Cargo Records

Middle Earth

The frontman for Magnum for over 20 years, capturing with them top 40 album success six times.

After Magnum's demise Bob continued working with Magnum's songwriter / guitarist Tony Clarkin in the Hard Rain project which saw a big departure from the classic epic and pompish sound of Magnum`s most successful days. At the beginning of 1998, after headlining "The Gods" Festival 1997 with Hard Rain, Bob Catley joined forces with producer/songwriter/singer Gary Hughes, of Ten fame, in order to start a solo career with the intention of recording what would be the logical follow up to Magnum's glorious heyday. The result was "The Tower", one of the biggest critical and commercial successes of 1998. One year later and after the very difficult and emotional decision to leave Hard Rain in order to be able to pursue his solo career, Bob released an equally succesful studio album in 1999 called "Legends" followed by live appearances in the UK, Benelux and most recently Spain. The time is now right for Bob Catley's new album, entitled "Middle Earth". This time the inspiration for Bob's producer and songwriter Gary Hughes came from one of the biggest masterpieces of fantasy literature, that is to say J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord Of The Rings". The content of the album is not meant to be a literal telling of the saga, rather Gary has chosen to use various aspects of the story to inspire the lyrics, allowing the epic music to build images of Tolkien`s world. The studio musicians that built up the monumental sound featured on "Legends" are confirmed also for this album, which is the most ambitious to date for Bob. Ten mainman Gary Hughes is on keyboards and backing vocals, Vinny Burns ( also of TEN ) on guitar, Jon Cooksey ( Dante Fox ) on drums and Steve McKenna ( Ten ) on bass guitar. A full European tour with Ten is being planned to support the album throughout April and May 2001, after which Bob will be involved in the 25th Anniversary reunion album / tour of MAGNUM which will bring huge amounts of media interest and will only serve to boost his solo career.