I was born in London in 1948 and grew up in Highgate. At school I took up the flute and piano. I started composing when I was 13, being totally self-taught. I left school at 17 and studied a little desultorily for 2 years at the Guildhall School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music.

By now I was losing interest in "official" contemporary music - Boulez, Stockhausen, etc. - because of its facile, yet at the same time incomprehensible, complexity, as well as its failure, after a very long honeymoon, to find an audience. I decided to give the whole thing up and went to study at University College, London, where I obtained a degree in Philosophy.