MUSICIAN

Victor Alec, The same grandfather who introduced me to 35mm photography as a boy, was a church organist, who had a Hammond C3 in his house (and not much else) from the day I was born. He gave me the gift of appreciating playing music in its purest form. He used to play music to entertain his army friends, just to give them something else to think about. I was never an advanced sheet music theory player, but I always had an ear, just like I had an eye, and I grew up believing that I was lucky to own those precious gifts. I remember playing organ concerts as a boy. I was the cute kid in the little jacket who sat on Robert Wolfe & Reginald Dixon’s knees and played Chariots of Fire on the string synth while they did left hand parts on the Wurlitzer to the delight of audiences at places like Chessington World of Adventures and the Thursford collection. I had played hundreds of concerts by the time I was ten and got tonsillitis, when I was loaned a cassette deck and a box of tapes. In that box I found ‘Live at San Quentin’ by Johnny Cash and I never looked back. I learned every word that week as I slowly recovered and vowed to do this for the rest of my life. I borrowed a guitar off a bloke Grandad knew & taught myself to play on his homemade 12 string. I was in bands all the way through school, playing mainly bass which I had a special affinity with but sometimes guitar, sometimes keys, writing as I went.