Peter Bardens

Peter Skiving Bardens (19 June 1944 – 22 January 2002) was a keyboardist and a founding member of the British progressive rock group Camel. He played organ, piano, synthesizers and mellotron, and wrote songs with Andrew Latimer. During his career, Bardens worked alongside Rod Stewart, Mick Fleetwood and Van Morrison, and recorded solo albums.

Bardens was born in Westminster, London. In 1965, he spent a brief spell as the keyboard player with Them after leaving The Cheynes. He moved on and formed Peter B's Looners which eventually morphed into Shotgun Express, a band that played soul music and featured Rod Stewart, Peter Green and Mick Fleetwood.

In 1970, he formed The Village and recorded The Answer, an album featuring Peter Green and Andy Gee. Bardens recorded an eponymous album in 1971 which was released in the United States as Write My Name in the Dust before forming Camel in 1972. He left Camel in 1978 to join Them bandmate Van Morrison's band. He recorded Wavelength with Morrison and appeared in the line up of the album's promotional tour. By the end of the 1970s, Bardens began exploring electronica and released the album Heart to Heart in 1979.

Bardens co-wrote "Looking for a Good Time" with Bobby Tench, featured as the B-side of the single "Chain Gang" (1982), which Tench had recorded as a tribute to Sam Cooke. In 1984, he became a member of Keats and released an album with them. Bardens continued to release a number of solo electronic albums including Seen One Earth (1987), which found chart success in the United States. The first single from the album, "In Dreams", was met with commercial success as well. The song enjoyed heavy airplay on rock stations in the U.S. and Australia, where Brisbane rock station 4MMM, the most popular radio station in the country at the time, added it to their playlist. In 1988, he followed this with Speed of Light (1988) which featured Mick Fleetwood. "Gold" from this album was released in the U.S as a single and found some success on MTV.

He released Water Colours in 1991, an album that featured his former Camel bandmate Andy Ward on drums and Caravan's Dave Sinclair. Bardens formed the band Mirage and released a new album Big Sky in 1994. His last concert, subsequent to being diagnosed with a brain tumour, was in Los Angeles in the summer of 2001. Other performers who joined him at his concert included Mick Fleetwood, John Mayall, John McVie, Sheila E. and Ben Harper.

Bardens died from lung cancer in Malibu in January 2002, at the age of 57 and is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. A double CD Write My Name in the Dust: Anthology was released after his death and included tracks recorded throughout his career.