Born and raised in sunny Sheffield, South Yorkshire, I moved to London in the 80s and have been making a living as a jobbing guitarist ever since.

Family Photo's

My daughters Katie, Asha and Elizabeth	My wife Ali with Elizabeth
Jane, me, Mom and Caz at Mom's 80th Birthday Party	The Eyres August 2005
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Dad playing Steel Guitar with his duo in the late 40s	Me and Mom

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Getting Started in Music

Coming from a house full of piano players, I started messing about on the old Joanna at home around 11 years old.

My Dad taught me the basic theory of how chords are formed and having a hereditary good ear for harmony I soon started playing pop songs and silly little tunes I made up. The guitar bug bit when I was about 13, Mr. Higgins the music teacher at school played the class a reel to reel tape recording. It was a modern dramatization of "Orpheus and Euridyce" and instead of playing a magic Lute, Orpheus played a magic "ELECTRIC GUITAR".

The sound of that guitar to me really was magical, it was that real '60s twang with loads of reverb and amp gain, it was like I could see sparks flying.. That was it....I got the bug....I had to have an electric guitar so I could make those sounds too.

My Dad had built my brother Tommy a solid bodied electric guitar 10 years earlier and it was just sitting in a cupboard in a real sorry state, no strings and the wiring all ripped out. I pestered him to fix it up which he did and he said he'd put a top E string on and if I could play a scale on that, he'd get the B string the following payday, etc. etc. It took me 6 weeks to get the full set!! (Scroll down for the full story of Dad's Strat).

We also had Tommy's old amp and speaker cab in the shed but because we didn't have a guitar lead, Dad just got an old bit of TV ariel co-ax and twisted the wires around the jack socket of the guitar and amp. I had to hold the guitar at a certain angle otherwise the wires didn't contact properly and the sound cut out. The action was so high, it brought me to tears but I persevered and eventually my Grandma bought me a better guitar, a cello built acoustic, probably a Framus although it had no name on it.

It was so much easier to play and Dad made a perspex scratchplate for it and we mounted the pickups and electrics off the homemade one, I was away!! A Zenta Telecaster copy (left) followed shortly after that. I never had any lessons but, thanks to Dad, I knew the theory of how chords were formed so I set about creating my own guitar chords. I would painstakingly work out whereabouts on the guitar I could get the notes of the chords I knew on piano and wrote my own guitar chord book. Having no books to compare with, I really thought I'd invented all my own chord shapes. I remember seeing Dave Hill with Slade on Top of the Pops playing one of my chords. It was a D major with the F# played with the little finger on the D string, I was furious and started yelling "He's nicked one of my chords!".

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The Dadocaster

Money was always pretty tight in my family so when my brother Tommy wanted an electric guitar, Dad, having pretty good basic woodworking and fabrication skills, said he'd make one for him.

He needed a template for the guitar body so one Saturday morning, he took Tommy down to Wilson Peck's Music shop in Sheffield town centre and asked the salesman if he could look at a Fender Stratocaster. The salesman got it off the wall and handed it to Dad who looked it up and down and then started playing it. Dad asked him a few questions and then played it a bit more and eventually the salesman went off to deal with another customer.

When the salesman was out of sight, dad whipped out a roll of wallpaper from his inside pocket, placed it on the floor, put the Strat on top of it, quickly drew round it with a marker pen, rolled it up and put it back in his pocket. When the salesman returned, Dad handed the Strat back, said he'd think about it and beat a hasty retreat with his body template safely in his pocket.

A nice new set of "Mohawk" strings and there it was.........."The Dadocaster".

He bought a cheap valve amp chassis, put a perforated zinc cover on it and plugged it into a speaker cab made out of an old TV set.

When Tommy graduated to a real Fender Strat, the Dadocaster ended up in a cupboard for 10 years then it became mine.