Born in Alton, Hampshire (UK) on 25 April 1945. In the 1970s Lawson was a member of Greenslade, an English progressive rock band which formed in the autumn of 1972. The band made their live debut at Frankfurt’s Zoom Club in November 1972 with a line-up of Dave Greenslade (keyboards), Tony Reeves (bass guitar and double bass), Andrew McCulloch (drums and percussion) and Lawson (keyboards and vocals). They released four albums between 1973 and 1975. The band announced their disbandment in early 1976, due to management problem, and Lawson then worked as a session musician.
In 1982, Lawson played the Synclavier on Kate’s songs There Goes A Tenner and Suspended In Gaffa. He wrote and arranged strings together with Andrew Powell for the song Houdini, and later arranged strings on the song Cloudbusting.
More recently, Lawson has become particularly noted for his work on so-called “fusion scores” such as those for the feature films ‘Angel Heart’ and ‘Mississippi Burning’. He also worked on Steven Spielberg’s ‘We’re Back!’ and on Kenneth Branagh’s ‘Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’. Lawson has also composed and co-composed, with Ronnie Bond and David Dundas, music for many cinema and television advertisements including those for British Gas, Coco Pops, Philips, Le Coq, Bird’s Custard, Braun, Blueband, Britannia, Philip Morris, Accurist, Atari, Dixel, Dulux, Roxy, Mintguard, Bonjour, Ellermans, Wilkinson Sword, Foster Grant, Alpine, Wash’n Dye, Arctic Lite, Yves Saint Laurent.
Lawson currently has an extensive sound design studio with one of the largest privately owned synclavier and synthesizer systems in Europe.
