This man of music...

No. Sadly, it's music he has in mind.

He would much rather not feel this way. After all, he is the man behind the popular magazine Avant, which has its ear closely to the ground on all matters regarding contemporary music.

Trevor, 51, is a person of restless creative energy. It is not surprising that Avant appears on newsagents' shelves the world over.

He's a rich man; though riches, you feel, are something he can take or leave.

We chat amid the modern decor of his attractive open plan house in palatial Western Road, Rayleigh, gazing through a picture window with splendid views of the surrounding countryside.

I'm here because a friend in the music business urged me to try for an interview with Trevor. "You'll like him," he said. "He's a nice sort of cove."

My friend is right. Trevor is passing me that boon to a lazy journalist, a close-typed CV.

Educated at Prittlewell Primary and Southchurch High schools, he took to music in the mid-'60s and, coached by Reg Williams and John Thompson, became an accomplished drummer.

He played professionally with many bands, including the Original String Quartet managed by Peter Eden. Recordings at Pye Studios followed, including the Improving Percussionist series with Paul Lytton, John Stevens, Frank Perry and Eddie Prevost.

In 1966 he opened the Balmoral Studios in Westcliff, first as a rehearsal facility then as a recording centre which came to be used by both local and international musicians.

He himself taught drums there. Pupils included Charles Mumford, then a keen young musician, now general manager of Southend's Cliffs Pavilion.

Trevor wishes now that he hadn't become a drummer. It's not the kind of music that interests him any more.

In 1979 he started a retail music business, Future Music. Based in Chelmsford, it expanded to service six south-coast outlets including shops in Brighton and Portsmouth.

Although the business generated a turnover of £4 million, the busy entrepreneur managed to keep up his playing.

"Southend," he says, "has always been an enthusiastically musical town.

"We did well, and I became what I suppose some people would call rich.

"At the time, it seemed a good thing. In hindsight, it wasn't. I began to lose interest."

Trevor thinks back to the '80s. He had to give thought to the kind of people who were coming through the doors of his shops. He himself was a hard core, dedicated musician. Were they? Perhaps not.

"Most of our customers were the 16 to 30-year-olds who had previously been into sport and after that computers. They had discovered that one way you could create music was by plugging into a synthesiser and driving a machine.

"A 16-year-old could press a button and get a sound equal to what a real musician would need thousands of hours of practice to produce.

"Before, you had to join a band. Now, musicians didn't even have to play; or even think about it -- we were on a slippery, sliding slope."

The disillusioned businessman decided to scale back his operations. "I could see the way hi-tech was going.

"I wasn't solely interested in making money. No matter how much you have, somebody else always has more.

"It's a never-ending route, of no spiritual value."

In 1981 he started Future Music Records as a means of supporting new music from talented British groups. Seven years later it had put out 65 releases.

"This was the sort of music which would not see the light of day if we did not help it.

"The record industry was suffering from many problems. I wanted my own company so that I could put something back into the business.

"To pay £15 for a CD is not on. It can be done for a lot less. We sell ours for £10. That's a good enough margin."

In 1993 Trevor started the Jazz Bar club in the foyer of the Cliffs Pavilion. It helped that Chas Mumford, his old drums pupil, was now in charge there. "Chas has been incredibly supportive.

"He has a lot of vision, and wants to bring people into the 20th century. The Cliffs should not be just a light entertainment centre."

Now, as financially secure as they will ever need to be, Trevor and his wife Terri are finding time to relax. Their home and surroundings are obviously an important part of their life, with light and colour taking high priority.

Here and there you notice an eastern touch. Buddhas of different sizes stand around their house, inside and out. Collections of water-rounded pebbles suggest the couple's feeling for their roots in nature.

Trevor puts it like this. "The Orient gives us an understanding of what matters in life.

"We in the West don't realise how stuck in the consumer groove we are."

Music is one way out of that groove. Two years ago he launched his own magazine, Avant, of which he is now editor. "This is a wonderfully exciting time in music.

"Our wish is to raise its profile by bringing it to a wider audience."

I see what he means when he shows me the weird new instrument he keeps in his hall. It's called a crystal horn, and in March he'll be publishing a book, Sculptures of Sound, about the two French brothers who invented it.

See if you can visualise this. A diamond of highly-polished metal about four feet high, shaped vaguely like the shield of a Norman knight.

"Stand behind it, and you'll see a row of crystal rods attached to the reverse side. There's also a small bowl containing water.

You wet your fingers, stroke them up and down the rods and create sound waves which travel forward and strike the metal diamond. This then reverberates, creating shivery, mournful notes which are like nothing I've ever heard.

As we struggle to find a comparison, Trevor recalls something he experienced in Australia -- "the sound when the wind blows through the telephone wires."

It is, perhaps, an lamenting sound of the future. And Trevor is a man of the future -- a man determined to help music survive the uncertainty of the present.

A nice sort of cove -- Trevor Taylor who believes in bringing music to a wider audience

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.