Roy Wood

Roy Wood (born 8 November 1946) is an English musician, singer and songwriter. He was particularly successful in the 1960s and 1970s as member and co-founder of the Move, Electric Light Orchestra and Wizzard.

Wood formed the Move in 1965, and had hits including "Flowers in the Rain". While the Move were still together, Wood, along with his band colleagues Jeff Lynne and Bev Bevan, founded Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), which was later to gain major commercial success. After increasing tensions, Wood left ELO in 1972 and formed a new group, Wizzard, who had seven hits, including Wood's most regularly broadcast song, "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day".

As a songwriter, Wood contributed a number of hits to the repertoire of the Move, ELO and Wizzard. Altogether, he had more than 20 singles in the UK singles chart under various guises, including three UK No. 1 hits. Wood was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017 as a member of Electric Light Orchestra.

Roy Wood was born on 8 November 1946 in Kitts Green, a suburb of Birmingham, England. For some years the legend persisted that his real name was Ulysses Adrian Wood, until it was revealed that this was probably the result of somebody close to the Move in their early days filling in such names on a 'lifelines' feature for the press as a joke.

His first group in Birmingham in the early 1960s was the Falcons, which he left in 1963 to join Gerry Levene and the Avengers. Their 1964 single "Doctor Feelgood" was the recording debut for both Wood and future Moody Blues drummer Graeme Edge. He then moved to Mike Sheridan and the Nightriders (the band later became the Idle Race). He attended the Moseley College of Art, but was expelled in 1964.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.