Even though he was born in the UK, he’s been living in Poland for years and he’s known to be a ‘British-Polish musician’. John Porter is celebrating his 70th birthday (his 44th birthday spent in Poland)!
John Frederick Porter was born on the 15th of August 1950 in Lichfield, a town in West England. After he graduated from the University of Sussex, he decided to pursue his music career dreams and move abroad. He visited several countries and eventually settled down in Poland in 1976 with his first wife – Aleksandra. Porter was composing a lot of music on his own when in 1977 he met Kora and Marek Jackowski and joined their band called Manaam, one of the most popular bands in Polish music history. However, the trio didn’t last long as in 1979 Porter left Manaam, met another three Polish musicians and formed his own band with them – Porter Band. The type of music they were creating can be assigned to the funk rock genre. In 1980 they released their very successful first album “Helicopters” – you can find a song promoting this album if you click on the link below:
Porter Band released another album in 1982 – “Mobilization”, however very soon after that they broke up and John decided to pursue his solo career in Poland. His albums “China Disco” and “Magic Moments” unfortunately weren’t very successful. In the 90s he formed another band with a few other Polish musicians which they named Mirror. Their two albums (“Right Time” and “Alexandria”) were not successful either and this band broke up as well. Porter’s eventual second wave of success came with “Porter Band ’99” – his first album created with a completely new Porter Band and also the album that was said to be the best funk rock/electric one of 1999.
After the band’s break-up in 2001, John Porter started working with Varius Manx’s lead singer Anita Lipnicka who he was also in a relationship with until 2015. Their single “For You” released in 2002 turned out to be a hit, however it never reached the popularity of their
no. 1 single “Bones of Love” (you can find the link to it down below!) released in 2003. The song wouldn’t come off the Polish charts for a good few months. Their first album created as a duo “Nieprzyzwoite Piosenki” (“Dirty Songs”) went platinum due to its incredible popularity. “Inside Story” released in 2005 was another one of their successful albums – this one went gold. Porter and Lipnicka marked the end of their music adventure together with their album “Goodbye” released in 2008.
At this point John Porter is fluent in Polish and lives in Poland permanently. He’s been working on his solo career quite a lot during the last 12 years and released two albums in the last decade. He also tends to co-work on different projects, such as “Songs of Love and Death” – the album he created in 2017 with Nergal (a famous Polish ‘blackened death-metal’ musician). Now he’s celebrating his 70th birthday and he can definitely say he has spent the majority of his life in Poland. His story is similar to Nigel Kennedy’s story – this British violinist was born in 1956 in Brighton and decided to move to Poland after he grew up. He’s been living with his wife Agnieszka in Cracow for years now, he also formed a strong bond with the city, played a lot of concerts in the Cracow Philharmonic and became the art director of Sinfonia Varsovia, a Polish symphonic orchestra. No wonder both Kennedy and Porter are called British-Polish musicians!
Author: Wiktoria Lewandowska
Pictures: John Porter’s Facebook
