[2] Roger Andrew Taylor was born into a modest family and was brought up in the Shard End area of Birmingham until the age of 11, and then a small suburban house in Castle Bromwich (15 Hawthorne Road).

His first ambition was to be a goalkeeper for English football club Aston Villa, and as a child he was taken to every home match by his father.

The video for the debut single Planet Earth opens with a shot of a reclining, bare-chested Taylor looking slowly up to the sky.

He then purchased a remote farm estate in the hills of Gloucestershire to live a quiet life away from the music world.

He briefly formed the electro/dance band Freebass, which produced a single, "Love Is Like Oxygen", (a cover of a song by Sweet) on underground dance label Cleveland City Records.

Taylor also produced electro house tracks with Freebass member Jake Roberts under the name Funk Face.

This culminated in five sold-out nights at Wembley Arena, playing Madison Square Garden again, and signing with Epic Records in New York.

He began a long-running DJ residency at London's Met Bar in 2003, playing a mix of house and hip-hop, and has gone on to become a renowned DJ over recent years, performing sets at Cielo New York and Pacha Ibiza along with friend and former Freebass band mate Jake (Fonique) Roberts.

In January 2016, Peace Tracks, a charitable organization that aims to bridge different cultures and countries through music, released a number of songs that featured Taylor in collaboration with members of ABBA, Philip Glass, Angélique Kidjo, and Anoushka Shankar.

In 2004, he was named Britain's fifth most eligible bachelor in the UK high society magazine Tatler, alongside Prince William and Hugh Grant.