Bottleneck Guitar
 Me and The Blues
blues links
I clearly remember when I got hooked on playing guitar and when I got hooked on playing the blues. 2 Separate events.

The first, wanting to play guitar was when I was appearing with my brothers (who all played trumpets in a kids troupe called "The Silver Smiths". My dad had grand ideas of getting a loads of kids together to play in old peoples homes and fetes and things like that. We actually played at loads of events.

There was Me and my older brother on trumpets my younger brother was drumming and then I remember ballroom dancers called "Paula and Keith" from a local dance school. I also remember a girl Called "Waridha Abdullah" who had the most fantastic voice for her age and also a ballerina who's name was "Olwyn"
We where playing at a church hall event (St Mary's in South Shields my home town) at the same time as a local group playing Beatles stuff.


We had been on and I remember sitting on the stairs at the back of the stage with tears in my eyes hating what we were doing and wanting all else to play a guitar and look cool on stage.

I think from that day on I hated my father for forcing me in to music. Really hated him.
The Second was whilst I was in the army in 1973. I was sent on a course to Exeter and was staying in a hotel for a fortnight. I took with me one of those early 1970's cassette players. Those gray plastic things with five buttons and one of them was red that everyone had and you were the bees knees if you had one.
Anyway, I had a copy of a Cream tape and I was listening to "Crossroads" one night with headphones on and I really listened properly for the first time to Eric Clapton playing lead in the song...........I was totally blown away by the guitar solos. I used to listen to the song all night till I fell asleep listening to it and probably listened to it every night for a fortnight. I was hooked!. I just had to learn to play lead guitar and especially blues. Clapton definitely was God as far as I was concerned
Similar to this one

It was not until I left the army in the late 70's that I got myself a guitar. I bought one from a second hand shop in South Shields. A dead cheepy thing with no name on the head. So I took it to bits, sanded it all down, got a book out of the library on "How to make Guitars" and put it all back together again, making sure the neck was straight etc. I also got a book on how to play the guitar and played the blues scale till I could find it anywhere on the neck from the nut right up to the top fret, in any key. Then I had a problem............It's OK playing lead but you need to know some chords. So back to the library and got myself a chord book. I soon learned that there was many ways of playing chords and adapted what I had discovered to play along with lead breaks. For example why use the structured chord for "B" when you can get away with covering all just three strings at the 4th fret. Then it clicked. Play the lead breaks around the fret you are keying the chord at. So I of and got myself an electronic organ so I could set up a backing beat and plugged the guitar in to a stereo system for noise.
My next step was to find someone to play with. So I contacted a friend who used to be in the schools brass band who played bass and we used to get together in his house to jam. The next step was a singer and drummer. The group was called "CID". Our first gig If I remember rightly was in the South Shields Busman's club in around 1980. But after a few gigs and playing at the New Crown Hotel Blues night I decided to go my own way as people wanted to play pop stuff.

Rehearsing in the back room of a local pub The Commercial in South Shields

Article in the Shields Gazette
click to see full write up

A gig in The Brigantine in South Shields

So I put together a group called "Southbank" With Eric the drummer from CID and two other members "John Clare" Vocals and "Marshall Spence" on Bass. We played a few gigs around the area the biggest being in The Londonderry Hall. We used to play regular in The Marsden Inn on Saturday nights they had a late licence till 2.00am.

One thing sticks in my mind about one gig in particular. Sitting right in front of the stage area was a group of rough looking blokes. One was actually carving his name on the table top with a flick knife............. I remember I was conscious of trying to play the lead in The Free number "Alright Now" and trying very very hard to play it as good as I possibly could.
Another gig was played in a pub in Jarrow and we played really well but there was absolutely no response from the crowd. I mean every number we played. They never clapped once. At half time I was in the toilets pointing percy at the porcelain when the guy next to me said "You sounded good" I asked him why don't they clap and he said "They do it all the time here on purpose they like to wind turns up". They succeeded. The bass player lost his rag at one point but, we had to play on till the end. A big lesson was learnt that night. Some people can be right B's. I got very disillusioned and was ready to jack it all in. Which I did a few weeks later and did not pick a guitar up again seriously until 2004.