Welcome to a rough guide to Beggars Opera the 9th and final line-up (see below) and the creative process involved in the production of the 10 Beggars Opera Progressive Rock albums, released by RGS (Ricky Gardiner Songs )

In 1996, Ricky Gardiner fell ill with SHINGLES and then developed an extremely rare condition known as Electrical Sensitivity. As a result he was unable to do live performance or work on any of the extended symphonic guitar pieces he was creating at the time. His studio had to be totally remapped and was in fact spilt in two working units. One for Ricky and one for Virginia. 

Song structures, back tracks and lyrics were created by Virginia Scott and then she recorded vocals and keyboards in her studio . These tracks were then imported into Ricky’s studio and guitars were added. Tom Gardiner drummer sent tracks remotely from his pod and then Ricky produced a mix.

Since Ricky passed away in 2022 it has been very difficult to listen to these tracks, but now we are enjoying Ricky’s incredibly melodically beautiful guitar playing again.

Beggars Opera line-ups from 1970- 2022 

1/ Ricky Gardiner, Alan Park,  Martin Griffiths, Marshall  Erskine & Ray Wilson

2/ Ricky Gardiner, Alan Park,  Martin Griffiths, Gordon Sellar, Virginia Scott & Ray Wilson 

3/ Ricky Gardiner, Alan Park, Pete Scott, Gordon Sellar & Ray Wilson

4/ Ricky Gardiner, Alan Park, Linnie Patterson, Gordon Sellar & Ray Wilson

5/ Ricky Gardiner, Alan Park, Linnie Patterson, Gordon Sellar & Colin Fairley

6/ Ricky Gardiner, Virginia  Scott, Pete Scott & Mike Travis

7/ Ricky Gardiner, Virginia Scott, Pete Scott & Clem Cattini

8/ Alan Park, Gordon Sellar,  Linnie  Paterson, John Hollywood & Colin Pattenden

9/ Ricky Gardiner, Virginia Scott & Tom Gardiner