Very saddened to hear that Larry Wooden passed away today after a short battle with cancer. Here’s a photo I took of him just over a month ago, through a lens we found whilst sorting through boxes of Larry’s life. He was an amazing man, full of ideas, sharp as a pin with a super dry wit. For a 70+ year old I’d regularly get messages from him at 1am and his telephone calls were always long ones.

He was born 1st Feb 1950 at The Limes, Norwich Road, North Walsham, Norfolk. A lover of photography from an early age – something that would influence a lot of his later interests – Larry started drumming lesson at ten years old after wanting to play them since he was seven. At 11 he swapped a previous interest in Hornby trains for a chemistry lab that he would then turn into a photo lab two years later in 1963. The same year, he first saw Dr Who on TV – a show he would love for a lifetime and name his lightshow after. Photographing the Doctor and Daleks directly from the TV, the enterprising Larry would sell the photos at school and make himself a miniature Dalek by studying the images at just 13 years old. During a stint helping him sort through his belongings we chanced upon this model, wrapped up in a box, not too worse for wear despite the 60 years since its creation.

In 1967 he gave up on his A Levels, learned to drive and his family moved to Longs Farm, Tollenshunt Major near Maldon in Essex where his dad was in charge of the Goldhanger Fruit Farms. He saw The Equals live at the Gaiety Theatre in Ramsey and joined his first band, D’Arcy Spice in 1968 alongside Jerry Arnold, Alan Valentine, Alan Jolly and Tony Loton. The same year he founded Orion Lighting and starting making lighting for the band. Their first gig was in 1969 at the Embassy Suite, Colchester with District Line, The Shey and Jimmy Pilgrim & the Classics and then Larry formed Nature’s Way in the summer who gigged relentlessly throughout ’70-71. Larry’s Doctor Who Lighshow was unveiled at the Felixstow Pier Pavilion on 24/04/71 and he would light the likes of The Groundhogs, Van Der Graaf Gernerator, Mott The Hoople, Osibisa, Uriah Heep, Keef Hartley, Desmond Dekkar, Dave & Ansell Collins, Geno Washington, Fleetwood Mac, Hot Chocolate and many more before quitting his day job at the tax office on Xmas Eve of 1971.

Nature’s Way promo shots, Larry in shades, beard and snazzy trousers.

Light shows and gigs continued throughout the early seventies including lighting The Sweet, Queen, Thin Lizzy, 10cc, Cockney Rebel, Suzi Quatro, Screaming Lord Sutch and Emperor Rosko among many more. Somewhere along the way Nature’s Way morphed into Peppermint Way and in early ’74 Larry retired the lightshow to concentrate on his lighting company. Orion made the first picture wheels, custom made control equipment like the 10 Way Chaser and the Spirochaser as well as manufacturing wheels for David Hone’s Solar Prism Lighting. He attended the BADEM (British Association of Discotheque Equipment Manufacturers ) lighting shows in ’76, ’77 and ’78, the latter of which would feature a four page colour Orion leaflet inside the centrefold of the Disco International program.

The Orion shop opened in 1978 at 20 Wethersfield Road, Colchester and ’79 and ’80 saw appearances at the Discom lighting shows in Paris where he demonstrated prototypes of the Galactic Floor – a light up disco flooring. The eighties weren’t kind to Larry though, Orion went bankrupt after the financial crash (like Pluto Electronics and many others), his marriage ended and he worked a succession of jobs and played in several bands to little success. But by the end of the eighties things were looking up; he was doing laser shows at the Andromeda Club, earning the nickname ‘Laser Larry’ and working the lights at the Hippodrome in Colchester, mixing the likes of Sister Sledge and the Drifters when they passed through. He booked the Rock nights there for a while, opened the Chaplins sandwich bar next door and even tried to unsuccessfully buy the venue at one point.

By 1992 he had moved on and was still gigging, briefly ran both an embroidery business and a dating agency, was once the UK’s sole developer of 3D stereo photographs and a keen practitioner of lenticular animation. He had interests in magic tricks, sci-fi and fantasy, family trees and gadgets of any kind – I’ve never met a man with so many watches and laptops. I only knew him for the final years of his life, tracking him down for my book on projection wheels and interviewing him about his Dr Who Lightshow and Orion Lighting years. After that we became friends and he graciously took part in the launch party, showing off his original wheel art and taking questions all night. He certainly didn’t waste a moment, a keen member of the lighting community and a very unique man.

RIP Lawrence ‘Larry’ Michael Wooden (1950-2025)