Keyboard player/composer/producer Mike Moran was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, in 1948. Although he grew up amid the 1960s British beat boom, he was more serious about music than most teenagers, and enrolled at the Royal College of Music. He became a session musician in the late '60s and soon entered the orbit of producer Gus Dudgeon, who used him on John Kongos' self-titled 1971 album -- indeed, with a lineup that featured most of the players from Elton John's recent Dudgeon-produced Madman Across the Water (among them Ray Cooper, Caleb Quaye, Dave Glover, and Roger Pope), Moran was virtually subbing for John himself as the keyboard man on the sessions (which included some very early and prominent use of the ARP synthesizer). He was part of Michael d'Abo's second solo album, Down at Rachel's Place (1972), and brushed up against the English folk-rock scene of the early '70s with sessions for Harvey Andrews and Dave Cartwright. But by the mid-'70s, the list of recordings on which he participated read like a who's who of British pop/rock, including Allan Clarke, work with whom moved him into the orbit of composer/producer/singers Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway, Kevin Ayers, Roger Glover, Rick Springfield, Ray Thomas, and Albert Hammond, plus a stint with the Ian Gillan Band. For a sample of his range, one could take in his work on the searingly loud funk of the Gillan band's Child in Time and then the deceptively lyrical yet unobtrusive work he did for Ray Thomas on Hopes, Wishes & Dreams, done the very same year. It was the following year, however, that Moran suddenly became a well-known figure beyond the ranks of his fellow musicians, through his co-authoring with Lynsey de Paul of the song "Rock Bottom," which made a strong showing in the Eurovision Song Contest that year, and became a hit in several European countries (though not in the U.K.). Thus began an extended musical partnership between Moran and de Paul, who went on to collaborate on "Let Your Body Go Downtown" and "Going to a Disco," among other successful songs.