Born on this day in 1950: Bassist and vocalist Mark Clarke, from English rock band Uriah Heep who had the 1975 UK No.7 album Return To Fantasy. They have sold over 40 million albums worldwide.
After seeing the Beatles and many other bands in Liverpool as a young boy at the age of 12, Clarke decided to be a bass player. In 1966 Mark Clarke played with the Kegmen, in 1968 with the Locomotive and late 1968 with St. James Infirmary. Liverpool Echo called him in an article “The Joe Cocker of Liverpool”.
After a year of local gigs he moved to London, where he was introduced to Clem Clempson, who played at that time in Colosseum. After some time Mark was asked by Jon Hiseman to join Colosseum in the summer 1970 and he played in the band until the split late 1971, and again from 1994 after the reunion of the band. After Colosseum split he was briefly around the turn of the years 1971/1972 a member of Uriah Heep, performing (and co-writing) on one studio track, “The Wizard”, on the 1972 album Demons and Wizards. In the beginning of 1973 he became a member of Jon Hiseman’s Tempest and played bass on the two Tempest studio albums with Allan Holdsworth, Ollie Halsall and Paul Williams, and a live album issued later. He also played bass on Ken Hensley’s solo albums.
In 1975 he formed Natural Gas with Joey Molland, Jerry Shirley and Peter Wood. He also played in Mountain, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, and in 1980 started working with Billy Squier and recorded Don’t Say No, The Stroke, In the Dark and many other albums with him. In 1986 he toured with The Monkees, and until recently still worked with Davy Jones. Clarke has also worked with Mountain, Ian Hunter and Torque, recording albums with all of them.
With Colosseum he played again from the reunion in 1994 to the farewell concert at BSE in London on 28 February 2015.
In 2010 Mark Clarke released his first solo album Moving to the Moon, which was co-produced by Ray DeTone, who also played all guitars on the record.
In 2017 Mark Clarke became a member of a new trio band called JCM. Other members of the band were drummer Jon Hiseman and guitarist Clem Clempson. The band recorded an album “Heroes” late in 2017 and it was released in April 2018. JCM begun touring Europe on 7 April 2018 but the tour ended after the show on the 22nd of April in Bonn due Jon Hiseman’s illness. The rest of the tour dates were cancelled.
