Tony Cummings talked at length to DAVID CLIFTON, a musician who's worked with everyone from Tanita Tikarim and Julie Fordham to Delirious? and Matt Redman.

David Clifton

The release by Integrity Music of the album 'Seeds Of Hope & Love' shines the spotlight on one of the most gifted musos currently writing and recording worship music. To say that David Clifton is an experienced musician is a bit like saying Leonardo Da Vinci was a pretty good painter/decorator. David is in fact a guitar and mandolin maestro who has worked with many big names in the mainstream firmament including Tanita Tikarim, Mary Coughlan, Julia Fordham, Paul Heaton (Beautiful South), Haylie Westernra and TV programme soundtracks for both the BBC and ITV. David has hardly been a slouch in Christian music either, contributing to the recordings of Matt Redman, Delirious?, Kim Hill, Joanne Hogg, Graham Kendrick and Robin Mark as well as composing songs for such acts as Point Of Grace and co-composing songs for the 'City Of Gold' best seller, along with Adrian Plass, Phil Baggaley and Ian Blythe. Now with the release of 'Seeds Of Hope & Love' the time is surely right for the international Church to become familiar with this intelligent and inspired crafter of songs.

Meeting up with this quietly spoken man in the Cross Rhythms office, I began by asking David to tell me a bit about 'Seeds Of Hope & Love'. "It's been a bit of a dream actually. Ages ago I did an album of Christmas music and I've always wanted to record some of the worship songs I've written. All the things you do in your worship time. Also, I wanted to record a couple of my songs that other people have recorded as well, a track called 'What Jesus Would Have Done' which Noel Richards covered and Mal Pope but to be honest they never quite recorded it the way I heard it in my head when I wrote it. So I decided to do the version that I heard in my head!"

I asked David about the actual songwriting process for the material on 'Seeds Of Hope & Love'. "Sometimes they are the product of writing sessions where I get together with someone and we just say, 'Oh, It would be great to write something together, let's do it.' There's a track called 'Saviour' which I wrote with John Hartley and Gary Sadler in Nashville when I was out there working for about three weeks. We put some writing days in the diary and had a cup of coffee and just wrote some songs. The rest are very personal. Actually 'What Jesus Would Have Done', which Phil Baggaley helped me finish off, I actually got the title when I was visiting one of my godchildren and I was talking about having to make a really difficult decision. Cressida's father, Jamie, said, 'Well, you did the right thing, you did what Jesus would have done.' And I went - 'You know, there's something in there.' So sometimes they're personal things like that. So songs come out of those sort of places. Another one called 'I Believe' I actually wrote as a little poem about what I felt and then came up one day with a melody. I thought, 'Good heavens, that's going to fit, let's try that.' So often they come out of very personal places.

"I've got various little notebooks I sometimes take with me on trips to hear people preach or speak. Other times I just hear quotes or see quotes written down and I'll make a note of them as well. Just little things that spark the thought process. Other times it's little Bible passages. I wanted to put that phrase 'when I was a child I talked like a child, thought like a child, reasoned like a child' to music for years. Then one day I was tuning my guitar, after changing the strings, and I'd accidentally tuned the B string down a full tone by mistake. I played this chord and went, 'Ah! Now there's an interesting sound.' I'd just come up with a complicated rhythm which took me ages to get right and that's just a very simple voice and acoustic guitar. I used that accompaniment to put the whole thing together. Writing songs are little journeys. Sometimes they never even go outside your kitchen or your dining room or whatever, you just sit there and worship God with them. And other times they take on a life of their own and other people respond to them."

Penning songs with the capacity to touch people's lives is something David views as very precious. "There was one incident when some songs I'd written meant so much to someone who'd lost their first child - it was a cot death. Then somebody else wrote and told me that they had a CD I'd recorded played while they were giving birth. And I know another person who just could not get to sleep because of losing a baby and there was just one particular song of mine they used to play round and round and round and round. If you write a song and it just helps one person in their lives that's what it's about really. We don't really have to take on board the whole media circus that has originated around music. It's actually all for God really."

Born in North West London, near Pinner, to church-going parents, when he was 11 David won a scholarship to Peterborough Cathedral School as a chorister. David vividly remembers his time at the cathedral school. "That was an amazing regime. A rehearsal before school every day, a rehearsal after school, and a service every day of the week and at weekends apart from Wednesdays - I think we had Wednesdays off. But in that time of singing this beautiful sacred music, I was so aware of something but I didn't know what it was."

On leaving college, David became one more hungry teenager looking for music biz success. "I'd studied painting and pottery but when I left college the band I was with got a little record deal. I was in a duo and we got signed to Red Bus, a division of EMI and I was offered a job teaching, I also had an opportunity to go into studio pottery.But in my wild youth I decided that music would be the journey I'd take. I've often said in the past that I sacrificed many things on the altar of my ambitions until I really came close to God and understood what the most important things are in life."

David then went on to record and tour Europe and the USA for two years with WEA singer/songwriter Tanita Tikaram. Said David, "I eventually moved to London in a band and I met Andy Piercy who invited me to Holy Trinity, Brompton." Andy Piercy had of course achieved much in his music career. As one of the founding members of rock team After The Fire he'd seen his band become the first Christian British rock band to make a dent in the mainstream. When After The Fire broke up in 1983 Andy became a worship leader at Holy Trinity, Brompton, the Anglican church which had been a pivotal church in Anglicanism's renewal movement. On 16th November 1987 David Clifton recommitted his life to Christ at Holy Trinity. Remembered David, "I can remember it clearly. It was a prayer that simply said, 'Lord, I've tried to do things my own way so long and I've got it wrong and now I just give my life to you and ask that you would guide me in everything I do. And that included all my music and actually, funnily enough, I had more success in the mainstream industry since then than I ever had had before, even though I had a couple of little record deals and things with Virgin and EMI. So, it's exactly that."

Professional muso David was quite happy initially to take a non-musical role at Holy Trinity. "For a long time I was very happy just to sit in the congregation because I was doing music professionally so church was my place of escape really, just to be fed spiritually and nurtured. At that time I was working for Tanita Tikaram and then after that I went to play for the Irish singer Mary Coughlan and then Julia Fordham and a chap called Steve Booker who was the bass player in the little indie band I was in The Sensible Jerseys and we made a record and toured with all sorts of great people. But at that time I was just content to have my little notebook and make notes in the sermons. It was a place of real growth and learning. I really began to understand theology and actually put flesh on the bones of the faith really and just understand what it meant to lead the Christian life and it was a big challenge."

Being a Christian on-the-road with non-Christian musicians did create its fair share of tensions. "I remember when I was playing for Mary Coughlan. I think she was going through quite a tough time personally and the band was made up of Irish and English musicians. One time we were rehearsing in Dublin and we went to bed about midnight, and the Irish half of the band were still there drinking their Guiness when we came down for breakfast in the morning. They were very hard drinking and there was plenty of drugs around. The band used to watch blue movies in the bus and stuff. I was known as the 'effin goody goody', in a very humourous way I have to say. It was a lot of fun to be with them but it had it's challenges. I had to really fight to stay on the straight and narrow and I fell off a few times. But the Lord is very gracious and compassionate. As Adrian Plass says, 'God is a really nice bloke.' He's on our side and wants to help us with these challenges."

David got involved in playing worship music with considerable reluctance. "I have to say when I first went to Holy Trinity I used to go out for the worship because I used to hate all the out of tune 12-string guitars and the bad sound and the feedback. There I was being very proud and arrogant but the Lord humbled my heart. And I think I played for Phil Lawson-Johnston and Tim Johnston played some mandolin first one Sunday. The way I got more involved was when I was on tour with Steve Booker supporting Susan Vega. We'd done about 20 days on the tour and Tim Mayfield, who was the worship leader at St Paul's, Onslow Square at the time which was a church plant from Holy Trinity, prayed that I would be able to be back in time to do the Christmas services. And the tour got pulled halfway through Europe! So I came to the church by default really."

In 1994 and 2001 David Clifton and Andy Piercy recorded two worship albums, 'Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow' (independent) and 'Praise God' (Integrity). David recalled how they came about. "I had a little spare room in my flat in Notting Hill and Andy and I used to meet when neither of us had much work. We would just sit down with a couple of guitars and a cup of coffee and worship God. And a lot of those early songs on 'Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow' came out of those worship times. Even 'Praise God' itself - Andy had got the first bit and then I wrote the second bit, I did the 'glories of the Father' bit where it slowed down."

David was becoming well known on the UK Christian music scene and was asked to contribute his guitar and mandolin talents to numerous recordings by the likes of Robin Mark, Delirious? (Andy Piercy of course being at one time Delirious?' producer), Sue Rinaldi, Spring Harvest Live and Graham Kendrick. He was also part of the songwriting team who with Phil Baggaley and Ian Blythe produced such popular albums as 'City Of Gold', 'Shipwrecks & Islands' and 'Road To The City'. In 2003 David produced an innovative Christmas album under the name Ikos. The project, 'Christmas Carols And Songs', released through Integrity Music, contained contributions from the Choirs of Peterborough Cathedral and such session-seasoned musos as Mike Haughton (sax, recorder) and Terl Bryant (percussion). The album, produced by David Clifton and Mark Russell, was described by Cross Rhythms as "a wonderful job in fusing some contemporary worship music elements to traditional Christmas ones." Now comes David's 'Seeds Of Hope & Love' album. David dreams of performing the songs live. "I would love to tour it. Again although they're songs of worship some of them we've sung in church others you would never sing in church but they are just expressions of faith. I would love to tour with the people that recorded it at some point. But we'll have to see how that goes because touring is a phenomenally expensive thing. Actually Julian Kindred, who produced it, also produced one of the recent Delirious? albums. He might even sneak in on keyboards if we did take it on the road. I would very much like to get out and about because I think music is to be shared. You know, I love sharing music on CD but I love live events as well. And of course you have to tailor the live event. You know what I don't want people thinking is they have to pay to come and worship. So we'd find a way of making it a very entertaining evening."