I can remember trotting out once a month to have him turn the knobs a bit. It was very impressive the way he did it, he actually looked like an overgrown ant, but those few seconds he needed to tune my classical, turned him into a God.
Then I got my tuning fork.
It was silver with A=440Hz written on it, which seemd cool I thought. Then I bought „The Guitar Handbook“ from Ralph Denyer (which I still have today) to find out how to tune, and suddenly discovered there were more than 3 chords and that Andy Summers was real.
Jesus all these chords and scales! I’m sure Bowie and Paul Simon don’t know them I thought – there’s hope for me yet.
So I started playing songs from Bowie and Paul Simon (so I didn’t have to learn ALL the chords and scales) and was quickly band from the groundfloor of my house, being sent upstairs to the cold bedromm which I shared with 3 other brothers. But it didn’t take long, and they banned me too.
What to do?
My fingers were itching, I was the new David Simon Dylon or something, it was cold outside in England, and the toilet was too small to practice (and one of my brothers was normally in there) - what was to become of this budding star?

It was at this time that I met Steve, he played too, and his parents owned an old peoples home, and he lived in a bullet proof caravan or something in the garden, which was cool, so we played in the caravan every evening.
I started writing songs about leaving girls, even though I didn’t have one, I thought it might be uncool to write a song about meeting them, it’s a bit slushy, leaving them is better.
I of course learnt all the minor chords and tried to impress Steve with a Cm, but he knew it already, so I did a weekend of learning a Dm9b7 – that got him – all my songs had this chord in it for the next year or so. Nobody noticed though, because nobody really listened, except for Steve and I.

We tried to play all of Bowie’s songs and then recorded epic versions with 30 minute solos on a cassette recorder – I think it was a sharp. We were going to be famous (with our own songs of course not Bowie’s).

Steve had a mate he used to visit, he played too (who didn’t) and everytime he came back after the weekend, he had a new song from his mate Paul with him, which he always made out to be better than mine. But this only got me writing more.

Anyway, then I met a girl and started songs about leaving them wasn’t so bad after all I thought – I dreamed of my 2 hour epic „Love Opera“ which should includes meeting and leaving a girl, then I relaised I could probaly build it out to 2 hours 10 mins if I included the „Being with a Girl“ bit as well. Never did that one though.

I used to think Steve could sing, well he could a bit, so I kept asking him how do you sing, I used to stay:
„Steve, how cou you sing? Can you teach me?“
And he used to answer with:
„Well, you just do it.“

That was my vocal training, it was cheap and to the point, no scales, no practicing, just the truth.

We used to go out at night and walk around the town, we got song ideas like „The Blue Stairway“. That one we got after seeing, well, a blue stairway.
Then we were eating dry roasted peanuts, and I said „I really hate the dust.“ Another song of course. Steve’s mate and I had a competion writng a song called „I Really Hate the Dust“ – Steve’s mates was better of course. We could have written a song about anything then. I’ve written about 300 since I was 15. A lot were crap, but some were not bad.

We started playing at parties and stuff, we even got a gig at Steve’s dad’s old peoples home. Most of them were deaf, I think a couple were dead actually. But we were excited. Then we did a christmas gig at a home for the mentally insane. That was interesting. Like „One Sung over the Cuckoos Nest“ or something. They only new one line of „On the first Day of Christmas“, and kept singing „and a partridge in a pear tree!“ – to every song, but they were happy.

Thereafter I went to university, and kept writing more „I’m leaving my Girl“ songs, and then „Oh, She just Left Me“ and then, „Maybe She’ll Leave me Again“ and „She just Came Back, baby“.....