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Mercedes originally started life as ‘Paintbox’ - an amazing three-piece band with Keith Wilford on guitar\vocals, Dave Hacker on drums\vocals and Dave Heap on bass guitar\vocals. Together they performed a mixture of covers and original material with stunning vocal harmonies and excellent instrumentation.The self-penned songs were so strong they decided to re-brand and re-launch under the name of ‘Mercedes’. This time their music was to be based entirely on original material featuring intricate musical structures, close-knit harmonies, and incredible lyrics with each song being a story within itself. There is no doubt that Mercedes became a formidable music force throughout the 1980’s and as a result gained a massive and loyal following.
The Big Time! - After many a TV\Radio appearance, grueling recording session and hundreds of live dates (stretching across several countries including the UK, Europe and the USA), it seemed like they were destined to hit the ‘big time’ but sadly after many disappointments the band decided to split.
Shortly after the break-up however Dave Heap teamed-up with Keith to form ‘Total Strangers’ which proved to be very popular. Together they performed over 3,500 gigs and surprisingly even managed to squeeze in recording sessions resulting in many well received albums. But they still missed those old Mercedes songs and towards the end of the 90’s decided to reform the band again. This time with two new members - Malcolm Middleton on keyboards and Dave Holmes on drums. The band was very well-received and with some re-vamping of the former arrangements the old favourites sounded as fresh as the day they were written. Mercedes played to packed houses but after two years both Dave and Keith went their separate ways... ‘Total Strangers’ became ‘Total Stranger’ with Keith going solo and Dave joined Status Clone, a tribute to Status Quo.
10 Years later Keith was still enjoying his regular solo work but having many requests to reform Mercedes again, many followers were asking “when is Mercedes going to play again?” By chance Keith listened to a live recording from 1998 and much to his surprise he really liked what he heard and remembered just how amazing the band sounded… well it had been ten years!
