Yeah, never quit, keep on going because you know it will save you one way or the other.
I started actually took up the guitar playing the guitar when I was at school when I was 14 and my
mate could already play. He grabbed one of these acoustic guitars and played I think it was the
opening intro to that'll be the day by Buddy Holly and I was really blown away and I thought
the feeling that I got here in this chap play the guitar so the hairs on back of the neck
kind of thing. I wanted to possess that. For the first few years it's just about playing getting
it down just so your friends and everybody else and then the bands and all that came on a little
bit later when I went out to Canada in America. And Medet was a guy called Jimmy McMullen and we
formed a little buskin group and went on tour, went on a buskin tour of Canada, went to Vancouver
and then went from there down to San Diego, California and back and made the trip several
times living in the car or in the van and playing on the streets of America when we were 21 and it
was great, it was a brilliant time. Until about 1990 I came back to England and picked up with
the bluegrass music and playing sort of rockabilly music and bluegrass music side by side at the
same time in different groups and formats. Yeah with the Boogie Boys we've been going since then.
A friend of mine first of all has got a shop in Brick Lane Market and they sell the old piano.
He phoned me up one day and said listen to this and held his phone up to the piano. So I thought
yeah okay hold the phone up for a bit longer and this guy was playing away you know and I could
hear lots of stuff going on in the music that I could use you know. So the next week I went down
there with the guitar and met Big John Carter and we hit it off straight away, we jammed for about
four hours. We've played everywhere, we've toured England, we've toured with Bill Haley's
comments, they were all in the 80s, late 70s and 80s, big inspiration there.
Jerry joined six years ago and he's been with us ever since and the colour place player Neil has
been with us for about two, three years and it's the right combination of people that we've got
and so it's working just nicely, just fine. A lot of people can't take the business, I've got
friends that are dead because they couldn't take the reality of their own situation because here
they are, they're on stage, everything's going well, girls are screaming, everything's great,
all they could have wished for, so why the heroin? Senseless and pointless and sad. You don't sign
the contract and then say okay this is how we're gonna do it, it's not like that, since you signed
your contract it's how they want it done, you don't have any more say in the matter, so already
you've lost it, you've lost it all already and they're telling you what's good and what isn't
about the tunes that you're writing or doing or playing, so then you're changing them because of
what some fucking idiot is saying to you, so your life is, it's got, you've given it all up really.
And I don't like the odds of that, you know what I mean, I don't like the chances that that doesn't
say, I'd rather stay right now and that's why I do okay in life without necessarily having
lots and lots of money, so that's it, that's the prize, that's the prize you get at the end of it all
and that's what I'd say to the younger people, never quit, keep on going because you know
it will save you one way or the other and then you don't know what's going to come along in music,
you ride on crest of the wave then you go down and then you come up again, you go up and down
and up and down, you just keep looking forward to the next time you go up, if you're down.
And I'll continue to go until I drop, you know, hopefully it won't be for a while yet,
but we'll have to wait and see, but there's lots more to be done.
