It was a dark, breezy summer night in the leafy streets of Ealing, queen of the London suburbs, when future Underground Circus lyricist and singer Mark Bradley first met drummer WIlliam Hatfield and bass guitarist Simon Senior in the sprawling garden of a mutual female friend, their subsequent conversations about music, lyrics and influences, notably their love of Duran Duran, together with David Sylvian’s arthouse ensemble Japan formed much of the impetus to start ‘Underground Circus‘, as it would later be known.
These bands together with other so-called New Wave groups such as The Cure and Bauhaus, and older influences such as Bowie, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground were singer Mark’s inspiration to leave school mid ‘A’ levels and work in the City as a trainee stockbroker, a job he loathed, but which met his ends, namely to help finance a dream. All he had was his book of jottings and lyrics, inspired by an early poetry competition win entered by kids drawn from a cabal of South-East England schools, but essentially, the dream was more of a determined goal to find like-minded souls to form a band — he didn’t have a clue where he would find them — but in that breezy summer night, their fate was sealed.
