Tymon Dogg was born as Stephen Murray in Formby, Lancashire, England in 1950. His musical career began at the age of 14, playing competent Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Donovan covers on self-taught harmonica and guitar regularly at the Peppermint Lounge in Liverpool, and the occasional gig at the legendary Cavern Club. His proud father turned up at every gig and was his son’s roadie by night. While still at school, he came up with the pseudonym of ‘Timon’ as a stage name in order to separate the fact he was both a performing musician and schoolboy. From a February 2007 email, Tymon explains his reasons for this: “I was about fourteen and was playing down the Cavern [in Liverpool] – I wanted a pseudonym to create a sort of performing persona that was separate from being a schoolboy - which I was at the time! I got the name from the Shakespeare play Timon of Athens.”
Spencer Leigh (now a DJ on Radio Merseyside) first met Tymon in 1965 and asked him if he’d like to write some songs for a Crosby venue. To Tymon’s surprise, he found composing came quite naturally. One of his first compositions was a lively song called “In Out of The Rain.” The Crosby revue was followed up with a successful solo show that was then repeated at Liverpool’s Crane Theatre (now Neptune Theatre.) Spencer Leigh would play an important part in encouraging the young musician’s song-writing and also became his local promoter-of-sorts, helping him get gigs and sending off demo tapes to various record companies. It was also around this time in Tymon’s life when he bought his first violin. He bought the instrument for £2 from an old school mate named Raphael and it had no strings. Because he knew of no one who could play a violin or teach him, he never really tried to play it until later on when he was about 20.
One day in 1968, while working as a screen printer in Southport, Tymon received a phone call from Leigh, asking him if he could get the day off work to travel to London with him to visit Pye Records. Cyril Stapleton, band leader and part of Pye’s management, was interested in signing him to the label after hearing the demo tape Leigh had sent them. When Tymon got there, one of his great heroes, Ray Davis of the Kinks, was wandering around in the studios along with people such as hit songwriter Tony Hatch. Pye gave Tymon an advance that was the equivalent of a year's wages in the hope of securing a hit single from him, though the big commercial pressure to produce a hit was too ultimately overwhelming for the young musician.
As a result of signing to Pye, Tymon soon left his home of Liverpool and moved to London where he began recording songs with arranger and producer Jerry Martin. Martin was a Canadian pop singer who was trying to make it as a producer in England. Tymon’s first single, The Bitter Thoughts of Little Jane was released in January 1968 (under the name Timon), and features a young Jimmy Page on lead guitar and John Paul Jones on bass, both of whom of course would go on to form the classic UK rock band Led Zeppelin. Shortly before the record was released, Pye sacked Martin and the record was given meagre promotion. Several months later Tymon received a royalty cheque for thirteen-and-six to cover the singles’ sales of an astonishingly low 127 copies. A year later the single was released in the Philippines, with much higher sales.
Tymon was next assigned to Pye’s hit producer Tony Macaulay. Macaulay was ultimately disinterested in working with Tymon due to an already punishing schedule, though a session for Tymon’s latest song, “You’d Better Not Say You Love Me Now” was recorded. Pye decided not to release the final cut, but instead arranged another session; this time with Frank Barber and Stapleton, who decided upon putting Tymon’s songs into waltz-time. The results were once again unsatisfactory, and Pye released no recordings.
It was around this time that Peter Asher (ex-Peter and Gordon) took interest in Tymon’s music. Asher was acting as a talent scout for the first Apple Records label, and after signing American singer-songwriter James Taylor to the label, he was on the lookout for other new and interesting talent. Paul McCartney heard Tymon’s "The Bitter Thoughts of Little Jane" and wanted a go at producing a new version of the song, to which Timon declined. McCartney was also interested in getting Tymon to record a Herman’s Hermits-type song he himself had written called “Miss Pringle”, to which Tymon again regretfully declined as he assured McCartney that it would better if he stuck to recording his own material instead. With this, a session took place with McCartney on piano, Taylor on guitar, while Taylor’s backing band sat in to do the rhythm section. They ended up recording three new originals: "Something New Every Day", "And Now She Says She’s Young" and "Who Needs a King". The results were not as good as they hoped, mainly because Asher did not know when to stop, and the added brass instrumentation to "Something New Every Day" ultimately sounded out of place. "And Now She Says She’s Young" and "Who Needs a King?" however were apparently worthy of release. After such frustration, Tymon went off and wrote a very commercial song he thought they would have liked called, “The Eye in the Pond”, but said he'd only do it if they would let him record a whole LP - like they were then doing for Taylor. At that time, it was the norm to have some commercially successful singles out first and then graduate to an album, and so in the end, with both this matter and the fact that George Harrison disliked the results of the first session, everyone simply fell out with the idea of such sessions. Tymon says of the fallout-of-sorts (February 2007): “If I'd have been in it just to make money I'd probably have gone around things differently. For me, music was, and is, the expression of my soul and I believed the great artists of that era had inspired this feeling in me.”
Tymon spent the next couple months playing a few gigs in the London area with little success. He decided to wander off to go busk in Europe for a while. He lived in Nice and Paris where he would play on the beaches to scrape enough cash together for food and stuff. When he got back to England, BBC-DJ Dave Symonds introduced him to the Moody Blues who had heard his songs and wanted to sign him to their own new record label, Threshold. The first signings to this label in October 1969 were both Tymon (signed as Timon) and UK rock band Trapeze. Tymon spent a lot of time rehearsing at the Clarendon Hotel on the Isle of Wight, and two months later in December ‘69, he and Trapeze supported the Moody Blues on their December 1969 tour. Venues played on the tour included: the Royal Albert Hall, Odeon Theatre, Usher Hall, Colston Hall, Gaumont Theatre, and a Radio Concert for the BBC.
Of the first exciting new discoveries on their own label, the Moody Blues once said: "TIMON" is a Liverpool lad who has been around for some time. He has some beautiful songs and we're giving him the chance to do what he wants - his way. Every time we have recorded him with a huge orchestra and an arrangement, it has swamped him. He hasn't really found himself yet. After all he's only about 18 now. He's trying to get a group together and find the place he should occupy. But at the same time he is playing music that desperately needs to be heard. Basically he's just a tramp-like person, wandering from place to place, occasionally playing with Fairfield Parlour and other groups."
From The Moody Blues December 1969 Tour Book: "Nineteen year old Timon was born in Formby, Lancashire. For four years he has been performing in the North and on the Continent. In Liverpool he has given successful one-man shows, something many an established artist would jib at. Tonight you will be given a taste of Timon's talent. You'll find his act refreshing and original. Most of the songs will be his own compositions and will be found on his forthcoming single and album, on Threshold. They possess such intriguing titles as "The Eye In The Pond", "The Bitter Thoughts Of Little Jane" and "Is There A Life After Birth?" Superlatives are bandied around like small change in the music industry as if shouting alone could raise the mediocre to the superb. One of the songs Timon will be singing tonight is called "I Am Not Important". Judge for yourself." The tour book promised a forthcoming album that would never sadly never eventuate. Timon and Moody Blues recorded the single “And Now She Says She's Young” along with five other tracks. The only other song to be released from these sessions along with the single was its b-side ”I'm Just a Travelling Man.” The single was released in March 1970 to average sales, resulting in no further recordings for Threshold.
After Threshold’s negligence regarding further recordings, Tymon went on to work with Muff Winwood at Island Records, though no recordings were ever released by Island. Tymon’s management at the time got him few gigs and even fewer auditions…
