It’s mostly been about luck. A few junctions in time, where something very lucky happened, define my ongoing experience with music and, in particular, the electric guitar..

I was/am very lucky to have two excellent older brothers who, although sometimes unknowingly or grudgingly, exposed me to music that I would fall head over heels in love with and which would inspire me grind through the process of ‘learning to play’ the guitar.

Anything else other than trying to learn and play Neil Young, AC/DC, Ramones or Sex Pistols riffs was seen as a pointless distraction at school, much to my parents’ consternation. This was the era of punk, button badges, safety pins, coloured vinyl singles, Sounds, Melody Maker and The NME, all incredibly exciting and inspirational - get a guitar, learn some chords, go form a band! Anyone could do it and it seemed that musical proficiency had very little to do with it. It’s hard to describe just how exciting it was to venture down to Woolworths on a Saturday afternoon, pocket full of shrapnel, to illicitly purchase a copy of ‘Holidays in the Sun’ by the Pistols and then smuggling it back in the family home as if it were weapons-grade plutonium. Mum and Dad were wonderful, loving and patient parents, but as old-school middle class conservatives, they viewed anything that happened musically after Gilbert and Sullivan as most likely the work of lazy work-shy hippies, drug addicts, the sporn of Satan or any combination of the above and likely to cause the downfall of Western Civilisation. Which, of course, just made Steve Jone’s yobbo guitar sounds all the more enticing and exciting. It was always about those guitars. Musically, a glorious time to be a teenager.
Then came that first baptism of joy which we all understand, that first time when one was ‘allowed’ to play a reasonably good quality, in tune guitar through a good quality LOUD amp....that feeling of immense power, like holding a machine gun that was loaded with fuzzy vibe bullets of visceral cool. Without knowing it at the time, we all wanted everything to go up to 11.

It was a very lucky day when, a few years later. I crossed paths with The Chairman. Having met at college, we soon bonded over a shared love of guitars, music and pretty much everything else. A plan for musical domination of The World started there and what has endured is a telepathic understanding as two guitarists that has become exhilarating and unique. As songwriters we have thrown all manner of instrumentation at our recorded output, from horn sections to mandolins, but it’s always come back to two guitars and our ability to make something happen that is much bigger than the sum of the parts. Some of that is more luck intervening, but it’s also about thousands of hours of shared experience , shared grit and determination and pushing beyond the comfort zone of the easy and familiar.

And now, luckiest of all, I find myself with the three big beautiful bastards I was destined to be with, in the best band in the world. I’m still ‘learning to play’ the guitar, there is so much to aspire to and there’s still nothing half as good as plugging in and riding the electricity.
I remain in awe of the following pantheon of Gods, who still inspire and scintillate today as much as they ever have….

Steve Jones, Steve Hackett, Alex Lifeson, Peter Green, Gary Moore, Mark Knopfler,
Brian May, Prince, Angus Young.

Equipment:
Guitars: Fender, Epiphone.
Amps: Blackstar, Fender, Orange.
FX: Line 6