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Beverley Craven's mother is from Devonshire and her father from Leeds, but she was born on 28th July 1963 in Sri Lanka while her father was working there for Kodak. Two years later the family were back in Hertfordshire and Beverley began taking piano lessons at seven, encouraged by her mother, an accomplished classical violinist. At first, Beverley concentrated more on her swimming than her music and she swam in the Hertfordshire county championship. "I didn't buy my first pop record until I was 15" she admits. "It was 'Telephone Line' by ELO. A bit later I got into singer/songwriters like Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Kate Bush, people who made pop records that were very musical and very personal". After leaving school, Beverley moved up to London and began writing her own songs. Bobby Womack was so impressed by her demos that he offered to bring Beverley to the US and sign her to his own production company. She politely declined, but toured Europe as one of Bobby's backing vocalists for several month, including, a major AIDS benefit concert at London Wembley Arena. | |