Peter White

Peter White Biography

Peter was born in England, as one of four kids, and soon learned to play a variety of instruments such as recorder, clarinet, cornet, trombone, violin, harmonica, and piano. What he was not given were any instructions in playing the guitar. Therefore Peter self-trained to play a few simple chords and felt intrigued by the influence of The Beatles and other 60s music at the time. In his late teenager years he waived going to college, electing instead to pursue a career in the music business. He started to play professionally in small clubs and would eventually move to London, where he soon met Scottish singer/songwriter Al Stewart. Pretty soon Peter joined Al's backing band and toured England up and down, subsequently the USA, providing guitar and keyboards to the band's sound. For the recordings of "Year of the Cat" Al put a classic Spanish guitar into Peter's hands and asked him to play on it for one song of the forthcoming album. That part became the opening of the well-known "On The Border". It were those recording sessions when Peter also worked with producer Alan Parsons of The Alan Parsons Project. In 1978 he followed Al Stewart and moved to Los Angeles, CA. Around this time Peter's younger brother Danny felt the inspiration to form his own group, which would become Matt Bianco ("Bianco" is Italian for "White"). Temporarily the Al Stewart backing band was renamed to Shot in the Dark, which consisted basically of the crew (among them bass player Robin Lamble) which played on Al Stewart's 1980 and 1981 albums. Shot in the Dark alone only released one album in 1981; they disbanded when their record label closed down. In the following years Peter became more and more involved in the L.A. music scene and played with the likes of Johnny Rivers (the "Secret Agent Man"), Bernie Leadon (after he left the Eagles), Susanna Hoffs (after she left The Bangles), Tori Amos (before she got famous), and Janis Ian ("At Seventeen"). Through this connection with Matt Bianco, Peter would contribute his guitar playing on albums of the band as well as later on with their lead singer Basia, also joining her on tours. In the late 80s he would discover that one of his neighbors, a man named Skipper Wise, was also a musician. Peter agreed to join him and his band Windows occasionally, playing guitar and keyboards on some of their records. When Skipper decided in 1988 to record a solo album (The Clock & The Moon) Peter agreed to support him, but asked for the same favor in return when it would come to his first solo album. Only one year later, in 1989, Peter White's first solo effort, Reveillez-Vous, was recorded and published, co-produced by Skipper Wise. A second release, Excusez-Moi, was finished in a similar fashion in 1992. Peter White became a leading smooth jazz musician and joined the "Guitars & Saxes" tour together with jazz musicians such as Richard Elliot, Warren Hill and Craig Chaquico.