bands and projects

1984: I was asked to join a band with my friends and the only option left was to be the singer. I went for it but fancied hiding behind a guitar, so I bought one. A few weeks later I had learned a few chords and had my first band rehearsal with 'Bizarre Alternatives'.

The first thing I realized was I had a rubbish voice. The second thing was, that if I wanted to be in a band, I'd better get good at playing guitar instead. I became heavily influenced by such great players as Gary Moore and Randy Rhoads and fell in love with the instrument.
I spent the next four years studying, six hours a day, seven days a week. No pubs. No girlfriends. No TV, Just guitar.

MASK 1987

BIZARRE ALTERNATIVES

1984

During art college I found some like minded musicians and formed 'Mask'. We played some Ozzy songs and a few songs by Rush. This was the first time I had played through a Marshall amp and was hooked straight away! The only live performance we did was in my living room during my 18th birthday party!

While rehearsing with Abuse, I bumped into Neil Brown, the other guitarist from my 'Urgent' days and we decided to mould our two bands into one and 'Big Trouble' was born. We stayed together for 7 years. We played hundreds of gigs and recorded three albums worth of material.

Click on the promo video below to see how much fun we had, and next to it is one of our ballads.

After four years of hard study, I felt ready and auditioned for a local Stourbridge band called 'Urgent'. When we finished playing the first song, the singer said "You're hired!" My hard work had paid off. I was in a band with the best local musicians around and did my first gig with them two weeks later.

This band lasted about a year until the singer left to go on tour with 'Neds Atomic Dustbin' as sound engineer. He was hard to replace, so we split up and I went to Tenerife to play in bars for a few months. Here, I did my first guitar lesson in a dodgy apartment for 500pts. (about £2.50 at the time) I jammed with the guitarist from 'Showaddywaddy', repeatedly drove on the wrong side of the road and nearly trashed a car when I left the handbrake off on a steep road.

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URGENT 1989

ABUSE 1990

SHED

BIG TROUBLE 1991

In 1990 I got a phone call from bass player Dom asking me to join his band. We rehearsed and became 'Shed'. Our singer was the drummer from 80's rock band 'Shy' Alan Kelly.

Came back from Tenerife and met bass player James Rudge and joined what was left of his band 'Tilt'. It was just a 'show off' band, so we showed off, got it out of our system and became more mature musicians because of it. We did a few local gigs under the name of 'Abuse'