Haworth, Bryn

Author & Composer

b Darwen, Lancs 1948. At 11 he was given his first guitar and has loved the instrument ever since. By the age of 16 he had moved from classical to electric guitar and was touring with Cliff Richard among other performers, while also writing songs of his own. He sees himself as having been a professional musician since he was 17. In the late 1960s he moved to London, playing blues guitar with Fleur de Lys until 1969. He was influenced by the stars of rhythm and blues and says that he has recorded with many top musicians, touring N America ‘with Led Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane and the Moody Blues’. He and Sally (see below) became Christians in the mid-1970s, after his 3 years of wondering how to get to know the God he had come to believe existed, at a tent mission led by the Brethren evangelist Dick Saunders. In the early 1990s he was on the staff of the Vineyard Ch in Putney, SW London, and in 2002 joined the CofE parish church of St George’s Ashtead, Surrey, where he has a recognised and distinctive role and continues his wider prison ministry. He leads guitar workshops, specialising in the slide guitar but also fond of the mandolin; of his own compositions he says, ‘I tend to write a whole load of songs at one time, then select and retain the best ones’. No.449.