When I left school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I went straight into the family shipbroking business, but I knew that wouldn’t be it.

As luck would have it - I was playing the guitar in a play, and on the way home, I bumped into Old Hymerian, Stuart Matthewman. He said “I didn’t know you played guitar. We have a vacancy in The Odds (who was Hull’s top group at the time), fancy an audition?” Within two weeks, I'd joined and was rehearsing for my first gig at a festival in front of 1,000 people!

Jonathan pictured on the right

Over the next couple of years, I was in the studio recording, on tour, playing numerous concerts - including a tour of Sweden and Germany. All when my school friends were doing their A-levels.

Stuart left the band to form SADE, a band he still writes for and plays with to this day. 

The singer Keiran Moses (his lad Rory is also an OH 2003-13), the bass player and I went on to form another group, ‘Moscow’, with another OH, Jez Ross (OH 1971-81). We toured extensively and appeared on TV a few times, including a memorable concert from The Hammersmith Odeon in 1983.

We reformed for a brief spell, recorded a brand new album ten years ago (available on YouTube and Spotify as Moscow for Pleasure), and played a few gigs at Fruit, The Welly and Kardomah. 

We recently signed a new record deal as The Odds (also on YouTube) and have a compilation album of all our old hits - studio and live - coming out in November on vinyl and Spotify.

I’ve played hundreds of gigs in front of as many as 5,000 people and as few as 10, but nothing was quite as nerve-racking as delivering my first speech at Hymers as President of the OHA! 

Jonathan has previously spoken about his music career in a past edition of the Hymerian 2010-11, which can be viewed below or in our Digital Archive.

To hear The Odds and Moscow, please click on the links below:

Facebook: The Odds

YouTube: Moscow for Pleasure

Spotify: Moscow for Pleasure