Clive Mitten

Clive Mitten (born Clive Richard Mitten, 24 February 1959) started at Reading University in September 1978, studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

Clive Mitten grew up in Brighton, where his musical career could quite easily have taken a different path.

“Originally I was given piano lessons by my grandmother who was a concert pianist”, says Clive in 2009. “Later, when I went to grammar school in Brighton I started to learn classical guitar and a couple of years after that I formed my first band. I played lead guitar. I moved to bass when I formed a band at school called Luna Hare. This would have been about 1974, so I would have been 15 or 16. Luna Hare was just a fun school band who played two or three gigs playing the usual rock covers, primarily. Our influences at that time were Curved Air, Deep Purple, David Bowie, Yes, Can, Pink Floyd, Man, and ELP.”

Even at this stage, Clive had strong ideas about the sound he wanted from his instrument: “I was always a big Chris Squire fan; a huge follower of Yes. But I realised recently when I listed to the ELP album Welcome Back My Friends to the Show That Never Ends that the sound I wanted from my bass was the very metallic, trebly sound achieved by Greg Lake at that time. I always wanted the bass to cut through and be prominent.”

Clive Mitten performed 310½ gigs with Twelfth Night between September 1978 and January 1987, missing the first three, the last and the 2nd set at Henley Youth Centre in December 1980.

Since 1987 Clive has been a studio manager, a student/academic, a charity employee, a charity director, a holiday home rental business owner manager on the Great Ocean Road in Australia, an associate director with a leading independent firm of chartered accountants and business advisers, and a management consultant.