P Michael Yates

P Michael Yates is a musician, author, and independent thinker whose life has been shaped by the sea, the stage, the studio, and a relentless pursuit of truth.

Born in Whalley, Lancashire, as the first northerner in a southern family, Yates was raised aboard cargo ships that travelled the globe. His childhood education didn’t come from curriculum textbooks or classrooms, but through ships radio, esoteric books, conversations, and the lived experience of an international life. He sidestepped the rigid mechanisms of standardised Prussian education, instead gaining a real-world awareness that shaped his critical, creative mind.

His earliest exposure to music came through his mother’s collection of 45’s - The Beatles, The Hollies, Gerry & the Pacemakers - the Merseybeat sound. Deeply influenced by Scouse music culture, he discovered his own calling when he heard The Police for the first time. That moment led him to pick up the guitar, and a love affair with sound was born. Soon, rock titans like Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, AC-DC, Deep Purple, and Van Halen would shape his playing, his thinking, and his lifelong devotion to music.

For over 25 years, Yates worked professionally as a guitarist, songwriter, producer, and sound engineer, releasing two albums and six singles while touring extensively around the world and coming face to face with a good number of his contemporaries. His style, though based in pop, draws from the raw power of rock and is anchored in three enduring musical ideals: harmony, melody, and power. For Yates, music is never just entertainment - it is a gateway into philosophical, metaphysical, and spiritual expression.

In the past six years, that expression has spilled into authorship. With eleven published works - The Title is Unimportant, Poking Crocodiles (a novel), The Big Stick, The Great Brain Robbery, The Architecture of Language, The Fire of Eloquence, The Illumination of Thought, The Sacred Number, Heaven’s Clockwork, The Measure of All Things, and The Music of the Spheres, Yates explores society’s deeper mechanisms, from its hidden controllers to the linguistic and logical systems that shape perception. His work seeks to illuminate the structures behind modern life and offer alternatives to mental conformity. Influenced by writers such as Graham Hancock, Rudolf Steiner, Walter Russell, and Robert Anton Wilson, Yates combines bold inquiry with grounded reasoning.

He now lives aboard his own very modest yacht in the Mediterranean, drawn to the region’s weather, cuisine, and people, and the clarity and simplicity of boat life. There, he continues to write, compose, and perform - driven by an unquenchable need to create rather than consume. His ultimate goal is to build a new paradigm of education, one that liberates minds from outdated control structures and restores the human birthright of cognisance and critical thought.

For Yates, the mission is simple: awaken the world - one note, one book, one conversation at a time.