Steve Cooke: A Musician’s Musician

Steve Cooke is a multi-talented performer whose career spans decades, continents, and genres. He has been a singer, musician, actor, and director on the world stage, having graced every venue from musical theater to rock clubs to the silver screen both large and small. Today he is still performing with the same elan vital which made him a standout from the beginning.

A recent song from Cooke, “California Girls,” is a representative manifestation of that ongoing spirit. For this song, Cooke found inspiration in the synergistic effect of California’s unique lifestyle, Hollywood glamour, and the aura of young good looking women having fun. Freedom, salt air, waves, good times, cars, dancing, and the never ending summer in California all reverberate and find their expression in this tune.

So, how did this all come about for Steve Cooke? As a youth, Cooke began singing in church choirs in New Zealand as a first solo soprano and got his first break at a local radio station. From there, it was on to London, where his career really took off and he began to land principal roles in major musicals. Moving to Broadway, he appeared in the musicals Hair, Godspell, and Jesus Christ Superstar. That mix of rock opera and stage acting was to help shape his vocal style and stage presence and lead to his singular persona as a solo performer.

Cooke has long admired and appreciated the work of Eric Clapton, Howlin’ Wolf, George Harrison, Willie Dixon, and Jimi  Hendrix, and they have all influenced his style and his innovative musical approach to his own sets. 

His solo performances in clubs run about one hour and 15 minutes with encores, and take the listener on a variegated journey through pop, folk, blues, and jazz favorites, as well as his own tunes, each of which he has carefully crafted to transform the personal poetry of his voice and his instrument into lyricism. Cooke’s spirited and distinctive playing on his double-neck 12 string guitar heroically heightens his soulful and crowd-pleasing renditions. With his flowing curled blond locks, he is the personification of charisma on any stage. 

The Steve Cooke who created “California Girls” for your audial and visual bliss has done it all and covered all the entertainment venues, from playing the principal character Wolf in Hair, appearing in productions on screen as diverse as Hercules, Real Rob, and King Kong, acting in commercials for Toyota and directing them as well for Hugo Boss the Scent perfume. In his historic traversing from the local church choir of New Zealand to the world stage of musical theater to the international arena of solo performing, Steve Cooke has always made it his mission to use his multi-musical and acting talents to tell stories and move audiences. Decades in, he is still doing just that! 

Please enjoy his music.