Vic Elmes has made his way and his name as a guitar player since the mid- '60s as a mainstay of groups such as the Epics, the Acid Gallery, and Christie, and subsequently in film and television music as well. Born in 1947, Elmes began playing the guitar before he reached his teens, and formed a group with some school friends (including future T. Rex drummer Bill Fyfield (aka Bill Legend)). That amateur group evolved into the Epics with the addition of Mike Blakely on drums, and they later became Acid Gallery. Neither group ever enjoyed much recording success, and by 1969 Elmes was looking for a new gig. He found it courtesy of Blakely, who had crossed paths with singer/guitarist/songwriter Jeff Christie, himself a refugee from a failed band called the Outer Limits. He was trying to put together a group behind Christie and Blakely brought Elmes into the trio, ultimately christened Christie. They enjoyed a short string of international hit singles before breaking up in 1972. It was soon after leaving Christie that Elmes got his introduction to the world of film and television music when the series #Space: 1999 went into production.

The series was created and produced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, who had previously made a string of successful science fiction adventure series utilizing marionettes. #Space: 1999 was to have one of the biggest launches of any science fiction series in the history of television, by virtue of its unprecedented (for TV) special effects budget and the presence of a genuine star couple, Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, as its leads. Everything about the series was to look new, and bigger and better than the Andersons' previous work, and that included the scoring. According to a 1998 interview with Jerry Scott, Elmes had an advantage in getting the gig, in that he was married to Sylvia Anderson's daughter, but he did seriously deliver the goods, despite some rough patches -- he was new to film music, and the fit was an awkward one, but for the series' first season, he introduced the sounds of rock instruments to space adventure. Elmes' drummer, Liam Genockey, and bassist John McCoy (later an alumnus of Deep Purple) could be heard in every episode, doing the lean, electric rock version of the series' theme over the credits, and he also wrote other parts of the scoring, where guitar was needed in lieu of standard orchestrations. He also wrote the complete new score material for one episode, #Ring Around The Moon. Alas, all of the first season theme material was junked, along with some of the sets and part of the cast and several characters, when the series was re-tooled for what ultimately proved to be a disastrous second season.

Elmes has since produced more film and television music, and has toured Europe, variously fronting bands designated as Christie Again and Vic Elmes Again. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi