1954 - 1987

Born in Stevenston, Ayrshire, Scotland.

MOVED TO GLASGOW IN 1960.

I took piano lessons, sang in the church choir and entered Burns singing competitions.

I remember first hearing the Beatles - 'She Loves you Yeah Yeah Yeah' - at a wedding reception in Glasgow too, so I assume the profession of DJ is not as new as we like to think. Heady days in the late sixties, with Top of the Pops playing the likes of Hendrix, the Who and Cream - or is it The Who and The Cream?

MOVED TO BATHGATE IN 1968.

Bought the Hendrix 'Are You Experienced' album on the Polydor 'Trackback' label so it was already back catalogue. I used to carry it around at school so people would know what I was into. That was when I started playing guitar and trying to write songs.

The first band was formed out of the Youth Fellowship at church. We called ourselves Raven and split when we finished school. It was a five piece band - guitar, bass, drums, vocals and echoplex - and we loved Led Zep and Hendrix and etc. It always used to piss me off that other guitarists would come in to jam and they always seemed to have better gear, better licks and better looks. Maybe it was because they weren't Christians. But we watched in awe when the top Scottish Christian band Flame played at our church.

MOVED TO EDINBURGH IN 1972

I bought an acoustic guitar because I'd grown out of all that noisy rock stuff, and studied theology at Edinburgh University with a view to becoming a minister for the Church of Scotland. I nearly blew it in my first year, because the theology degree required two subjects in the first year and I only passed one. I was going to be thrown out, but got back in because I only failed one subject. Stand out track that summer - 'I gave it up for music and the free electric band' by Albert Hammond.

I joined Caedmon the following year after hearing about them in an SCM meeting. Caedmon were a Christian folk rock band who played all over the country for several years before playing our farewell concert in 1978 in Edinburgh. We recorded a farewell album too with a minimum pressing of 500 which we sold at cost price - £2.50. Apparently it's now a collectors item and the second best folk rock album ever. We sold the rights years ago, which is why you can now get the Caedmon album on CD.

EDINBURGH 1978

i joined Ever After (the then current incarnation of Flame) and played with them for two years whilst running the Netherbow Arts Centre book shop for my day job. It was through Ever After that I got the gig as guitarist in the backing band for Nutshell who supported Andrae Crouch and the Disciples on their 1989 UK tour. As a result, yes - I've played the Albert Hall.

MOVED TO LONDON 1980

The gig with Nutshell gave me access to the shit-hot London Christian music scene, so I moved to London and wasted the best part of a year farting about trying to get someone else's band off the ground. Bitter? Me?

MOVED TO MANCHESTER 1980

With the disappointment in London behind me I moved to Manchester where my girlfriend was studying. I spent a year with various bands which failed to get out of the rehearsal room and then gave up and started taking day jobs more seriously. I married my girlfriend and a couple of years later we went out to Zimbabwe.

MOVED TO HARARE 1983

Here was a chance to do something different. Leaving my guitars behind, I took a fiddle out with me to Zimbabwe and started teaching myself how to play Scottish folk tunes whilst teaching English in one of the townships during the day. After about six months of daily practice I taped myself as a more objective way of assessing how I was doing.

The next day I went out and bought a second hand guitar.

MOVED BACK TO MANCHESTER 1984

I got a proper day job, we bought a house and started a family. The day job included using computers to handle publishing and building databases.

MANCHESTER 1987

The marriage broke. Time to start writing music again.

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