Well, how do you start a section of influences........

I guess as I'm the songwriter I should do it.......

I played the recorder at school when I was about 8 years old.......I hated it........

I was born in the 70's so I spent a lot of my formative years listening to the likes of ABBA and bands like that. The first music I ever really listened to was by Simon and Garfunkel; they were the first people to actually take me places with their music. I can remember listening to "America" and trying to absorb all the place names, I could imagine them all, even though I knew very little about the USA at the time. I like to think of it as musical geography. One of my all time favourite songs from that period is "Scarborough Fair" and having the opportunity to live in Scarborough later in my life made the lyrics and melody even better. 

My absolute love of harmonies probably stems from my days listening to Simon and Garfunkel, man could they harmonise...............

Towards the end of the 70's, music took a strange turn with the advent of Punk. I'm afraid "Punk" went beyond my comprehension and to this day I harbour a slight loathing of it, mainly because it stood against everything I held sacred in music, which was a: a tune b: some meaningful lyrics and c: some actual talent.

I don't say that to upset punk fans; I think everyone is allowed his/her own taste in music. It's just that Punk wasn't for me.

The next thing to happen was synthpop and the New Romantics. The ironic thing is that then I hated nearly all of them, but now, as I write this, I realise that some of my greatest influences stem from that period.

Take Depeche mode for instance. I used to turn the TV off whenever they were on......and do you know why?

It had nothing to do with the music (as I found out much later on when I actually listened to it)...it was because they looked GAY!!! I will say right now that I mean no offence by that; it's just I was about 11 years old and very worried that I should be perceived as a man. So I spurned all music performed by men in fluffy shirts and makeup, much to my loss I might add. I also couldn't be seen to like girly singers either, (it makes you gay) ( I think)........so what did that leave me?.........you guessed it.....

Heavy Metal............I got right into it, all that death, devil, slave women, bat eating, fun......nobody could accuse you of being anything less than hetro when you're clad in a big denim jacket on covered in Iron Maiden patches. (can you imagine....11 years old, thinking I'm tough)

They banned head banging from our school (an immensely stupid dance which involved swaying your head about in an altogether brain mushing way.......top "head bangers" would kneel down and simulate banging their head on the floor.......why they did this is anybody's guess)

I remember two Iron Maiden songs especially, "The Number Of the Beast" (all about the devil...and a good track for scaring girls with.......as every 11 year old knows, you can just scare girls into dating you) and "Run To The Hills" (a useful track for showing aforementioned scared girl that you really have a caring side, in being bothered about the plight of the Native American...(they were called Indians back then) 

As I got into my teens I became confident enough about my sexuality to have a listen to the "gay" bands and found out, to my surprise, that most of them weren't actually gay (it's true). So I had a lot of back catalogue (and soul) searching to do catch up. The one band that really stood out to me from this lot was Depeche Mode - the song crafting was just exquisite. They made me interested in synthesizers for the first time (about 1984), but it was still a long time before I could actually afford to buy one.

The next thing that happened was Break dancing. This one thing consumed all of our lives (well me and my mates anyway) for about 3 years - a Saturday wasn't complete without a trip into the city centre with a large piece of rolled up linoleum (on a bus mind you) with someone else in charge of the "ghetto blaster" (really a simple portable stereo out of someone's bedroom, but with loads of extra bits glued on, including in some cases extra speakers, which actually had the effect of draining the batteries twice as quickly!).

There were loads of Breaking "crews" who used to meet in Queens Gardens in Hull. It was quite a spectacle, hundreds of kids in track suits seemingly throwing themselves at the ground. To be honest, I think the adults were just pleased the punks had stopped terrorising people and were quite prepared to put up with a bit of "dancing" in return.

This was the period when I really learnt about drums and rhythm because the whole point of this music was the beat which acted as a kind of metronome for your "moves". Thus my knowledge of different drumming techniques was greatly increased. This all ended when we left school and went our separate ways. 

Obviously, during this time I was also listening to other styles of music and, in 1985 on a warm summer's day at the Wembley Stadium in London, a group of the world's best musicians came together to give to the world what was probably one of the greatest rock concerts in history. Live Aid was my first taste of the political music world, and I can remember standing in my living room at home and jumping up and down to U2's "Bad" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday". I became an immediate U2 fan and got totally absorbed in "The Unforgettable Fire". I started to get interested in the "production" of records and found myself not just listening to the words and music, but to the compression on a snare drum or the ping pong delay on the second electric guitar. (sad, I know)

Then one day, out of the blue, I was visiting my local Asda store and noticed they had started selling cheap Casio keyboards. I decided to have a quick go on one, although I didn't have a clue as I'd never played a keyboard before. But before long, I had some auto accompaniment chords playing away in the back (one finger play) and with the other hand (finger), I was playing tunes over the top. Well!, I got so absorbed in it that I stood there at the keyboard for about 2 and a half hours before I was escorted out by the security guard (they had to close the shop), but that was it, I was HOOKED!

I (I'm ashamed to admit) re-arranged my friend priority list to put those with keyboards at the top and spent every opportunity I had sitting in a room somewhere playing these things. I still didn't have any ideas about being a musician, I just loved the sounds I could make.

After I left school and got my first job (1986) I decided to buy my first keyboard, (Yamaha PSS 460 or something). It cost me about £140 I think (I'm probably still paying for it!!) The day I brought it home was one of the most exciting I can remember. ( I had to go out with my girlfriend that night and was desperately trying to think of an excuse not to go.....I came home early though)

The keyboard was actually terrible, but at the time it may as well have been a Fairlight (very expensive synth) I loved it, and, eventually, it coaxed a song out of me....yes an actual song......I couldn't believe it...(I shudder when I think of how bad it was). Once I had broken this barrier, it was time to seriously think about getting a proper full-sized pro keyboard. At the time, I had a very low paying job and I asked my girlfriend of the time to help me get my first synth. She said yes, which is something I am gratefull for to this very day. Everything I've achieved so far is because of that one purchase. Thanks, you know who you are.......

Once I had my first professional synth (a Yamaha DX11), it wasn't long before I had another sound module and a sequencer. These were soon followed by a 4 track, effects and eventually a sampler. With my little home "studio" I could finally realise all the songs that had been floating round my head. Most of the songs were pretty bad, but I learnt a little about songwriting and had a bit of interest from London Records. Unfortunately, this was at the height of the Kylie Minogue/Jason Donovan/Rik Astley crap and I knew that it wasn't the time for what I had to offer. 

I spent the intervening years trying to find new bands to listen to. Some of the more memorable for me would be The Wonderstuff, The Cure, Billy Bragg, Simple Minds, Stone Roses, New Fast Automatic Daffodils, The Waterboys and The Mandlebrot Set. All the time I was practicing and joining bands and generally trying to make myself a better songwriter, (whether I succeeded in this is up to the listeners discretion....lol...)

Most of the nineties was given over to Dance music, which I enjoyed immensely. Back to a solid drum pattern, crazy noises and deep (I mean DEEEEEEEP) bass. All the things I love. I tried a few experiments in dance/rave music, but really more for my own and my friends' enjoyment.

I started, after a while, to get more into the ambient scene, with the likes of The Orb, KLF and some real obscure people. This taught me a lot about aural textures, kind of like seeing sound as colours and trying to paint with them. ( yeah I know........... it's a bit trippy) Slowdive were a great band for this kind of thing, really lush sweeps and massive reverb guitars. I like to think of it as music to float to. 

During this period I was also introduced to The Smiths/Morrisey (having largely ignored them due to the fact that Morrisey appeared to have a large tree growing out of his butt) and found them to be great songwriters; they had a sort of blunt honesty which I hadn't really noticed in anyone else's songs. I realised that you could write just about anything and providing you meant it, you could get away with it. 

I find that the music I listen to depends greatly on whether I'm in a relationship or not. I tend to listen to deeper songs when I'm not. I also write more when I'm not. (which is a good split up line......"I'm leaving you....I need to write some more songs......")

As I got a bit older I started to listen more and more to Singer/Songwriters, notably Tori Amos, Mark Cohen, Tasmin Archer and Tracy Chapman, I loved the way they could just sit at a piano and sing the most beautiful songs. I realised that sometimes less is more and started to be a bit more sparing with my melodies. The piano started to feature more and more in my material, and I tried to make the production sound like a real band, (which is quite hard actually!). 

Unfortunately, these days there aren't any bands that I can get really exited about - with the exception of The Smashing Pumpkins and perhaps Travis, most of them are manufactured boy bands, which, quite frankly, is going to kill the music industry. I just hope that we can get a fair crack of the whip before it does. 

I hope that there are still people out there who appreciate a nice tune and some good lyrics, and hope even more that a record company will understand that and give us a chance to get our music to the masses.

Cheers

Spelling mistakes are gratuitous............