When I was about 13 I wanted to sing after listening to Stevie Winwood and Stevie Wonder. Unfortunately, there were no bands looking for a 13-year-old singer and it would not be until 1970 that I joined a band. I was a keen soul fan but the band, Cataclysm, were intent on prog rock. Oh well! One evening we set up for a rehearsal in a local hall. I was holding a microphone plugged into the guitarist's Vox AC30. Now, in my head, remember, I am one of the Stevies but as we launched in to a Beatles song, the strangled and hesitant noise that emanated from that amplifier came as a surprising and embarrassing shock. It was not good.
After a while, I was able to sing and people were able to listen without it causing too much pain. By 1974 I was singing with a band called Smacky Davis. A talent show called New Faces had just started on TV and we auditioned and were accepted. Legendary Producer Mickey Most was on the panel and took an interest in us. He came to see us at a couple of our shows. I thought that this was the beginning of my show business career and I moved to London. I was to be disappointed. Mickey Most did not sign us so I had to start earning a living in the big city…
Bored with working for others, I thought that working for myself would give me the opportunity to attend auditions, so with a few musician friends we started doing small building jobs. As a lot of our friends were musicians, so naturally a lot of our jobs were related in one way or another to music. In 1979, we were asked to do some building work at Tony Visconti’s Good Earth Studios in Soho. We also constructed some huge acoustic screens on wheels to divide the studio area. The studio is now called Soho Studio and I notice from their website that those screens are still in use. We built to last back then!