Robert Forsyth is an author, editor and publisher who first heard the music of the Climax Blues Band in 1976 when tracks from the Gold Plated album were played regularly on Britain’s offshore ‘pirate’ station, Radio Caroline. He has been an avid fan ever since.
He runs an independent book production business, he has presented blues programmes on local radio and is also an aficionado of the military aviation of World War Two about which he has written more than twenty books.
Climax Blues Band: An Illustrated History – Volume One : Using the Power 1968-1977 is the result of more than three years research and writing, and countless interviews with former band-members and their close associates.
Derek Holt joined the Climax Chicago Blues Band as a founding member in 1968, initially playing guitar and later switching to bass guitar and keyboards. He experienced many of the band’s finest recordings between 1969 and 1984, and toured with Climax in Europe, North America and the Far East, playing in British pubs and working men’s clubs to American arenas opening for, and playing with, the likes of Son House, B.B.King, Albert King, T-Bone Walker, Johnny and Edgar Winter, Bachman Turner Overdrive, Steve Miller, Wishbone Ash, Renaissance, Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top, Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, ELO, ELP, Heart, Fleetwood Mac, Bad Company, Weather Report and Chuck Berry to name a few.
A well-known figure in the music industry, since leaving Climax he has had a varied and stimulating career in other band projects, songwriting, filmscores, live performances and production work.
He has contributed his extensive memoirs and band archive to Climax Blues Band: An Illustrated History – Volume One : Using the Power 1968-1977 .