Far from alone in his choice of domicile, the LA scene was liberally sprinkled with other UK rock exiles, both minor and major league. One such person was Jackie Lomax with whom Terry briefly collaborated in the ironically named Brit exile band Teabags. The kind of loosely connected line up common in musical colonies the world over.

With a young family to provide for, life of course couldn't be all fun. Terry paid the bills by obtaining regular session work. With his superb voice and above average guitar skills Terry had no problem finding work. For him it was a question of turning up at the studio , asking " What's the song ?", " What style ? " , " OK here you go .. ". A vocal technician is how he succintly described himself at the time.

Terry worked with a number of people on a variety of albums often un-credited .

Collaborations of note were with Jackson Browne ( still a good friend), Bonnie Raitt and Don Henley to name a few . So don't be surprised if on digging out an 80's recorded West Coast album you think you hear a familiar voice in the background ! Sadly a comprehensive list of these contributions doesn't exist , not even in Terry's memory.

The whole 80s decade drifted on with not a song released; no new album to keep the faithful ticking over. The slow setting of Terry's sun on a pacific horizon ?
Thankfully no. Terry had been quietly ( or perhaps not so quietly) stacking up demos of new songs and sending out feelers to people in the business, 'banging the phone ' as he put it. Over in the UK some of the demos got the ear of influential Warner UK chairman Rob Dickins. Apart from running the UK arm of a major global entertainment company Rob was a serious music fan, including Terry in his own personal list of favourites. Reaching out a particularly long arm he pulled Terry over to the UK and teamed him up with UK producer Trevor Horn .
Trevor's track record included working with the likes of Cher , Grace Jones, Tina Turner, Enya , the list goes on.
From earlier work in a pop group ( Buggles ! ) Trevor was collaborating with a keyboard player Hans Zimmer ( more of him later but, no, he had no involvement in Seed Of Memory's The Frame !) who was fast becoming a major talent in the film music industry.

I'm not sure which project was in mind first but Hans was writing the score for an upcoming Tom Cruise film , Days Of Thunder and together with Terry and Trevor wrote a signature song for it, 'The Driver' ( the film's based on a NASCAR driver's tale). The melody made it into the movie but the song didn't. Becoming instead the title track of another project, Terry's new album.
Although not a major grossing film, as a Tom Cruise vehicle, it was nevertheless yet another tantalisingly close brush with success and greater recognition.
So, anyway, if you've always wondered, "why 'The Driver' ? " now you know, nothing to do with Terry's secret ambition to burn rubber as his compadres exit a bank, guns blazing.
A different track from the one intended, Terry's take on the Spencer Davis classic 'Keep On Running' did make the film, so all was not lost on the movie front.
Later (1993) the shorter version of the title track made it on to the soundtrack of a completely different film Aspen Extreme, a movie about love, snow and curiously shaped planks of wood, a theme that was perhaps oddly prescient considering Terry's involvement in another film project much later on ( see Wonderland Part 6 of Bio).
Further exposure, this time on a smaller screen occured when two tracks , 5th of July and Right Til the End, surfed their way on to an episode of Baywatch ( 1993 series 3, Shattered Pt II ).
Petrolheads, ski dudes and pneumatic bouncing Pamela fans , the songs got a whole spread of potential new fan bases for Terry. Somewhere there's probably a guy hurtling down a slope right now on a set of motorised skis wearing nothing more than a tight, red, one piece swimsuit declaiming at the top of his voice ' Can't stop to think or see , is this really what god cut for me ... ' ( The Driver Pt1 ).

Anyway, aware of Trevor's track record and happy to take advice, Terry let the guy get on, do his job and produce the new album ' The Driver'. The result is a tightly produced record which whilst sounding very much like an album of the times still allowed for a typical Terry confection of different styles. Some soft acoustic , some big ballads, rockers and a little experimentation with the sampling in of some of the Voix Bulgares , a band of tradiitonal female Bulgarian singers who had made a big impresssion in Western Europe and the States around that time. Terry recalls hearing the singers whilst in America and being deeply moved as many were by the stunning and unfamiliar style of singing.

Although not credited on the album sleeve there was a whole host of people contributing to the tracks ( recorded in the UK and back in LA ); Joe Walsh, Alan White, Lee Miles, Soko Richardson , Howard Jones, Stewart Copeland and Enya. These were the ones referenced by Warner UK in a press release of the time, though I believe there are more.

Also in occasional attendance was Jeff Beck whose history with Terry goes back to touring in the 60s with The Yardbirds. Amongst other things Jeff was working on music for Days Of Thunder but sadly his only contribution that made it into the film was an instrumental on the soundtrack. There are apparently four full tracks from the project sitting idle in a can somewhere. Years ago I was told by someone from Warner UK that there is also at least one track involving Jeff and Terry which didn't make it onto The Driver album.
Someone really ought to dig out those masters and see what's on them.
True to previous form the album was released without a massive amount of publicity, a promo concert or two took place. A single , Terry's take on The Waterboys' 'Whole Of The Moon' was released but it's progress up the chart was stymied by the 'coincidental' re-release of The Waterboys' original.
A second single with commercial potential '5th Of July' ( a Louise Goffin number ) was released and got a good amount of airplay but not enough to help get the album anywhere serious in the charts.

Not often cited as a favourite by long-time Terry fans I would say it deserves a good listen. Terry's voice is on top form and his songwriting skills are well evidenced in the self penned tracks. His interpretation of other people's songs bearing, as ever, very favourable comparison with the originals.

The album is definitely long overdue for re-release and with a few tempting bonus tracks ( Mr Beck's contribution at least ) it would be warmly received.
A final footnote; Hans Zimmer went on to fame and fortune gaining many awards in the film industry ( Oscar for Lion King score ) . He was most recently responsible for the score of a film about a certain yellow family from Springfield including the 'Spiderpig' song, Homer's homage to the new found love of his life. As that song is frequently and loudly sung in our household I was over the moon to find a connection with Terry ( however slight).Superlungs , superlungs, doing whatever a superlungs does.....

So into the 90s with a new album under his belt and more public exposure than he'd had in a long while.

Back in LA Terry continued his habit of playing with whoever and whenever most notably he struck up an ad hoc musical partnership with ex Rolliong Stone, Mick Taylor.
Mick was also living in LA and had known Terry from way back in the late 60s particularly the '69 USA tour. Another musical prodigy , born the same year as Terry,Mick's blue's based guitar work combined with Terry's voice and guitar made for an electric stage show and they played many gigs to delighted fans. In 1992 for instance they played in Hollywood with Brian Auger, John Entwhistle and Lee Miles (unrecorded, as far as I know ! )

Terry and Mick played together regularly for a couple of years including a couple of stints in Hong Kong gigging at The Jazz Club there. It might have been the basis for a semi-permanent band but never hardened into anything solid enough to produce an album or a major tour. They remain friends though and played together again, this year ( 2007 ) when Mick joined Terry for 3 numbers at one of his gigs in England ( Rhythm Festival Bedford, see gig pages for pics).

Whilst in Hong Kong , Terry overheard a men's room attendant humming a piece from one of his favourite Cantonese operas. Ever on the listen for good tune, Terry went back to his room with the tune in his head and sang it into a tape recorder. Back in LA he turned it into a song, Hong Kong.
On his return to Hong Kong for more gigs, the story made the local press and there's a lovely article in The Hong Kong Standard with a picture of Terry and a somewhat bemused ( non-english speaking )Lo Yuen, the aforementioned men's room attendant. The photo-shoot was of course done in the men's room which according to Terry resulted in a queue of increasingly desperate guys building up outside. It's only rock'n'roll but I need to pee........

The song appears on the Alive album which, whilst only released in 2004, was actually recorded in LA in 1994. Terry had been on a promise for some time to do a gig with Elliot Easton ( The Cars) and the promised gig finally materialised in late 1994 at The Belly Up Club in Solan Beach CA. Seven of the songs performed were recorded and released. As well as Hong Kong there was a current crowd pleaser , Terry's version of 'One Night With You' rechristened and sung as 'One Night Of Sin', much more in keeping with Mr Reid's past pleasures!

Also on the album is a co-written track 'The Road We Chose' surely a song that deserves some time in a studio. It's a wry look back over a career full of choices ,good and bad in which Terry philosophically muses on what could have been. Along the way making reference to all the 'radicals and rascal' ( no prizes for guessing who ) that he's met along the way. Some having gone on to fame and glory, some burning out long ago. Terry recognising that he's chosen his own road, he's where he is and there's no point in regretting past decisions.

The concert was a satisfying snapshot of Terry at his best, performing live interacting with a crowd in a small intimate venue one of many such events that, for once, just happened to get recorded

Now in the mid 1990s there's a sense of time and chance having moved on in Terry's life as the decade headed towards a close and the start of a new century. The informal but promising partnership with Mick Taylor effectively dissolved as they each chose another different road.

Terry, of course, wasn't idle, he never has been, he was just operating below the reach of the public radar. In 1997 a small blip on the screen identified him as singing a tune on an epsisode of Conan ( The Destroyer ) a short lived TV series. The tune, 'In Love and War' was penned by Roxanne Seeman (a noted songwriter with whom Terry did some work in the 90s) and Charles Fox ( prolific tunesmith and co-writer of Killing Me Softly). Thus Terry added a muscle-bound marauding swordsman to the cars , snow and beach themes of his other screen contributions. I'll leave you to string the metaphors together and add what Terry tune you think fits best.

Another public appearance occurred in 1998 as the real passage of time was sadly marked by the untimely death of a friend, Beach Boy Carl Wilson. Terry was part of the all star bill at the Roxy in LA when there was a Benefit concert for Carl . He sang 'Don't Worry Baby' a Dennis Wilson song, that he's pretty much made his own and often includes in his repertoire now . 'Don't worry baby, everything will turn out alright', I doubt there was a dry eye in the hall as he sung that.

On the public performance and recording front, things remained quiet for Terry as the year 2000 got ever closer. Remember all the hype all the hopes and fears expressed ? The milennium bug was going to wipe out the world's IT systems , the Messiah ( which one ? ) was coming back , aliens were sure to land ( in LA they already had ,years ago ... ). Or so the pundits, all the seers and sages told us. Reality, of course , was a different story, for all of us, Mr Reid included.