Michael Hasted

Early life

Michael Hasted was expelled from school at the age of 16 for spending more time backstage at his local repertory theatre, The Everyman in Cheltenham, than on his studies. Unable to accept the place he had been offered at the Bristol Old Vic Drama School because he was too young to receive a grant, he spent the next few years working in rep all over Great Britain, notably The Everyman, Theatre Royal Lincoln, Queens Theatre, Horncurch and The Dundee Rep. He appeared in various productions with Steven Berkoff, Penelope Keith, James Bolam and John Savident. He was in the controversial You’ll Come to Love Your Sperm Test by (and with) John Antrobus at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in 1964.

Music career

He became involved in the music business in the mid 60s and was part of the in-crowd at the legendary Les Cousins in London’s Soho where he designed their daily event poster and occasionally performed. He collaborated with Cat Stevens on a couple of songs, had a demo produced by Al Stewart and was backing singer on a couple of tracks of a Jeff Lynne album. He was responsible for, and hosted, a virtually forgotten solo gig at Cousins by Van Morrison. He worked with Morrison and his group Them as publicity manager until their split.

Artistic career

He continued working in the record industry as a photographer and sleeve designer photographing Hawkwind, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Ravi Shankar, Tiny Tim, Canned Heat, Free, Robert Palmer etc. etc. and did sleeves for, among others, The Groundhogs "Scratchin the Surface", Mike Batt "Schizophonia" and classical guitarist John Williams"The Height Below".

In the early 1970s he also took up illustration and painting. He produced over 300 book jackets and magazine illustrations including for Playboy with whom he worked for 20 years.

His paintings have been exhibited extensively in Europe, Japan and America and are in public collections in England, France, Greece and USA.

In the mid 1980s he went to live in France and from 1996 until his return to England in 2003, ran The English Bookshop in Montolieu [1], the book village in the south of France. He now works as a writer and theatre director, journalist and photographer and runs the on-line theatre magazine StageTalk Magazine. In 2011 he wrote a history of the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham and wrote, produced and directed a revue in the theatre's Studio - 'Final Daze', featuring Robert Whelan, Andrew Thorn, Wendy Abrahams and Steven Rayworth.

In October 2014 he produced and directed John Mortimer's play THE DOCK BRIEF at the Everyman starring Tweedy the Clown and Mark Hyde.

His book THESPIANS, actors' reminiscences of the 1940s to the 1970s with a foreword by Penelope Keith was published in December 2014.

Public collections owning pictorial works