First record you bought
First single I bought was a cassette of Vic and Bob’s version of I’m a Believer. Dunno why it was that song but I think it was probably the influence of my mum and all her old 60’s records that I just loved the song, and it being Vic and Bob who were just appearing on my radar as a young lad, I guess it appealed! First Album was Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Still one of my fav albums to this day, I actually bought it off my older sister who’d got it through Britannia Music Club! Remember that?!
First gig you went (who, where, when)
First gig I had a ticket to go and see was R.E.M on their Monster tour at Sheffield Arena, unfortunately just before the tour drummer Bill Berry suffered a brain haemorrhage and the tour was cancelled. Thankfully he made a recovery! So my first actual gig I went to was Cast at Sheffield City Hall. Must have been 1995. I was so excited, and I blame the excitement but in the crush at the barrier at the front I’m ashamed to admit I had a small ‘accident’! It’s much more likely to be to do with the 2 bottles of Budweiser I’d necked before they came on tho!
First band you fell in love with
Not a band, but a man. Jimi Hendrix. I loved the Beatles and other bands like that, again found through my mums old records, but it was when I heard Jimi for the first time that I got that lightning bolt moment of pure joy and that real mind blown moment. He was and I guess still is on another planet!
First song that inspired you
This one definitely has to be ‘Rock n Roll Star’ by Oasis. For my 13th birthday I got a mini hifi system with a shiny new CD player in it. With my birthday money I rushed out and bought the newly released Definitely Maybe and thanks to the alarm clock function on the cd player, I literally woke up every morning for school to the strains of Rock n Roll Star. Quite a start to each day and definitely seeped into my conscious as a result!!
First song you wrote (any good?)
It was called ‘Nobody Girl’. I was about 11 and it had one chord and I think repeated the same two lines over and over again. Was it any good? No. Haha.
First gig you played (how’d it go?)
This would have been a school end of term Christmas assembly. I’d have been about 14 I think, me and a couple of mates who also dabbled with guitar decided to form a ‘band’ and badgered the teachers to let us play. We did a couple of Oasis covers, maybe one song we’d written ourselves and ended on a cover of I Am The Walrus by The Beatles. For this momentous closer, I remember donning a pair of round John Lennon glasses and sitting at the piano that was in the assembly hall doing the ‘woos’ in the chorus! Loved it, never looked back!!
First musical hero
Before Rev&The Makers, I was in a band called Judan Suki, members of which were a certain Alex Turner and a certain Matt Helders, but that’s another story! It was around this time I got introduced to a man call Stu Moseley who was a proper old school musician and songwriter from Sheffield. He flirted with fame in the late 60’s and 70’s but was sadly another ‘nearly’ man. We were recording a demo at the famous Yellow Arch studios here in Sheffield and the producer Colin played us a song he’d recorded just before us by this guy Stu Moseley. He told how Stu was really ill and had recorded this song just for himself really, we were blown away by it and decided there and then to go and find him out and meet him. We tracked hi down to a little terraced house in the Crookes area of Sheffield and rather than tell us to piss off, which he’d have been well within his rights to do, he asked us in and gave us a cup of tea and we just chatted for ages. He seemed like I real wise old sage and gave us some advice about the music industry that I still remember and use to this day. He really was a hero, understated, underrated and a very sad loss to the music world. Stu Moseley.
A long-time lynchpin of the Sheffield music scene, best known as the guitarist and co-songwriter in Reverend & The Makers, Ed waited to make his solo debut until the time felt right. Only when his storytelling songs naturally found their own sound did he finally step from the shadows. “It’s only taken 10 years or so for me to find the confidence!” says the self-depreciating singer, who shared stages with Arctic Monkeys members Matt Helders and Alex Turner before the Makers took off.
‘If’, ‘The River’, ’Madeleine’, and now ‘Lovers Blues’ are tantalising glimpses of the established guitarist and first-time frontman’s majestic debut. Fortunes Favour casts a spell from the moment it opens; ten, timeless, strings-soaked songs are invitations to eavesdrop on life’s crossroads moments and the powerful emotions they evoke. Intimacy anchors expansive songs. Details are seductively spilled.
Both delving back decades through classic pop’s vaults and firmly fixed in the present, Fortunes Favour features languid guitars, brooding atmospherics and swooning strings. Ed’s sumptuous, soul-bearing vocals bewitch. His lyrics delve deep to capture complex emotions devoid of cliche. Fortunes Favour took flight after Ed abandoned attempts to decide on a sound and instead let the songs lead the way. “After several attempts, it became the song that sent me in the right direction. With a lot of albums, it takes just one song to kick things off and If was that moment for me. It set out the stall for who I wanted to be as an artist with its strong sense of emotion and the journey that runs through it.”
Recorded at Giant Wafer Studios in Wales and produced by Ed and Dave Sanderson – aided in the recording room by Milburn’s Joe Carnall and The Crookes’ Adam Crofts – Fortunes Favour is a rare debut album made mid-career. It’s a record which deals in real life, rather than dreams, on which Ed pours 20 years of songwriting experience into looking back, dwelling on the moments that mattered.
Ed Cosen’s debut album solo album ‘Fortune’s Favour’ is out now via Distiller Records
