Noel and Tricia Richards - Still Dreaming...

I guess our story is all about hopes, aspirations and dreams. We wrote a song back in 2023, called “Still Dreaming”. The first verse says: “When we were young, we used to dream, imagine what we'd be”.

We were looking back at our lives and realised we could so easily lose the sense of adventure we had in our younger days. We needed to look forward and dream some new dreams.

Early dreams

We seem to have had dreams for our futures, for most of our lives. Tricia dreamed of one day performing at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Noel used to create a makeshift stage in his backyard and pretend he was performing to a big audience. Strumming a toy guitar and dreaming!

We met for the first time in 1975. Noel had just started to work full-time as a singer/songwriter and visited Tricia's home city of Plymouth for a gig. Tricia was the support artist.

From this first meeting a friendship grew and our first date was writing a song together.

In the first years of our friendship, we gigged continually, taking every opportunity to play to an audience. Sometimes just a handful of people in someone's home, with everyone seated on couches and bean bags. We believed that we had a simple message of faith and spirituality to communicate to people and music was a great vehicle for this.

We also realised that music is a wonderful way of connecting with the creator of the universe. When we were young, we heard examples of this in songs such as “Morning Has Broken” - Cat Stevens, “My Sweet Lord” - George Harrison and many others.

So we began to write songs that took us and our friends on a spiritual journey. Songs that could be described as modern hymns.

We were both involved with a church that was made up of students and schoolkids. When we met together, we wanted to sing. But there weren't many hymns that worked with guitar. So we decided to try writing our own. Little did we realise that our songs would one day reach many more than our own little group.

We also formed a band with our friends and gigged throughout Devon and Cornwall.

After we married in 1978, we travelled around the UK together, performing in all sorts of venues - schools, colleges, prisons, churches and more.

Our early dream, to be singer/songwriters was being realised.

Crazy Dreams

We moved to Cobham, Surrey (near London) in 1980 and this created more opportunities for us to dream. Our songwriting was improving and they were being published and recorded. We had two children and Tricia did most of the home-making while Noel went out and performed.

It was during 1987 that we wrote a song that really put us on the map as songwriters - “All Heaven Declares”. It has been recorded by many artists. On one YouTube channel alone, the song has had 3.6 million plays.

In the late 1980s, Noel saw a televised broadcast of Queen playing at London's Wembley Stadium. When they sang “We Are The Champions”, he had a wild thought. It would be great to play there one day!

A crazy dream had been born.

We shared this dream with our friends, other musicians and songwriters and found that it resonated with them. We all thought it was a crazy dream but as someone once said: “Why believe for the inevitable, when you can dream for the impossible”.

Over the next ten years, we held onto that dream and took every opportunity to prepare for it. At every concert we shared this dream with our audience.

Finally, with the support of our close friends, fellow artists and our record company, we booked Wembley Stadium. We and another friend underwrote the risk with our homes. If no-one bought tickets, we would lose everything!

But on Saturday 28th June 1997, almost 45,000 people attended our event - “Champion of the World”.

In doing this event, we inspired others to dream. We helped to launch other artists into being more successful than we could ever be. Our ceiling became their floor!

Still Dreaming

Thanks for reading this far. We don't want to give you the impression that we are famous, successful songwriters. Far from it. We sometimes wish we could be more prolific and often label ourselves as 'accidental songwriters'. It seems that our best songs have come when we don't try too hard to write.

We haven't sold millions of albums, we don't have a huge following on social media.

We are ordinary people, who have had the privilege of making a living out of songwriting and performing.

We are grateful for the opportunities that have come our way. For the countries we have been able to visit with our music. For the dreams of our youth that have come to pass.

Since 2010, our base has been in Spain. We stepped outside of our British culture and our church culture and found ourselves on a fresh spiritual journey. We have formed new friendships with people who may have no particular belief in a deity, but would call themselves spiritual.

We have also become friends with people who have an entirely different faith to our own.

This has impacted our life in a positive way.

After writing so many songs for people to sing in their churches, we wanted to go back to our roots and write songs and poems that tell stories about the joys and struggles of life, love, friendship and faith.

So we are still dreaming! That's why we wrote the song a few years back. To remind ourselves of who we are.

If our songs, words and music are the sails of our ship, we are going to raise them and let the wind blow us to new destinations. The unknown beckons. There are new dreams to dream!