John Robert Waughman, better known as Johnny Warman, is an English singer-songwriter, best known for his 1981 album, Walking Into Mirrors and the hit single "Screaming Jets".
Inspired by the Beatles at the age of 11, when he heard their song "Love Me Do" playing on a Dansette record player, he joined the school choir and in 1964 was picked to sing at the Royal Opera House performing in Tosca and Pagliachi with Maria Callas and Tito Gobbi.
In the early 1970s, Warman joined the group Bearded Lady (originally named Elmo's Fire) as a vocalist and rhythm guitarist.
Bearded Lady entered the National Folk And Rock Contest in 1974 and were voted into second place in the final to Curly who had Paul Young as their vocalist.
Warman worked a day job to support his wife and young family and still insisted the band commit to at least four nights of rehearsals a week.
Warman took demo tapes of "Head On Collision", "London's Burning" and "Mind Games" to Arista Records, who asked for the songs to be re-recorded at Decibel Studios.
In June 1979 the album was launched at Hamburg Planetarium by an RCA inprint and received encouraging reviews but failed to make any chart impact.
The group disbanded after releasing a single "Automatic Kids", in 1980 on Elton John's Rocket label, the song "Future Fun" was the B-side.
Over the next two weeks the album continued to develop and Tony Levin invited the musicians to The Record Plant in New York City.
Larry Fast also became involved in the project, before moving recording sessions to the House Of Music in West Orange, New Jersey.
The album Walking into Mirrors was released in July 1981 in the UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand and sold over 100,000 copies worldwide.
[4] Capitalising on the success of Walking into Mirrors Warman took to the road, making live and television performances in Sweden, West Germany, Belgium, France, Spain (Music Express), Portugal (Festa é Festa), the U.K. and the Netherlands, where he appeared second on the bill to Ian Hunter at the New Pop Festival in Rotterdam in 1982.
The Rocket Record Company encouraged Warman to start work on a second album, which was to become the more musically intricate From The Jungle to the New Horizons.
Warman was Alain joined by drummer Jerry Marotta also bassistTony Levin, Guitarist Chris Payne of Dramatis and keyboard player Andy Clark.
[3] In 1984, Warman started writing for other artists and recorded his final solo release "(Here Comes) The Beat Patrol", with the song "Don't Call Me" as a B-side under the guidance of Mickie Most.
"War of the Roses" became a UK national selection for the Song for Europe and was performed on BBC One on 2 April 1986[11] On 1 January 1989 Warman sang vocals on "Spirit of the Forest", a charity single and can briefly be seen standing next to David Gilmour in the accompanying music video.
The lineup included John "Rhino" Edwards, Steve Byrd, saxophonist Andy Hamilton, Spike Edney and guitarist Mark Rich.