My first record player at age 11. First album: Beach Boys Greatest Hits.
First guitar at age 11: Hofner President. Started teaching myself to play. Wrote songs for myself. Voice broke and the beautiful soprano became a hoarse beast! Decided I wanted to be in bands but wanted to get qualified, do well at school etc.
First band was a bunch of a hairy wannabe rockers whose template was Def Leppard. My hair wasn’t long enough. I was the only writer in the band and they didn’t like my songs. Neither did I. Wasn’t comfortable writing bog-standard rock. Band split and I took the singer.
