William Henshall, Idearist, Los Angeles California

WILLY M

Will Henshall is a Los Angeles, California based creative professional. He identifies himself as an "idearist", working in 3 distinct fields. Music Composition, Photography and Software.

In a previous career he was an internationally successful musician, songwriter and record producer, working under the stage name "Willy M". This page has information, images and audio clips from this period of his life.

He writes...

Londonbeat was a London UK based pop soul band I founded back in 1987. The line up was three amazing soul singers, Jimmy Helms (originally from Boston), Jimmy Chambers (originally from Trinidad) and George Chandler (originally from Atlan'a), and Londoner me playing most of the instruments in the studio. We had a great live band that we used for touring. The song that most folk will know is" I've Been Thinking About You" (here's an mp3 clip) which hit the #1 slot in 26 countries in the early 90s. It was the BMI PRS song of the year in 1992 and is on the way to having had 3 million plays on US radio as I write this in 2010. There were about 10 other hit singles such as "Better Love" (here's an mp3 clip)and "Come Back" and 4 albums during the band's lifetime. Here's an mp3 clip of a popular album track. We were signed to Eurythmic Dave Stewart's label Anxious/RCA records everywhere except the US where we were signed to RadioActive/MCA. We were managed by our mate Sandra Turnbull, at Hyperkinetics in London. This is what she is doing these days.

	1990 as it says on my shirt..I had to take those rings off to play guitar with any degree of accuracy...	This image was used in the art work of the "In the Blood" album in 1991. Photo by Robert Goldstein
	Still from a video shoot in London in the early days of the band	This was not a composite amazingly enough. It was shot at a gig in Amsterdam and the band happened to be like this on stage. Ken Copsey took this shot
	A total vibe of the time. Taken in NYC in a very dirty and dangerous alley. Not sure who took this shot. Might have been Annie Leibovitz. I just have the neg dupe with no credit...	Used for the cover of the single "I've Been Thinking About You". Photo by Robert Goldstein.
	New Yorker Robert Goldstein at work. He always shouted a lot during shoots and was pretty intense to work with. In the end I figured out I had to shout back at him. You know like how you'd deal with a NYC cab driver. Heh. Shot by Sandra Turnbull.	"In the camera mother f*ckers..." Shot by Sandra Turnbull.
	A promo shot used a lot at the time. I was a lot paler (well, duh) then the other guys and we learnt where I had to stand so our skin tones were not too either dark or blown out in photos...	Robert Goldstein never let focus (or lack of) get in the way of a good shot
	Still from the video of "I've Been Thinking About You" Photo by Daniel Root	A festival gig somewhere in Europe.
	Yikes. 1988. Nice hat. Er... well they were hip at the time.	I always was fond of this guitar, it was an Adamas and was a very loud acoustic. We did a lot of acoustic gigs, in fact we did the very first MTV unplugged in London. The 3 singers were so loud when singing in harmony together I had to strum like hell to be heard at all. This is Helmsey, the lead singer and me.
	Caught out with a blond...actually that was no blond...heh...that was Sandra Turnbull, our manager! This photo was the first time I got shot by the paparazzi in London. Mad fun!	The cover from the WarnerChappell published music book of our songs. The same photo as used on the "In the Blood" Album. Shot by Robert Goldstein
	Platinum albums in Toronto	Platinum albums in Australia
	Always had to keep the haircut fashionable eh?	The wall of gongs in my recording studio. and a shot from a gig somewhere in NYC in about 1993.
	Click on this image to see these polaroids at a higher resolution in a new window . These were printed in one of our song books courtesy of my music publisher, Warner Chappell.	And the second page of these...I had a sponsorship deal with Polaroid and took thousands of them during the 5 year term. These represent the best of them!