Education
He was educated at King"s College London.
He was educated at King"s College London.
He is better known for having played keyboards for from April 1970 to June 1980. Evans changed his name when his first band, The Blades, changed their name to The John Evan Band. Jeffrey Hammond apparently thought "The John Evan Band" sounded better than "The John Evans Band".
He participated from the Blackpool musical scene, with most of the musicians that would become, including Barrie Barlow and Ian Anderson.
Later on, Evan was attending college when he happened to recognize his former band mates on the radio with the song Living in the Past, remarking years later that it stood out to him because of its quite unusual time signature for a popular song (5/4). Whilst with, Evan had a penchant for wearing his trademark white suit, along with a yellow shirt underneath and a pink-and-yellow polka-dot tie.
Evan can be seen wearing this outfit in photographs on the album War Child, and the live album Bursting Out, while a painted version of him is seen wearing the suit and tie on the inside cover of the Aqualung album. Because of the familiar white suit, Anderson was known to jokingly refer to Evan (during band member introductions) as "everyone"s favourite ice cream salesman".
Evan departed in July 1980, with the "Big Split" of the band.
He then went on to form Tallis with fellow departing Tull member, David Palmer. After many years running his own construction company, during which he would occasionally be recognized by die-hard Tull fans, he now resides in Australia. He also appeared in the 2004 Digital Video Disc – A New Day Yesterday: The 25th Anniversary Collection (1969–1994) (originally released in 1994 on VHS), the 2008 Digital Video Disc – Their Fully Authorised Story (1968–2008), and the 2009 Civil Defense/Digital Video Disc combo – Live at Madison Square Garden (1978).
In 1970, he played as a session musician on Tull"s Benefit album (where his acknowledgement reads: "and John Evan, who played keyboards for our benefit"), and was eventually convinced by Ian Anderson to leave school to become a full-fledged member of the band.