Jon Deverill
Musician (Vocalist) and Actor
Jon Deverill, born on 16 February 1961, is a Welsh rock vocalist and stage actor. This site's own records have long given his birthplace as Church Village, near Pontypridd, while other published sources give Cardiff; both are noted here as the discrepancy has not been conclusively resolved. Before turning professional, he played in local Cardiff pub bands, including one remembered by this site's owner as "Aura" - almost certainly the same act a 2016 reader recalled as "Aurora" - and the two have their own first-hand memory of meeting Deverill in the changing rooms at the Great Western pub in Cardiff.
Deverill was recruited as vocalist by guitarist Phil Campbell (later of Motorhead) to front the band Persian Risk, before being headhunted in late 1980 by the Whitley Bay heavy metal band Tygers of Pan Tang, replacing original singer Jess Cox. He fronted the band through their most successful period, singing on the 1981 album Spellbound and the 1982 album The Cage, before the band split in 1987 amid a contract dispute with their label, MCA.
After his music career, Deverill trained as an actor at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, going on to work professionally on stage under the name Jon de Ville - including playing Franz in a 2008 production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music.
In 2018, Deverill returned to music, reuniting with former Tygers of Pan Tang guitarist Fred Purser in the project Purser Deverill, whose debut album, Square One, was released in December that year.