b. 4 July 1952, Lancaster, Lancashire, England. Waite is a singer, bass player, and occasional harmonica player who has found greater fame and fortune in the USA than in his native land. A former art student, he began playing in bands in the late 60s and in 1976 formed the Babys with Mike Corby, Tony Brock and Walter Stocker. The Babys split in 1981 after five albums and Waite embarked on a solo career. His debut single, ‘Change’, was not a chart hit and he had to wait until ‘Missing You’ was released from his second album for a breakthrough. In the UK the record made a respectable number 9 but in the USA it went to the top.
Waite formed the No Brakes band, joined by former David Bowie guitarist Earl Slick, to promote the new album, but did not scale the same heights again. Instead, he formed the ill-fated Bad English in 1989, before resuming his solo career in the mid-90s. In 1995, he had his first hit for several years with the power ballad ‘How Did I Get By Without You’. The album Temple Bar was more in the folk rock line and included cover versions of songs by Hank Williams and Bill Withers. When You Were Mine (1997) and Figure In A Landscape (2001), two pleasant but unremarkable AOR collections, failed to restore Waite to the charts.
