My earliest memories are of watching Top off the Pops a UK TV music show and being mesmerised by the bands especially the rock bands. There is just something about the sound of a distorted guitar that makes me want to rock. I bought Eliminator by ZZ Top when it first came out and was blown away and this ignited my passion for heavier music. I come from a musical family, my dad played jazz guitar and was featured on BBC radio 4 in the ‘60s. I always wanted to be a drummer, but I wasn’t allowed a drum kit so instead my parents bought me a Bontempi toy guitar when I was 7 but I didn’t stick with it. Later as a teenager, I remember going through my dad’s vinyl record collection and finding albums by Black Sabbath, Boston, Queen, Thin Lizzy, UFO and Whitesnake. I used to come home from school and play the albums at full volume on my dad’s stereo whilst playing along on a large Tupperware tub with a set of drum sticks I had made from cutting up my old wigwam. Then I got into bands like Iron Maiden and Motörhead and used to mime along in the mirror with my Mum’s badminton racket meanwhile a school friend Mark Toghill had bought a bass guitar and wanted to start up a band. So, I asked my parents for a guitar and my dad took me down to Freeway music in Bedminster, Bristol to buy my first guitar a red no-name copy Strat for £110. The guitar was hell to play buy I was hooked so I persevered and self-taught I began writing my own riffs. Rob was my neighbour, and he had just started playing guitar, so we used to jam together along with other musicians in the area. I first met Steve in ‘86 when I had gone to his house just up the road and asked if he would sign my brand-new copy of ‘Power From Hell’ by Onslaught and he went the extra mile and got the whole band to sign it which was cool. I played in several bands with other kids from school but nothing serious and at 19 I left home and went to New York hoping to join a thrash metal band and live there. However, it didn’t work out, so I returned to Bristol and met up with Mark Toghill again and we started up a 4-piece thrash metal band called ‘LifeState’ and wrote an album which was never released. By ‘92 I had lost my passion for metal music and sold my guitar and didn’t play again until ‘99 when I returned to playing in bands and live gigs. At the same time, I bought my first Jackson guitar which was a dream come true, and I have played Jackson guitars since. For a brief time, I played guitar for the melodic death metal band ‘Irony of Christ’ then I set up my own home studio and began experimenting with music software and still do today and have written over 70 albums none of which have ever been officially released. In 2023, I auditioned for ‘Insult’ and have returned to my roots playing fast, aggressive punk/metal again. There is nothing like the adrenaline rush and feeling of playing live.