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Sorry if this seems a bit self-indulgent. I was asked a few questions, and the answers have turned into a mini autobiography!
Why the violin?
When I was quite young, maybe as young as three or four, I started to listen to records (Atlas Records?) of various plays set to music. There was the Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, Bluebeard, amongst many others, all set to appropriate classical works, by Tchaikovsky, or Mendelssohn, for example.
I LOVED that music. I listened more to the music than the plays. So, slowly, I started to get classical records. My father bought some for me, and my Uncle Len was a big classical fan, and gave me lots of records. Soon I discovered the great violin concertos, and I was so stirred and moved by these works I wanted to play them! So I started asking my Dad for violin lessons, but he was reluctant to let me have them. He was a professional musician himself, and he didn't like the idea of me becoming one too! He would remind me all the time that if you're not super-successful, it can be a hard life scratching round for gigs (he was quite right!).
I went to Manchester Grammar School, where private violin lessons could be arranged through the school. I badgered my Dad, who already had a violin for me, but was still holding back on getting me a teacher. Many boys had started when they were seven or even younger; the rest who wanted to play started in the first term. I began taking lessons in the second term. Maybe Dad was just waiting to make sure I really wanted to learn. Anyway, I took to it with great enthusiasm, and would do my practice as soon as I came in from school. Not long after, the concert secretary at the club where my Dad worked gave me an old violin that his grandfather had bought from G. A. Chanot in Manchester, in the late nineteenth century. It was gorgeous! A rich dark sound, not unlike the sound on my records! I had to play even more of the time. That violin sealed my fate.
It wasn't long before I was playing along with my records. I copied chunks of the music by ear and, if I couldn't get exactly the right notes, I would make up stuff to fit. Meanwhile, my lessons were scales, arpeggios, and little teaching pieces that I seldom could be bothered to work on at home. I heard a rock group called Curved Air, with Darryl Way on violin, and realised that the fiddle could work in pop music too. Soon, that was what I was copying, and I stopped having lessons before two years were up. This is really why my reading skills are not great. After I finished having a teacher, I worked out everything else by ear. There was no-one insisting that I should read, so I didn't.
I heard Pink Floyd, and copied Dave Gilmour's solos. I heard Deep Purple, and copied Ritchie Blackmore's solos. I heard Hendrix, and copied him! I spent a lot of time learning (on violin!) guitar solos from the players of the early seventies.
Then I heard Gong.
I was amazed by them. I went to see them in 1974 at the Free
Trade Hall in Manchester, and it turned my head around.
After that, I was copying Didier Malherbe's sax solos on my
violin. Listening to Didier was what shifted my attention onto
the saxophone as a source of inspiration. Soon Frank Zappa joined
my list of heroes, as well as Christian Vander's Magma (whose
teenage violinist, Didier Lockwood, I really admired. Still do.)
Gong was my major influence for about three or four years. So much so, that I formed a Gong cover band called Aqua. I played guitar in this band. Our first three gigs were at street parties on Silver Jubilee Day, 1977. The first ended in ignominy when the organisers sent on a Scottish bagpiper to get us off! At the second and third we were outdoors, and it rained.
I went to University in 1978 (to study biology in Brighton), and expanded my musical interests to ECM jazz, Keith Jarrett, Eberhard Weber, Ralph Towner, Jan Garbarek. My house mate, Jeff Daniels, would play me all sorts of interesting jazz, Coltrane, Miles Davis, English players like Stan Sulzman, Don Weller, Paz, Allan Holdsworth, and Evan Parker. Another player he turned me onto was Mike Brecker, but it wasn't until years later that I started to copy his stuff! During this time, I would sit in with anyone who would let me, including Joe Lee Wilson, the American blues and jazz singer. I also got to know John Eacott (later of Loose Tubes) and Adrian York.
I began to learn about chords, playing guitar in a jazz-rock group (Sirocco) with Jeff.
When I really got inspired was after Dad had given me a double bass for my twenty-first birthday, and I went to a Jazz Education weekend, with bass-player Peter Ind. He was the first person to explain to me how the chords came from the scales, and how the chords moved through a key, and into the next. I learnt all this on bass. That gave me a good grounding for absorbing the structures of tunes. I still often learn chord sequences by playing them on bass first.
In fact, my first paid gig was on bass. I had asked a bass player to let me try his instrument (a beautiful English bass by William Calow), and he like my playing. Some weeks later, he called me to do a dep. for him when he couldn't get to a gig. It was at the local jazz club, backing Don Lusher, a top-class English trombonist. I was so scared, I told him I'd ring back. I phoned my dad, and asked him whether I should do the gig. Of course, said he! So I did the gig. Don Lusher is a gentleman. He was so supportive and helpful to me. He knew I was not an experienced bassist, and he said, "Don't worry, we'll play the blues all night, with the odd rhythm changes." He gave me loads of solos (which I was probably better at than walking bass at the time). It was a great experience, and encouraged me very much.
After this, I worked away on violin, learning chord changes, playing through all the keys, learning tunes, and listening to sax players. When I finished my degree in 1982, I moved to Bristol.