From Penny Lane to the Royal Albert Hall

Her father Don Andrew, was at the heart of the Mersey sound revolution in the early 1960s. He played bass in the Remo Four, a band managed by Brian Epstein which was more popular than the Beatles in the 1961 Mersey Beat magazine poll.

A generation later, Aitch’s brother, P J Andrew, was also active in the Merseyside music scene. He introduced Aitch, then aged 16, to her first Liverpool band, The Big Still. Now 38, married to bass player Aaron McRobbie and living with their two young sons in an idyllic Oxfordshire cottage enjoying spectacular views across the Chiltern Hills, Aitch has sung live and recorded with many of the biggest names in music.

From Van Morrison to Mavis Staples, Jools Holland to Jimmy Cliff and Joe Cocker, as well as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Lonnie Donegan, Robert Plant, Solomon Burke, Amy Winehouse and James Blunt, Aitch has worked with them all.

She also writes and teaches music and has finally recorded her first album, Take Off Your Shoes. This features Aitch singing her own compositions with support from talented musician friends including husband Aaron on bass, Richard Newman on drums, Pete Brown on guitar and mandolin, plus Sam Brown providing backing vocals and playing accordian, ukulele, piano and percussion.

The album is an accomplished production — a blend of soulful yet mellow music, intelligent lyrics with some fine performances from all involved. Hopefully it will help bring Aitch the wider recognition her talents so richly deserve.

When I arrived at the McRobbie family home, I was greeted by a beautiful black labrador called Obi as I made my way through the garden of the country cottage Aitch shares with Aaron and their two sons, Finlay, nine, and Oscar, four. Aitch is midway through preparing iced cakes and sausage rolls for Finlay’s birthday party. It is a cosy, domestic scene. In this home parenthood and practicality clearly have high priority.

“I love our life here,” Aitch enthused. “It is great for the children. They can go to school locally and I work part-time at the village nursery school which I really enjoy. I am doing an NVQ2 in childcare. “I so like being with the children — art one day, reading another, computers the next and sometimes I take my guitar and we do music. I think Oxfordshire is wonderful. There is nowhere in the country I would rather live. It is perfect for a young family.”

It must be very different from the rather depressed Liverpool of the 1970s and 1980s where Aitch was raised, I asked.

“It is,” Aitch says with a gentle smile. “But you know, my upbringing in a suburb called Childwall was so happy that I was never aware of all the problems in inner-city Liverpool. “I remember in the early 1980s my school did once run out of money for books. But life at home with my mum and dad, plus my older sister and brother, was very secure and I just have good memories. They called me ‘Aitch’ rather than Helen from a young age. “In fact it was ‘Big Aitch’ because I was so much taller than my older sister. The name just stuck and with my family and in the music world I am always known as Aitch. Though locally and at the nursery they do call me Helen.

“In my childhood home there was lots of music, always,” Aitch recalls. “Not live music — just from a big stereo system which was a hugely prized possession. None of us children was allowed to touch it! “Those sounds — mainly 60s music — have been an influence right through my career — Mamas & Papas, the Carpenters (I always thought I could hear a sadness in Karen Carpernter’s beautiful voice), Elvis, Carl Perkins, the Beach Boys, the Everly Brothers, Lonnie Donegan. “In fact, years later, when I did the Lonnie Donegan tribute at the Albert Hall with Van Morrison, Roger Daltrey, Mark Knopfler, Joe Brown, Billy Bragg and others it was great because I already knew all the songs. “When we were rehearsing, every time anyone mentioned one of Lonnie’s numbers, I already knew it from my childhood. “Of course most of all, my parents were always playing Beatles music. grew up knowing virtually the entire Beatles catalogue!”

Aitch's dad, Don Andrew, played in the Remo Four — another Brian Epstein-managed band.

“He played bass with them,” Aitch said. “They were actually more popular on Merseyside than the Beatles at the beginning of the 1960s. In fact the Beatles used to come along to sit and watch my dad'’ band play! “But when my parents started a family my dad gave up his musical life and never went back to it. Although for his 50th birthday, the Remo Four regrouped for the day and played in the Cavern, which is now part of the Beatles Story museum at the Albert Dock. “It was so great for me because I had always wanted to see my dad play. I had seen footage of him playing in the sixties, but had never seen him live. It was really good fun to see and he was excellent!” Aitch said.

How did her own musical career begin?

“We lived in Penny Lane and I went to Dovedale County Primary — where Sir Paul McCartney had gone. My junior school music teacher was Mrs Whittle and she was very encouraging, a big influence on me. I also remember singing God Be In My Head at Mike McCartney's wedding when I was ten.

“I met Paul McCartney that day and recall thinking rather disapprovingly that he was wearing a tie that was not very ‘weddingly! But I didn’t especially shine in music at my secondary school. Very few musicians I know ever did. Music was always taught too theoretically back then and just didn’t do it for me.

“I was just 12 when I was asked to record a song by a man called Joey Molloy from the Rathbone pub in Liverpool,” Aitch explained. “He knew my brother P J Andrew a bit and had written the song.

“I did the backing vocals at Amazon Studios which was then just outside Kirkby near Liverpool. Then I sang the song with him at the Rathbone pub and at various other pubs around the city. After that I did backing vocals for a cousin's band, the Reverb Brothers, who were signed to RCA Records. Then my brother arranged for me to sing with a friend’s band, The Big Still. “My first meeting with them was very embarrassing. They were a five-piece band and rehearsed in a room full of knitting and dressmaking stuff. I said ‘hello’ to the lead guitarist Noel and then stepped back and fell backwards into a huge empty tea chest. I had to be helped out. But it broke the ice and they agreed I could join them,” Aitch laughed. “From the age of 15 or 16 I was singing in all these dodgy clubs in Liverpool. I have the happiest memories of it but now I look back and cannot believe I did all that so young. “Walking down Duke Street in the middle of Liverpool all alone on dark winter nights. Never thought twice about it and never had a problem — ever. “I did a session at the Liverpool Music House studio with Brian O’Hara from the Fourmost who knew my dad. And then the studio asked me to do more. So by the age of 16 I was getting pretty busy singing.

“Of course all this music activity did for me at school!” Aitch said. “My academic work suffered and the teachers were concerned because I had a lot of promise, so they said. But I have never regretted it. I would not have wanted to go to university. I was just too keen to get out and into the real world.

“I learned so much from those early days of performing to tough audiences and from recording. Invaluable experience, knowing how to handle situations, learning recording techniques and how to do drop-ins and takes.

“Soon I was going to London regularly with the band, doing ‘showcases’ to try to impress music industry executives and producers. I was also singing with some other Liverpool bands and sometimes playing guitar and piano. I found time to work in a restaurant, too. I was never bored.

Then a producer called Nick Tauber who worked with Thin Lizzy, Toyah and Marillion asked me to help with other things he was working on. I ended up doing more and more things in London and eventually, in 1989, aged 18, I moved there.

Was it very different from life in Liverpool?

“It was great,” Aitch said. “I had a busy life and made a lot of friends, sharing various flats. Between session work I helped run a clothes shop in Wood Green. But soon, when I was 19, I was offered a job by Micky Most’s Rak Studios in Regent's Park. “I worked on reception but ended up doing backing work with all kinds of people which I really enjoyed; it was a great learning experience. And I lived in Camden which was so cool. “About this time I met Sam Brown and her brother Pete and another great friend and brilliant singer, Margo Buchanan. I moved to Golders Green which I loved and I used to cycle to work down the Finchley Road, through all the traffic at Swiss Cottage. Can you believe I did that each day? “And then I met Aaron,” Aitch recalled, a slight twinkle in her grey-blue eyes. “I was 21 and he was 29. We met at a gig at the Jazz Cafe. I was singing and he came to play double bass. We hit it off immediately. “He was from Oxfordshire and was born in Ipsden, near Wallingford. Aaron had been at the comprehensive school in Woodcote with Sam and Pete Brown and their foster brother, the drummer Richard Newman. There were a lot of links there as Richard’s dad Tony Newman had been the drummer in Sounds Incorporated, another Brian Epstein-managed band, so my dad knew Tony. The connections continue because Sam, Pete and Richard who are all brilliant musicians still work with Aaron and me. We all live locally and are really good friends.”

“As soon as I met Aaron we used to come out of London for weekends here. And I just loved being in the countryside together,” Aitch said. “We lived in Warborough for a while and then in Benson before we moved to this cottage. For a time I commuted to the studios in London but with all the unsocial hours that was tough. So, just before Aaron and I married in 1994, I wrote to a residential recording studio near here — Outside Studios at Hook End near Checkendon — just to see if they had a job. They did, but only as a housekeeper, looking after the artists so they could concentrate on their recording work. It was a 16th century manor house with over 20 acres of private grounds and was run a bit like a luxurious country house hotel. It was reputedly one of the world's best residential studios and had been owned previously by Alvin Lee and then David Gilmour .

“I took the job and it was great. I enjoyed meeting all the artists there — many I already knew. Whenever there was a spare moment I would shut myself away in the studio live room, which had once been a milking shed, where there was a beautiful piano. I composed a lot of songs on that piano, working into the night, sometimes. It could get quite spooky in there, all on my own in this huge old place. “Later Trevor Horn bought the studio and I started doing backing vocals for Tom Jones and others. Things quickly took off for me again. There were many big names at the studio – Eric Clapton, George Michael, Pink Floyd, the Spice Girls, Sade, the Kaiser Chiefs have all recorded there. Plus a lot of musicians live here in Oxfordshire, so I soon had many invitations to perform.”

Aitch has worked with a huge range of musicians over the years — what are her highlights?

“There have been so many good moments. One of the most challenging things I did was lead vocals with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Albert Hall. John Lord of Deep Purple had written a classical-style song with Sam Brown but Sam wasn't available to sing it. So I did it. “The event was in aid of the Countryside Alliance and John Mortimer was reading some poetry which then ran into the song I sang. I was nervous but it was fine. “Recently Sam Brown and I performed at a tribute to Sir John Mortimer during the Henley Literary Festival. I sang and Sam accompanied me on piano. We were providing music between readings of John Mortimer’s work by Joss Ackland and other well-known actors. It was great to be asked to do that. I also sang with Paul Weller at the Sunflower Jam event which was really fun, too,” she said. “Working on TV with Jools Holland was great experience. I performed with such a range of people. Ronnie Wood, Paul Carrack, Solomon Burke, Jimmy Cliff, Mavis Staples, KT Tunstall, Amy Winehouse, Corinne Bailey Rae, James Blunt — the list goes on. You do pick up so much over the years from others. But I think I have actually learned the most working with Sam Brown and Margo Buchanan, doing backing vocals with them, which I always enjoy. Singing with them is such a natural thing now that we almost do not need to rehearse. “When I was first doing professional singing, back in Liverpool, my friends and I used to drive in the car singing along to Sam’s song Stop which was a massive hit. I had not met her then. How funny that I know her so well now. “Thinking about it, Sam's been one of my biggest influences, though she might laugh if she heard me say that. It is great she and Margo as well as Pete Brown and Rich Newman are on my album.”

But is it hard to get the right balance between a music career, family life and other activities? “It is not easy. The children come first, of course. I really enjoy my spare time with them and Aaron — and walking Obi, too. “The boys seem to be quite musical. Finlay had an electric guitar last Christmas which he loves and he's heavily into Elvis as well as Lightnin' Willie and the Poor Boys — who Aaron played with on tour this year. Oscar is already making up little songs and loves the piano. He is only four but he made up a great song about a spider last week and was playing spidery piano to accompany it, too. Really funny! Oscar also seems to like banging things — maybe he'll be a drummer.

“I have no great ambitions for myself, really. Of course it is nice if people appreciate your music but I have no wish to be rich and famous. The music always mattered most to me, not the chance of celebrity or fortune.

“ I just like my present life too much; I am quite happy. And I would never want to leave Oxfordshire. Even if I could relive my life, I can't think of anything I would change. I'm a great believer in people doing whatever they are supposed to do. You make choices and that leads to other things, good and sometimes bad. But you learn to deal with the bad and get over it and just move on with life.

And you come to appreciate and really value the good things. I find that music really helps with all of that.” Aitch's album Take Off Your Shoes is available now on iTunes and the CD will be out soon.

Nick Dent-Robinson, November 2009. (3400 words)