Our tribute to Spiritual Cowboy Jonathan Perkins who recently passed away after his battle with cancer

Jonathan Perkins, the talented musician and Spiritual Cowboy has sadly recently passed away. He made significant contributions to the music industry during his career.

Jonathan Perkins was born 9th February 1958 in Swindon, Wiltshire and was the lead singer and songwriter of MISS WORLD, and formerly The Flame, JP’S SILVER SPURS and Stadium Dogs.

Since the mid-seventies, he showcased a diverse range of musical styles and collaborations with influential artists over his career. He played with Teenage Polecats, XTC, and Stadium Dogs in the Swindon music scene from 1973 to 1978. Perkins joined Original Mirrors in 1979, producing albums and singles until 1982. Transitioning to his solo career in 1982, he worked on various projects, including recording with RCA Records and collaborating with Kevin Mooney of Wide Boy Awake in 1985.

In 1988, Jonathan signed to Dave Stewart’s Anxious Records and released the LP “The Flame” in 1989, which was later reissued as “Snaketalk” in 1990. He preleased several singles from these albums, showcasing his musical prowess.

Jonathan also collaborated with Dave Stewart’s Spiritual Cowboys, releasing albums including “Dave Stewart & The Spiritual Cowboys” in 1990 and “Honest” in 1991. These projects received acclaim, including a minor hit with the single “Jack Talking,” which Jonathan co-wrote with Dave Stewart. It was as a Spiritual Cowboy he took on the name Wild Mondo and toured all across Europe in the early 1990’s.

Throughout his career, he worked with various artists, including contributing keyboards to Shakespeare’s Sister’s “Hormonally Yours” in 1992 and co-writing and producing songs for Nan Vernon’s “Manta Ray” in 1994.

His versatility and talent shone through in his collaborations, as well as working on many of Dave’s solo projects . He played keyboards on many of Dave Stewart Stewart’s song productions for other artists at his studios in Los Angeles, London and the South of France, including Timothy Leary, Roger McGuinn, Terry Hall as part of Dave’s Vegas project, the Jute City TV soundtrack and Dave’s crazy Beyond the Groove TV series for Channel 4.

In 1991, he formed the band MISS WORLD, producing the LP “MISS WORLD” in 1992. The band toured extensively, captivating audiences with their music. Perkins continued his musical journey, co-writing and co-producing “Vice and Verse” for EMI Artist/Poet Murray Lachlan Young as part of the 100 years of EMI celebrations.

After moving to Cornwall in the mid 90’s Jonathan experimented with different musical styles both in a solo capacity and with Miss World.


Jonathan signed to Roger Taylor’s smashing records in the late 90’s also playing on Roger Taylor’s album Electric Fire.
 Jonathan continued to gig, write and release material under the guise of Miss World and with local musicians in Cornwall area for the next decade.

Jonathan eventually became a music lecturer at Truro arts college where he spent many years encouraging and nurturing the next generation of artists on their musical journeys.

JP as he was affectionately known spent his final years in Hampshire where his loving wife Caroline has created a wonderful community art studio.

Jonathan Perkins leaves behind a legacy of creativity and passion for music that will be remembered by fans, colleagues and students alike.

Jonathan is survived by his wife, Caroline Perkins and his two sons, Christian & Buster.

On the news of Jonathan’s passing many people have made online tributes to Jonathan, here’s just a few.

Dave Stewart wrote the following words :

“News got to me that a great artist friend and collaborator Jonathan Perkins a Spiritual Cowboy if ever there was one he was it. Wild Mondo was his pseudonym and he was wild and gentle a highly sensitive beautiful soul.My heart goes out to his wife Caroline and to his family”

Hans BoS

“I read the news today, oh boy
About a lucky man who didn’t make it after all
And though the news was ultra sad
Well, I just had to smile softly
I saw the photo
He was someone who made my life brighter
Apparently, suddenly the traffic light changed
A crowd of people stood and stared
They had seen his face so many times
And everyone was sure he was from the House of Lords.
The house where the most beautiful, kindest, and
most interesting gentlemen live.
And where host Sir Perkins will shine forever.
I will miss you, Jonathan”

And a few words from Andrew Morton who is Anxious through and through and knew JP personally :

“I truly loved JP he was a hero and dear friend to me for over 30 years and I will miss him terribly. Talented, Kind, Funny & Loving and so much more”

Ride fast cowboy, ride fast.
Steve Gayler

With thanks to Andrew Morton for his help in writing this tribute.

Here’s some words that Jonathan wrote about his time working with Dave Stewart:

In 1988 I signed to Anxious Records, the label founded by Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics. We had briefly met in 1980 while appearing on the same bill at a Festival in Cascais Bull Ring, Portugal. He and Annie Lennox had been Tourists and I was a member of the Original Mirrors. We later become label mates at RCA signed by the same A&R person Jack Stevens when I began a solo career in 1984 although our paths rarely crossed. We’d also shared the same gentleman Solicitor James Wylie for years and this didn’t become apparent until after a period signed to Chrysalis Records when I was again looking for a deal and James suggested Dave’s new Label.

He and Annie had recorded their 1984 hit album Sweet Dreams in a studio they built in the upstairs of a church they were renting in Crouch End. The success of the album enabled them to buy the building and, by the time I arrived, The Church was a sought-after London recording venue with three state of the art studios alongside a trio of lesser known spaces – Fundamental, 16 Track and the eponymous Basement – the repository for cannibalised analogue equipment, reel to reels, amps, PAs and a temperamental monitor desk which had to be wooed into life by the nurturing talents of its users.

After a UK tour promoting my first album release on Anxious in 1989, I was seconded to Dave’s new project The Spiritual Cowboys, and co-wrote ‘Jack Talking’, the band’s first single.

For several months we worked between London and LA then began touring extensively in Europe. There was little time to work on my own musical ideas. So in those intermittent fragments of a free day or night here and there, Dave gave me the freedom to use the 16 Track, Basement and Fundamental studios to write and record demos.

Fundamental studio was a high-ceilinged room, poorly illuminated by a large mirror ball and a few sixty-watt bulbs that hung from long cables like nooses. It was baking hot in summer and freezing in the winter.

Barry, the enigmatic singer from Pleasure, had ‘informed’ the studio using puppet parts, dolls, plastic flowers and dark graffiti creating the atmosphere of an abandoned operating theatre from Silent Hill.

The 16 Track at the back of the church on the ground floor was like an extremely damp large walk in wardrobe, dimly lit by small stained-glass windows set in high recesses, with dark angular corners that could accommodate a kettle, a table for the desk, reel to reel and a few foldaway chairs.

The Basement studio beneath the crypt housed Dave’s portable digital recording studio alongside the dismembered remains of puppets and sets from the Captain Pugwash, Trumpton and Camberwick Green children’s TV series, forgotten and orphaned by their puppet masters Bob Bura and John Hardwick who once imagined there.

This mixed with the euphoric chanting and wailing occasionally seeped through the walls from the ‘working’ Church next door, where a devout African congregation conducted their services at evenings and weekends. It all added to the strange ambience of the place, as did the smell, which was both rancid and sterile.

The intoxicating aromas of pharmaceuticals, head cleaner, incense and exotica permeated the control room like familiars – summoning images of Doctor Benway, whose ethereal imprint was often in residence. The audio-visual and sensory effects of religious services, strange smells and whacked out interior design combined to produce an eerie and otherworldly ambience and presence that permeates the recordings made there.

The songs feature Anxious artists, musicians, associates and mavericks that moved in my particular sphere at the time; primarily Chris Sheehan (The Starlings) along with Nick Pyall, Nan Vernon, Barry Maguire, Gully, Siobhan Fahey, Olle Romo, Martin Chambers, Johnny Turnbull, Paul Thompson, David Winthrop, Chris Bostock, JC-001, D-Zire and the ever-present Andrew Morton (Editor the Anxious fanzine).

The sessions were generally nocturnal affairs, restricted by time, but fuelled by curiosity and a kind of innocence. Experimentation, the wilder the better, was the rule, and songs and sketches were often written, recorded, mixed, and then ultimately abandoned all in one night.

Dave gave us money, a garret, the canvas, brushes, paint and catalysed this ever-evolving sentient instillation and indirectly influenced it from afar, by phone, fax and rare appearances. He used to say, ’It’s a beautiful thing’. That it was; the output from these other studios by Anxious artists was prolific – songs, videos, photographic sessions and rehearsals that provided a continual flow of art in all its multiplicity, produced for the label. Some were highly successful and critically acclaimed, others less so and captured more by chance than design, as is clear from this collection.

Looking back, it was like a school, a school for students like me (hence the title) that mainstream establishments (the Majors) couldn’t handle anymore, had expelled or didn’t recognise the potential. Thankfully, our Governor’s ethos and perception was a little different, he saw beyond the instant profit and cosmetic, empowering us all with unrestricted access to facilities enabling us to develop and evolve. In a sense, he was emulating the ethos of Warhol’s Factory and like that model, it was equally dazzling and dark.

It shone so very brightly for a while, but over time the evolving dynamic between Anxious Records and its major label investors’ expectations became incompatible with some artists’ musical direction. Dave tried to maintain investment in his artists whilst satisfying the distributors typically commercial interests. He also became more and more entranced by other artistic pursuits such as photography, filmmaking and further solo albums during his informal sojourn away from the Eurhythmics.

So gradually the label waned, lost its lustre, surrendering the innocence it harboured, once espoused and tried to distil and develop. It got darker; too dark sometimes. Not everyone who was there is still here now, but at its best, for a brief moment in time, it was a beautiful dream, everything most of us ever wanted, anarchy in its truest sense.