I was born at some point in the 1970s. My first memory of music was when I was about 7 years old head banging to Status Quo, pounding out of my parent’s stereo with ALL dials turned up to 11. But I didn’t actually pick up a guitar until I was 13. I had saved up my paper round money and bought a nylon string ‘classical’ guitar. Even though my friend Neil lent me ‘Bert Weedon’s Play in a Day’ it took me 6 months to figure out how to tune the bloody thing. I then mastered ‘cheat g’.

After my triumphant ‘cheat G’, I felt ready to move onto something electrical. I bought a metallic purple ‘marlin sidewinder’ fender stratocaster copy – it was a terrible guitar. However, it had one of those ‘whammy bar’ things on it so I spent the next year performing dive bombs and ‘car accelerating’ noises. At this point in my life (about 14 years old I think) I started making some music with my friend Neil Randall. While all our other friends were off drinking 20/20 and Diamond White cider down the local parks, Neil and I would hire 4 track recorders from our music shop and spend the weekends recording songs with dodgy drum machine backing. I remember we wrote a 15-minute epic called ‘Netherworld’. It was pretty bad, but not that bad for 14 year olds. Maybe I should dig it out and remaster it. We also did some extreme metal under the name of ‘Dominus’. Anyway, we carried on writing until we finally got a band together, Vulgar Unicorn. I had a picture of our first ever gig but i've lost it. I'll scan it and stick it here if I find it. It was in the sports hall of our school (Preston Comprehensive in Yeovil). For some reason, the headmaster walked out mid performance. Soon after, we performed a gig in a pub in the back end of nowhere to about 5 punters. You had to walk through the band to get to the toilets (where one annoyed punter took great delight in telling me how sh!t where were).

We then all moved on to ‘college’ (that’s 16-18 year olds here in the UK). One of the activities they had was a ‘rock workshop’ in a local studio called ‘The Ice House’. This was a defining period. At the time, the workshop was run by a certain ‘John Parish’ who went onto to garner some major success with acts such as PJ Harvey, Sparklehorse and Eels (to name but three), as well as with his own solo work. A guy called ‘Dick’ who went on to become a successful freelance sound engineer ran the studio. It was like Yeovil’s very own Hacienda. More importantly, it taught me how to 'play in a band'. A lasting memory is when Dick took the time to stay behind with me after a rock workshop and taught me how important a low key strummed acoustic part was for a song. I just didn’t get it, all I wanted to do was play something loud that everyone could hear, ideally with some dive bombs. Now I get it. It was the point in my life when I realised what I had to do to become a decent musician, and subsequently a decent songwriter.

However, I had a lot to learn. I bought a new guitar and joined a band called ‘Shellshock’. The other guitarist in the band, Phil Roberts, taught me a lot of 'licks'. This was during the peak of the Glam Metal era with bands like Whitesnake, Warrant and Extreme shredding their way up and down the fret board singing about ‘rock’ and 17 year old girls. I tried to widdle but couldn’t do it straight away so gave up and concentrated on ‘the groove’.

I then moved away to Leicester for 5 years. I answered a really crap looking ad for a ‘guitarist wanted’ and auditioned for a band called ‘Terminal Headspin’. This is when I met Jon. Here he is in the atic rehearsal room where we first met, complete with full compliment of blond hair...



We went on to become the greatest funk rock band in the whole world that was Leicester University’s student union.

Well, we were pretty good actually. Because we were tax-wasting students, we rehearsed about 20 hours a week. It certainly taught me how to be ‘tight’ but also did some serious damage to our hearing. Our drummer was more of an animal than ‘animal’ and no drumstick on earth was thick enough to last a gig without breaking. Sadly, we never fulfilled our dream of world domination. I then jobbed about in limbo, playing with a band called 'Double Zero' where I learnt a great deal about bands and life. I can accurately describe this as a 'biker band', apart from the fact I didn't have a big black bike. I remember gigs would have about 40 bikes parked outside the venue each time and each time a new person on crutches. But I couldn't stay in, what was radidly becoming a ghost town. Reluctantly, I gave up and moved back down to Somerset…

It was then that we had a surprise call from Malcolm Parker at Cyclops. He wanted to release the stuff I had been doing with Neil with Vulgar Unicorn. This really came out of the blue. In fact it was only because we were featured on a cassette compilation that Malcolm got to hear us. So, we hired the local studio for 4 weeks (Smallworld Studios, sadly the Ice House was no more) and set about recording our first album, ‘Under the Umbrella’. This went on to sell quite a few on Cyclops (at the time, the biggest seller). For the second album, we decided to teach the 'prog' world a lesson and push the genre’s boundaries. What turned out was an ambitious mess with some great moments but ultimately without the integrity to hold it’s own. Still, it was a huge learning experience. Vulgar Unicorn continued for one more album and 2 spin offs before finally being laid to rest in 2004.

During this time, Neil and I decided to open a commercial recording studio of our own. One piece of advice, if you like writing and recording your own stuff, don’t dedicate your life to doing it for other people. We blew a lot of money to learn that lesson. The last thing I wanted to do after polishing a very smelly turd all day long was polish my own.

That was in back in 1998. We sold up, split the gear and I set up a studio of my own in my small mid-terrace home. That’s when I decided to write ‘Abducting’, the first The Pineapple Thief album. Later I relocated the studio to a much larger, sound treated room. The rest, as they say, is history. Well, a chunk of it is catered for in my blog (so I won't be updating this page too often, but I might come back with more detail....)

Coming soon...