Ones beginnings.

Where do I start?

Well, it's been interesting, my 34 years on this planet so far. When I tell people the stories of my life, I can see the look of disbelief on their faces. I'll readily admit they do sound extraordinary, but every word is the truth. The stories of my life are the things you hear, but they always seem to happen to someone else..... Maybe I'm that someone else but I'm genuinely a normal, average every day chap.

Born to an age of disco, the death of punk, emergence of new wave and the still dominant ABBA, all with Kate Bush screeching "Heathcliff, it's me, it's Kathy, I've come home, I'm so cooooooolllllddddd"...... Why did that song have to be my birth no1? Actually love Kate Bush's work, but that song just gets my goat! OK, I digress, sorry. My parents were exceptional. I'm the son of a train driver, who gave everything he could so my brother and I could have the best, wherever possible, and a loving mother who unfortunately died when I was 14 from cancer.

Brought up on a diet of ABBA, Slade, Chris de Burgh, Paul McCartney and his Wings, obviously The Beatles, Roy Orbison, and many other musical idols, no wonder I have a wide ranging taste in music. I definitely got the softer side of my music love from my mother and the harder side from my father. I remember being about 3 and screaming the lyrics to 'Get down and get with it' with my father, one sunny summer's afternoon, while he was playing the record on his big old ditton 44's doing some housework.

My parents still influence me to this day, especially my mother. I wish she was here to see me married to my very beautiful wife, and to see me onstage with my band. Her death inspired me to do the things I do today. With my father working lots of night shifts, I had to stay at home to make sure she took her prescribed drugs when most of my peers would be outside playing or chasing girls in those early teenage years. I don't begrudge my peers; however, with the exception of a select few friends, especially my best friend Ewen, I didn't have many mates my age when my mother finally succumbed to that horrible disease. With her gone, my father saw that I was lost and with the help of Ewen, who taught me my first chords, he bought me my first guitar. My mother always encouraged me to sing, I sung in choirs, but upon her death, and with my newly acquired mediocre guitar skills, I decided to give lead singing a go and I found out I was pretty good. Ewen and I joined forces to form a duo with very little success and only 1 or 2 gigs performed. However, I soon joined my first real band and started performing to enthusiastic audiences. Concurrently to that, probably the biggest performance of my life happened, and it happened by total fluke...

....and that's a story for the next post....