Barnsbury Boy - Paul Kenealy: Music: the Early Days
Paul Kenealy. His Early Music Days
We were a musical family. Dad played piano, mum also played piano, although not as well as dad, and with a much different repertoire, and so my sister Gillian and I were both sent to piano lessons from an early age.
My piano teacher was George Kilsby. He lived just around the corner from us in Highbury Quadrant. We had moved into our brand new ground floor flat there in about 1955. George and his wife Elsa, who were friends of my Mum’s from our time in Newington Green, had a house with a lounge and a dining room, very up market for an LCC place. George had a piano in his dining room, which had connecting doors to the sitting room, so he used to give lessons there in the back room. I used to go round there at about six in the evening for my painful experience. It was painful for Elsa and her family too, because I could hear them watching the TV in the front room and wincing every time they heard George giving me a slap across the knuckles when I played a bum note, which was just about one every bar. It soon became apparent that I was not concert pianist material, and my Mum and Dad stopped sending me.
At Newington Green school I was a member of the choir, and once was given sixpence by the headmaster for singing a solo in assembly. I was so proud that I went straight to the sweet shop on the way home and bought my Mum a quarter pound of sherbet lemons which were her favourite sweets. I also used to do country dancing. I was always a bit of a show-off. We had to perform in the Islington Town Hall in a sort of inter-school competition, and ended up at the English Folk Dance and Song Society at Cecil Sharpe House in Primrose Hill. Once again, I think the only reason for my taking part was because there were plenty of pretty girls to dance with.
Gillian was clever and went to Dame Alice Owen’s School in Clerkenwell, which was a privately funded grammar school, as it happens it was funded by the brewing industry, which wasn’t really in line with Mum’s Methodist principals. Throughout my primary and junior school I had been reminded about how clever my big sister was, ‘Paul Kenealy, you’re not as clever as your sister Gillian, so you’d better try harder’.
Anyhow, having failed the ’11 plus’ I was schlepped around various grammar schools to see if I could get in. Fortunately for me, I failed them all, much to my Mum’s annoyance, and I ended up having an interview at my preferred hall of residence, Barnsbury. The headmaster, Mr. Davies, took me into his study, and asked me a few pertinent questions. Who is the Queen of England? How many days are there in February in a Leap Year? What’s 8 times 7? Why do you want to come to Barnsbury School? Because I want to play in the brass band, Sir. I was in!!! The fact that my friends from Newington Green; Michael MacDonald, Christopher Bunting and Nicholas Patsious were also starting that September was my biggest reason, but I really did want to play in the brass band, and so it was decided.
September 1958 was to see me walking to the Arsenal Tube, getting a 1½d ticket to Holloway Road and walking round the corner into Eden Grove. I had made it at last to the Big Boys School. First day at Big School is a life changing time for anyone, and I was no exception. To start with, all the other boys seemed bigger than me, especially the second years. My class was 1B, which obviously is not as good as 1A, but then was better than 1C, D, E, F etc.. One of the new friends I made on the first day was Griff Lewis. He lived with his mum and dad in their dairy in Gillespie Road, so we travelled to and from school together every day on the tube.
Our first year form teacher was Mr McHughes, who was also the music teacher, so we had a piano in our classroom. As well as the regular lessons such as English and maths, we had one lesson a week of music. Mr McHughes played and the class sung. Men of Harlech, Vicar of Bray, A Rovin’ and the school song, Jerusalem. Those of us who could hold a tune were given a bye straight into the choir. In a rough all-boys school in the unfashionable borough of Islington getting boys to volunteer for the choir was like asking a turkey if it was looking forward to Christmas. Anyway I volunteered because being in the choir was a good way of joining the Brass Band. Another reason why volunteering for the choir wasn’t cool was because choir practice was on a Wednesday afternoon, AFTER school.
Only dummy’s would volunteer for extra time at school. However my plan worked out, and within a few months of starting at Barnsbury, I was sitting in the medical room, where band practice started off, with a cornet in my hands, puckering my lips, and blowing my tiny brains out.
Sometime in about ’58 dad came home with a little beauty. A Dansette record player. Electric! He must have bought it second hand, because it came with a couple of records, and they were 45’s. One was Pat Boone; Tutti Frutti, and the other was Elvis; Heartbreak Hotel. I had first heard Elvis on the radio in about ’57. You have to remember that back in those days we in England got everything late. Cars, if you could afford one, were still black. TV and Films were black and white. Men’s suits were grey, as was the weather. Every Saturday morning I would listen to ‘Uncle Mac’s Children’s Hour’ on the radio. The usual fare was (I’m a) Pink Toothbrush, (You’re a) Blue Toothbrush; This Old House; and my favourite, The Laughing Policeman. Then one day good ol’ Uncle Mac played Heartbreak Hotel. That was it for me. I had no idea where Lonely Street was, or why anyone would stay in a hotel if they weren’t on holiday, but I could understand the music. Since My Baby Left Me, boom boom, I’ve found a New Place to Dwell, boom boom, It’s Down at the end of Lonely Street, Called Heartbreak Hotel.
After that I couldn’t get enough. I only had this one Elvis record, but I learned every word. Heartbreak Hotel was my signature tune. From that point there was no stopping me. I was listening to Gene Vincent, Eddy Cochran, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and of course Buddy Holly. I was dismissive of all girl singers except Brenda Lee, who I thought sounded great, until I saw her on TV. Still her records sounded great. My original record purchase was Duane Eddy’s first release in this country, Rebel Rouser. The price is etched in my brain, 6/8d.
I did a paper round soon after starting at Barnsbury. I used to get fifteen shillings a week, and I got another five shillings a week pocket money. I had to earn this with chores around the house. My job was cleaning out the grate on a Saturday, going to the shops to get the greengroceries, and polishing the brass in the living room. My friend along the road in Highbury New Park was Ron Harvey, he and I were both Duane Eddy fans, and shared records. Duane Eddy was playing at the Finsbury Park Empire, and unbelievably my Dad bought three tickets, one for him, one for me and one for Ron. After that night I couldn’t wait for my next ‘gig’; although we didn’t know that expression in those days. I’ve no idea what happened to Ron Harvey, although I know my copy of ‘Rebel Rouser’ got broke at his sister’s birthday party. Come to think, it must have been a 78rpm, ‘cos 45’s didn’t break.
Anyway, having seen Duane Eddy live, all I wanted to do was play guitar. I had bought an old acoustic guitar in a junk shop at the Angel with money saved up from my paper round. I played until my fingers ached, and then played some more. Duane Eddy was indeed a good guitarist. His version of Chet Atkins ‘Trambone’ has fascinated me for 45 years. I can just about play it now, although Eddy’s version is nowhere near as good as Atkins’ original.
My next outing to Finsbury Park was to see Cliff Richard. Every boy who played guitar wanted to be Hank Marvin. He played a beautiful red Fender Stratocaster, although you had to guess the colour if you were watching on tv. Dad bought another three tickets, this time my friend at Barnsbury, Geoffrey Nardini, was the lucky third. Cliff’s first record was ‘Move It’ with his backing band The Drifters. We arrived at the Finsbury Park Empire to see ‘Cliff Richard and the Shadows’ on the bill. What’s happened to The Drifters then? They’d changed their name because of the vocal group in the States.
Dad and I bought my new guitar in Berry Pianos in Holloway road. By coincidence just a couple of doors away from where Joe Meek would later set up his recording studio. I can’t remember how much the guitar was, all I can remember is it had a solid body with a single cutaway, sprayed white, a neck with finger board and head, and all the electrics. It was basically all there, but you had to put it together yourself. Dad and I had many a happy hour with glue, screws, soldering irons and polish. It had one pickup and no tremolo arm. One volume control and one tone control. Easy enough to play, but there was one drawback. I didn’t have an amp!
In the third year at school as well as Griff Lewis, I also made two new friends. The first was Jerome Want-Sibley who was on my wave length as far as humour was concerned, but wasn’t musical. The second was Billy Pitt-Jones. Billy lived down the Caledonian Road and we got together ‘cos he played guitar too. He had a red Hoffner ‘Colorado’, a kind of copy of a Gibson 335, the guitar that Chuck Berry played. Bill’s mum paid £35 on the ‘never never’ for this guitar. Bill also had an AMP, a Watkins Dominator, which was about 30 watts with two 8” speakers in a kind of triangular cabinet, so the speakers faced out at about 60 degrees. Very funky. Anyway, there were two inputs, so we could both play through the amp. Only one channel though, so as it was Bill’s amp, his guitar was always turned up louder than mine. Anyway his guitar had TWO pickups, so he was twice as loud.
Not many months later I had saved up my paper round money to put a deposit on an amp, and my Dad had to come to the shop with me to sign the HP papers. Can’t remember the price but the amp was also a Watkins, but not as good as Bill’s; only one 8” speaker and 20 watts, but sure loud enough for my bedroom, and the odd outing to the school hall.
There was one more guitarist that I played with. Also from Barnsbury, Steve Howe was always ahead of Bill and me, but he tried to teach us. We would bunk off in the afternoon and go to Steve’s flat, which was just the other side of the Cally from school. Steve was a couple of classes down from Bill and me, and was always certain that all he wanted to do was be a professional musician. Steve would play us records of people like Chet Atkins, Jim Byrd, Charlie Christian and Wes Montgomery, all of these guys played jazz, which was a bit out of my league in those days.
Eventually we formed a band. As we didn’t need three guitars, and as my ‘home made’ guitar was easy to adapt, I bought a set of Bass strings, removed two of the machine heads, and Hey Presto! I was a bass player. The fourth member of this quartet was another Barnsbury boy, John McDonald who played drums. Now Johnny Mac was never going to be Tony Meehan, but he had one big advantage, he had a brand new Premier drum kit. His dad was a screw in Pentonville Prison, and had access to the prison officers club in Roman Way. We used to rehearse in Johnny Mac’s house which was in Wheelwright Street, just by the prison. So Bill Steve and John all lived off the Caledonian Road, and I was the outsider from Highbury.
We played a few times, once at the PO club on a Sunday night, once in a pub in the Cally at a talent night, and once in a youth club just off Holloway Road. I can’t remember what we played, probably Shadows and Ventures numbers. They were all instrumentals as none of us would sing, and we didn’t own a microphone anyway. As leader of the group Steve decided that we should break up and practice at home till we were better. Steve got Much Better.
I was without a band, aged fifteen and on the scrapheap, so I went back to playing trumpet. My old piano teacher, George Kilsby played in a band with a local trumpet player called Ernie Higginbotham. The band were all ex-Regimental bandsmen. They had plenty of work at weekends, so offered me a place playing second trumpet in the band one Saturday night. I seem to remember that the gig was at the Commonwealth centre, just off Trafalgar Square. The line up was Ernie on trumpet, a tenor sax, trombone, George on piano, bass and drums. Plus me on second trumpet. I had to borrow a tux from one of the bandsmen. Needless to say it didn’t fit me and I still hate bow ties to this day.
Now I could read music, but my sight reading was not great, so Ernie gave me a piece of advice that I remember to this day. ‘Play the notes you know, and leave out the ones you don’t’. It was all pretty tame stuff really, I think the Tenor sax player sang the ‘vocal refrain’. Some dance music: three waltzes, three foxtrots, three quicksteps. Then a five minute fag break while the punters went back to their tables, then another set of nine tunes. In one tune, don’t remember which, Ernie stood up and played a fantastic Dizzy Gillespie type solo. After that number I said to him how much I had enjoyed his solo. He plays the same one every night, said the Tenor player. And Ernie agreed, “I learned that solo in 1950,” he said “and I’ve being playing it ever since”.
It was around that time, 1962 that I met John Walker. I was still doing my paper round from a shop in Blackstock Road. My pal Griff Lewis had just had his 16th birthday, and although he was in the same school year as me, he was about 9 months older. Anyway Griff had just bought a Lambretta scooter; or rather his Dad had bought it for him. I wondered what a scooter would cost, and how long it would take me to save up the money at 15 bob a week. So I was looking at the ad’s in the paper shop window where I worked, when I noticed an ad which read ‘Bass Player Wanted’. I wrote down the number, which was the same exchange as mine, so I knew he lived nearby. Later I rang it and asked for ‘John’.
John lived at the other end of Highbury New Park, so we met in the middle, sometime on a Sunday night, in the autumn of 1962. We walked up and down Highbury New Park for a while, then popped into Fenner’s sweetshop for five Cadets, I think John smoked three and I smoked two. Eventually we ended up at John’s flat because John’s mum and dad let him smoke indoors, and mine didn’t. John also had a Hoffner guitar, but his was a big blond job with a Bigsby tremolo arm. John could certainly play. Whenever you meet someone new with a similar but different talent to yourself, whether in music, sport, art or any other field you are often impressed by their ability. My first impression of John was not wrong. Over the next few years he proved to me what a good guitarist he was.
November 2013
We were a musical family. Dad played piano, mum also played piano, although not as well as dad, and with a much different repertoire, and so my sister Gillian and I were both sent to piano lessons from an early age.
My piano teacher was George Kilsby. He lived just around the corner from us in Highbury Quadrant. We had moved into our brand new ground floor flat there in about 1955. George and his wife Elsa, who were friends of my Mum’s from our time in Newington Green, had a house with a lounge and a dining room, very up market for an LCC place. George had a piano in his dining room, which had connecting doors to the sitting room, so he used to give lessons there in the back room. I used to go round there at about six in the evening for my painful experience. It was painful for Elsa and her family too, because I could hear them watching the TV in the front room and wincing every time they heard George giving me a slap across the knuckles when I played a bum note, which was just about one every bar. It soon became apparent that I was not concert pianist material, and my Mum and Dad stopped sending me.
At Newington Green school I was a member of the choir, and once was given sixpence by the headmaster for singing a solo in assembly. I was so proud that I went straight to the sweet shop on the way home and bought my Mum a quarter pound of sherbet lemons which were her favourite sweets. I also used to do country dancing. I was always a bit of a show-off. We had to perform in the Islington Town Hall in a sort of inter-school competition, and ended up at the English Folk Dance and Song Society at Cecil Sharpe House in Primrose Hill. Once again, I think the only reason for my taking part was because there were plenty of pretty girls to dance with.
Gillian was clever and went to Dame Alice Owen’s School in Clerkenwell, which was a privately funded grammar school, as it happens it was funded by the brewing industry, which wasn’t really in line with Mum’s Methodist principals. Throughout my primary and junior school I had been reminded about how clever my big sister was, ‘Paul Kenealy, you’re not as clever as your sister Gillian, so you’d better try harder’.
Anyhow, having failed the ’11 plus’ I was schlepped around various grammar schools to see if I could get in. Fortunately for me, I failed them all, much to my Mum’s annoyance, and I ended up having an interview at my preferred hall of residence, Barnsbury. The headmaster, Mr. Davies, took me into his study, and asked me a few pertinent questions. Who is the Queen of England? How many days are there in February in a Leap Year? What’s 8 times 7? Why do you want to come to Barnsbury School? Because I want to play in the brass band, Sir. I was in!!! The fact that my friends from Newington Green; Michael MacDonald, Christopher Bunting and Nicholas Patsious were also starting that September was my biggest reason, but I really did want to play in the brass band, and so it was decided.
September 1958 was to see me walking to the Arsenal Tube, getting a 1½d ticket to Holloway Road and walking round the corner into Eden Grove. I had made it at last to the Big Boys School. First day at Big School is a life changing time for anyone, and I was no exception. To start with, all the other boys seemed bigger than me, especially the second years. My class was 1B, which obviously is not as good as 1A, but then was better than 1C, D, E, F etc.. One of the new friends I made on the first day was Griff Lewis. He lived with his mum and dad in their dairy in Gillespie Road, so we travelled to and from school together every day on the tube.
Our first year form teacher was Mr McHughes, who was also the music teacher, so we had a piano in our classroom. As well as the regular lessons such as English and maths, we had one lesson a week of music. Mr McHughes played and the class sung. Men of Harlech, Vicar of Bray, A Rovin’ and the school song, Jerusalem. Those of us who could hold a tune were given a bye straight into the choir. In a rough all-boys school in the unfashionable borough of Islington getting boys to volunteer for the choir was like asking a turkey if it was looking forward to Christmas. Anyway I volunteered because being in the choir was a good way of joining the Brass Band. Another reason why volunteering for the choir wasn’t cool was because choir practice was on a Wednesday afternoon, AFTER school.
Only dummy’s would volunteer for extra time at school. However my plan worked out, and within a few months of starting at Barnsbury, I was sitting in the medical room, where band practice started off, with a cornet in my hands, puckering my lips, and blowing my tiny brains out.
Sometime in about ’58 dad came home with a little beauty. A Dansette record player. Electric! He must have bought it second hand, because it came with a couple of records, and they were 45’s. One was Pat Boone; Tutti Frutti, and the other was Elvis; Heartbreak Hotel. I had first heard Elvis on the radio in about ’57. You have to remember that back in those days we in England got everything late. Cars, if you could afford one, were still black. TV and Films were black and white. Men’s suits were grey, as was the weather. Every Saturday morning I would listen to ‘Uncle Mac’s Children’s Hour’ on the radio. The usual fare was (I’m a) Pink Toothbrush, (You’re a) Blue Toothbrush; This Old House; and my favourite, The Laughing Policeman. Then one day good ol’ Uncle Mac played Heartbreak Hotel. That was it for me. I had no idea where Lonely Street was, or why anyone would stay in a hotel if they weren’t on holiday, but I could understand the music. Since My Baby Left Me, boom boom, I’ve found a New Place to Dwell, boom boom, It’s Down at the end of Lonely Street, Called Heartbreak Hotel.
After that I couldn’t get enough. I only had this one Elvis record, but I learned every word. Heartbreak Hotel was my signature tune. From that point there was no stopping me. I was listening to Gene Vincent, Eddy Cochran, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and of course Buddy Holly. I was dismissive of all girl singers except Brenda Lee, who I thought sounded great, until I saw her on TV. Still her records sounded great. My original record purchase was Duane Eddy’s first release in this country, Rebel Rouser. The price is etched in my brain, 6/8d.
I did a paper round soon after starting at Barnsbury. I used to get fifteen shillings a week, and I got another five shillings a week pocket money. I had to earn this with chores around the house. My job was cleaning out the grate on a Saturday, going to the shops to get the greengroceries, and polishing the brass in the living room. My friend along the road in Highbury New Park was Ron Harvey, he and I were both Duane Eddy fans, and shared records. Duane Eddy was playing at the Finsbury Park Empire, and unbelievably my Dad bought three tickets, one for him, one for me and one for Ron. After that night I couldn’t wait for my next ‘gig’; although we didn’t know that expression in those days. I’ve no idea what happened to Ron Harvey, although I know my copy of ‘Rebel Rouser’ got broke at his sister’s birthday party. Come to think, it must have been a 78rpm, ‘cos 45’s didn’t break.
Anyway, having seen Duane Eddy live, all I wanted to do was play guitar. I had bought an old acoustic guitar in a junk shop at the Angel with money saved up from my paper round. I played until my fingers ached, and then played some more. Duane Eddy was indeed a good guitarist. His version of Chet Atkins ‘Trambone’ has fascinated me for 45 years. I can just about play it now, although Eddy’s version is nowhere near as good as Atkins’ original.
My next outing to Finsbury Park was to see Cliff Richard. Every boy who played guitar wanted to be Hank Marvin. He played a beautiful red Fender Stratocaster, although you had to guess the colour if you were watching on tv. Dad bought another three tickets, this time my friend at Barnsbury, Geoffrey Nardini, was the lucky third. Cliff’s first record was ‘Move It’ with his backing band The Drifters. We arrived at the Finsbury Park Empire to see ‘Cliff Richard and the Shadows’ on the bill. What’s happened to The Drifters then? They’d changed their name because of the vocal group in the States.
Dad and I bought my new guitar in Berry Pianos in Holloway road. By coincidence just a couple of doors away from where Joe Meek would later set up his recording studio. I can’t remember how much the guitar was, all I can remember is it had a solid body with a single cutaway, sprayed white, a neck with finger board and head, and all the electrics. It was basically all there, but you had to put it together yourself. Dad and I had many a happy hour with glue, screws, soldering irons and polish. It had one pickup and no tremolo arm. One volume control and one tone control. Easy enough to play, but there was one drawback. I didn’t have an amp!
In the third year at school as well as Griff Lewis, I also made two new friends. The first was Jerome Want-Sibley who was on my wave length as far as humour was concerned, but wasn’t musical. The second was Billy Pitt-Jones. Billy lived down the Caledonian Road and we got together ‘cos he played guitar too. He had a red Hoffner ‘Colorado’, a kind of copy of a Gibson 335, the guitar that Chuck Berry played. Bill’s mum paid £35 on the ‘never never’ for this guitar. Bill also had an AMP, a Watkins Dominator, which was about 30 watts with two 8” speakers in a kind of triangular cabinet, so the speakers faced out at about 60 degrees. Very funky. Anyway, there were two inputs, so we could both play through the amp. Only one channel though, so as it was Bill’s amp, his guitar was always turned up louder than mine. Anyway his guitar had TWO pickups, so he was twice as loud.
Not many months later I had saved up my paper round money to put a deposit on an amp, and my Dad had to come to the shop with me to sign the HP papers. Can’t remember the price but the amp was also a Watkins, but not as good as Bill’s; only one 8” speaker and 20 watts, but sure loud enough for my bedroom, and the odd outing to the school hall.
There was one more guitarist that I played with. Also from Barnsbury, Steve Howe was always ahead of Bill and me, but he tried to teach us. We would bunk off in the afternoon and go to Steve’s flat, which was just the other side of the Cally from school. Steve was a couple of classes down from Bill and me, and was always certain that all he wanted to do was be a professional musician. Steve would play us records of people like Chet Atkins, Jim Byrd, Charlie Christian and Wes Montgomery, all of these guys played jazz, which was a bit out of my league in those days.
Eventually we formed a band. As we didn’t need three guitars, and as my ‘home made’ guitar was easy to adapt, I bought a set of Bass strings, removed two of the machine heads, and Hey Presto! I was a bass player. The fourth member of this quartet was another Barnsbury boy, John McDonald who played drums. Now Johnny Mac was never going to be Tony Meehan, but he had one big advantage, he had a brand new Premier drum kit. His dad was a screw in Pentonville Prison, and had access to the prison officers club in Roman Way. We used to rehearse in Johnny Mac’s house which was in Wheelwright Street, just by the prison. So Bill Steve and John all lived off the Caledonian Road, and I was the outsider from Highbury.
We played a few times, once at the PO club on a Sunday night, once in a pub in the Cally at a talent night, and once in a youth club just off Holloway Road. I can’t remember what we played, probably Shadows and Ventures numbers. They were all instrumentals as none of us would sing, and we didn’t own a microphone anyway. As leader of the group Steve decided that we should break up and practice at home till we were better. Steve got Much Better.
I was without a band, aged fifteen and on the scrapheap, so I went back to playing trumpet. My old piano teacher, George Kilsby played in a band with a local trumpet player called Ernie Higginbotham. The band were all ex-Regimental bandsmen. They had plenty of work at weekends, so offered me a place playing second trumpet in the band one Saturday night. I seem to remember that the gig was at the Commonwealth centre, just off Trafalgar Square. The line up was Ernie on trumpet, a tenor sax, trombone, George on piano, bass and drums. Plus me on second trumpet. I had to borrow a tux from one of the bandsmen. Needless to say it didn’t fit me and I still hate bow ties to this day.
Now I could read music, but my sight reading was not great, so Ernie gave me a piece of advice that I remember to this day. ‘Play the notes you know, and leave out the ones you don’t’. It was all pretty tame stuff really, I think the Tenor sax player sang the ‘vocal refrain’. Some dance music: three waltzes, three foxtrots, three quicksteps. Then a five minute fag break while the punters went back to their tables, then another set of nine tunes. In one tune, don’t remember which, Ernie stood up and played a fantastic Dizzy Gillespie type solo. After that number I said to him how much I had enjoyed his solo. He plays the same one every night, said the Tenor player. And Ernie agreed, “I learned that solo in 1950,” he said “and I’ve being playing it ever since”.
It was around that time, 1962 that I met John Walker. I was still doing my paper round from a shop in Blackstock Road. My pal Griff Lewis had just had his 16th birthday, and although he was in the same school year as me, he was about 9 months older. Anyway Griff had just bought a Lambretta scooter; or rather his Dad had bought it for him. I wondered what a scooter would cost, and how long it would take me to save up the money at 15 bob a week. So I was looking at the ad’s in the paper shop window where I worked, when I noticed an ad which read ‘Bass Player Wanted’. I wrote down the number, which was the same exchange as mine, so I knew he lived nearby. Later I rang it and asked for ‘John’.
John lived at the other end of Highbury New Park, so we met in the middle, sometime on a Sunday night, in the autumn of 1962. We walked up and down Highbury New Park for a while, then popped into Fenner’s sweetshop for five Cadets, I think John smoked three and I smoked two. Eventually we ended up at John’s flat because John’s mum and dad let him smoke indoors, and mine didn’t. John also had a Hoffner guitar, but his was a big blond job with a Bigsby tremolo arm. John could certainly play. Whenever you meet someone new with a similar but different talent to yourself, whether in music, sport, art or any other field you are often impressed by their ability. My first impression of John was not wrong. Over the next few years he proved to me what a good guitarist he was.
November 2013