Career
1960s
Bardens formed The Cheynes in 1964. He hired then unknown drummer Mick Fleetwood to join the band after hearing him play in his garage, three doors from Bardens. Fleetwood later said of this: "He literally kickstarted me into the music business." The Cheynes played a mix of pop and R&B popularised by Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. They soon had a residency the Mandrake club in Soho, and even released a few singles.
Bardens left the Cheynes in early 1965 to join the band Them, which led to the Cheynens disbanding. His stint with the group was short, but he did play keyboards on their debut album, The Angry Young Them, released the same year. By the end of 1965, Bardens had left Them.
Following his stint with Them, he formed a band called The Peter B's, releasing a single, in 1966, called "If You Wanna Be Happy" (b/w "Jodrell Blues"), an instrumental version of the old standard. He moved on and formed Peter B's Looners which eventually morphed into Shotgun Express, a band that played soul music and featured Rod Stewart, Peter Green, and Mick Fleetwood. By 1967, Bardens had fired Stewart, and Green had been invited to join John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, which Fleetwood soon followed, leading to Bardens disbanding Shotgun Express.
From August 1968 to February 1970, he formed The Village with featured future Elvis Costello and The Attractions bassist Bruce Thomas and Bill Porter (drums). They released a single "Man in the Moon"/"Long Time Coming".
1970s
In 1970, Bardens recorded The Answer, an album featuring Peter Green and Andy Gee. Bardens recorded an eponymous album in 1971 which was released in the United States as Write My Name in the Dust before forming Camel in 1972. The group, a progressive rock outfit, are best known for their 1975 studio album, The Snow Goose, a concept album based on Paul Gallico's novella The Snow Goose.
He left Camel in 1978 just before the band were set to go on tour to promote their album Breathless. Bardens left Camel to join Them bandmate Van Morrison's band. He recorded Wavelength with Morrison and appeared in the line up of the album's promotional tour. By the end of the 1970s, Bardens began exploring electronica and released the album Heart to Heart in 1979.
1980s
Bardens co-wrote "Looking for a Good Time" with Bobby Tench, featured as the B-side of the single "Chain Gang" (1982), which Tench had recorded as a tribute to Sam Cooke. In 1984, he became a member of Keats (an Alan Parsons Project offshoot) and released an album with them. Also in 1984, Bardens wrote and produced Scottish vocalist/guitarist Willy Finlayson's debut single 'On The Air Tonight', later covered by Colin Blunstone.
In 1985 he recorded the single "Solo" with the band Solo, and in 1986 he produced a Leo Sayer version of the song.
Bardens continued to release a number of solo electronic albums including Seen One Earth (1987), which found chart success in the United States. The first single from the album, "In Dreams", was met with commercial success as well. The song enjoyed heavy airplay on rock stations in the U.S. and Australia, where Triple M Brisbane, the most popular radio station in the country at the time, added it to their playlist. In 1988, he followed this with Speed of Light (1988) which featured Mick Fleetwood. "Gold" from this album was released in the U.S as a single and found some success on MTV.
1990s
He released Water Colours in 1991, and Big Sky in 1994. Also in 1994, with his former Camel bandmate Andy Ward and former members of Caravan, he formed the band Mirage for a brief European tour. A subsequent, all-American version of the band, with only Bardens and guitarist Steve Adams from the original line-up, did more touring in 1996.
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