993) and Raoul and the Kings of Spain (1995), an Orzabal solo album, Tomcats Screaming Outside (2001), and an album by the Icelandic singer Emiliana Torrini, Love in the Time of Science (1999). He also co-wrote Heavenly (Good Feeling) with Seal for his 2003 album, Seal IV, and saw retrospective albums by the Escape, another project, White Hotel, and Apartment released through Bristol Archive Records in 2008, 2009 and 2016.
Inspired by his love of Hitchcock films, Bernard Herrmann scores and Gerry Anderson animations, Alan moved into making music for TV and films. His most regular work was for the CSI franchise, also contributing to the series True Blood (2008-14) and Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011), among others.
I was privileged to have had a 35-year friendship with Alan, since his time with the Escape. He had a long-lived passion for the band Television and had seen them play with fellow New Yorkers Blondie in 1977. That gig had inspired his music-making years and, in later life, he created an archive of rare copies of the band’s recordings and memorabilia.
Alan is survived by Joan.
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