(Born 1945)
Wayne Fontana, (real name Glyn Geoffrey Ellis), was born on 28th October 1945 in Manchester. Before embarking on his music career, he trained as a telephone engineer in Manchester. It is said that he adopted his stage name in homage to Elvis Presley's drummer D J Fontana. Wayne was an accomplished rhythm and blues singer and soon had a sizeable following of female admirers and fans. Wayne was the lead singer with local group, The Jets. Their debut audition was to take place at the Oasis Club in Manchester, though the band apparently failed to turn up and Wayne was left to audition solo, having hastily enlisted the services of other musicians already there and spontaneously calling this motley crew "Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders". Despite the fact that Wayne was still only in his teens, the audition so impressed Jack Baverstock of Fontana Records that he gave them a two year recording contract on the spot.
The group line-up included Wayne Fontana (vocals), Eric Stewart (guitar), Bob Lang (bass), and Ric Rothwell (drums). Their most successful song was "The Game of Love" and none of their other music ever managed to attract the kind of public approbation that this song did. While failing to reach number one position in the UK record charts, it did achieve that position in the USA.
The group's first record hit was in 1963 with "Hello Josephine". After the success of "The Game of Love" several minor hits followed, including "Just A Little Bit Late" and "She Needs Love".
In 1965, Wayne married one of his young fans, left the group and set out on a solo career with a few hits like "Come On Home" and "Pamela, Pamela", though he never managed to repeat his former successes and retired from the music industry in the early 1970s. Meantime, The Mindbenders (now without Wayne Fontana) had a brief success in America with "Groovy Kind Of Love", and in the UK with "Ashes to Ashes". The Mindbenders finally broke up in 1968.
Despite many years in obscurity, Fontana came out of retirement in the late 1980s and had made occasional live appearances and performances, tours and on the club circuits.