The Axxeman's Biography ...
Music first touched my life at the tender age of 6, in the form of the humble recorder. A classmate was cleaning hers with a fluffy pipe cleaner, and I decided to ‘grab it and have a blow’. Ignoring her loud protestations, I carried on making a horrible din for 30 seconds or so before being relieved of it by a very irate Infant School teacher. Too late; I was hooked…
The recorder was, and still is, a very user friendly instrument for little fingers. I quickly mastered the basics and in no time was sat with the girls, in morning assembly, playing the Hymns every day before classes started. However, playing the descant recorder becomes boring after a while and, although I had graduated to the treble and bass versions, it was still, after all, a recorder. One note at a time or monophonic. So imagine my delight when, on my 8th birthday, a guitar appeared!
It was a third hand acoustic that my mother paid the princely sum of £2 for, (I think, with hindsight, she was ‘had’). The strings were so far above the fingerboard that you would have been better off doing archery with it rather than music. But it was a guitar all the same, and I loved it.
I shunned lesson opportunities as, being a stubborn little bastard, I thought I could suss it out unaided. I bought a book, “Play In a Day” by Bert Weedon. It cost 1s 6d, (one shilling and sixpence), which equates to 7½ pence in decimal money. And it was rubbish. True, I picked up the basic idea from it, but the first song it taught you was, “Go Tell Aunt Rhody the Old Grey Goose is Dead”. If there has ever been a worse song written, in the whole history of music, then I have yet to hear it. I’d have finished the poor goose off with my bare hands if it would have shaved a couple of verses off of this dirge…
By the time I was 11, things were going along nicely. Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck were the radio stars of the day and I was gaily strumming along with them. “Please Release Me” and “Green, Green Grass of Home” were two I particularly liked as they were very guitar friendly songs for my limited abilities.
About this time, my mother approached the manageress of the local Mecca Bingo Hall; a jolly middle aged lady going by the name of Mrs Talbot, to see if she would allow me to sing a couple of songs during the mid-session break on a Saturday night. She indeed gave the idea the ‘green light’, and I found myself standing on the stage of a converted cinema, with my beaten up guitar and an ex-BBC microphone obscuring most of my face. I stared out into the smoke filled arena, at two tiers of bingo hungry punters. It was a full house on a Saturday night and over a thousand faces were staring back at this skinny kid on the stage. Their hardened stares belied their inner kindness. When I finished my first offering, the applause was deafening and I was swept up on a magic carpet of euphoria. Back in the office, I realised that Mrs Talbot and my mother hadn’t agreed a fee. “Here’s two pounds”, said Mrs T. “Is that OK?” “Oh”, retorted my mother, “That’s far too much. Give him ten shillings!” And in one fell swoop my pay suffered a 75% cut. I sacked my mother as my manager that very night.
One thing that the bingo gig taught me, (apart from negotiate your own fee), was that entertaining could be so uplifting. The inner feeling you get, when an audience applaud so warmly, is priceless… and addictive.
Teenage years quickly followed and the inevitable messing about in this and that little band started. It was a very unsatisfactory period as, just as you got good enough to charge money, someone would leave and a replacement drummer, bassist, singer etc would have to be recruited and trained up, only for the very same cycle to repeat itself ad nauseam. So at 15 I had a brainwave; join a band of ‘grown ups’ where there was a much better chance of some stability. And that’s what I did.
A local group called the Road Runners were looking for a lead guitarist. These guys were all way older than me and the band was already playing regular bookings in social clubs. It was an ideal opportunity to gain some experience of the club scene, and make some much needed money from my art. It was a fantastic learning experience. Every week-end I would be playing clubs in a 50 mile radius for (largely) enthusiastic audiences. And, at the end of the night, I got paid for it! The eagle had well and truly landed.
About 8 years on, I had tired of the endless circuit. I didn’t have a steady job like the others, and I was becoming increasingly frustrated by their lack of ambition. The gig money had increased, but it was nowhere near enough to live on. We needed much better money – or less personnel. A chance meeting was to prove pivotal in my next step on this musical odyssey…
I was in a local club on a Sunday evening, playing snooker, when a guy turned up and started setting up some gear on his own. I was intrigued. What on earth was this solo guy going to do? He had a guitar, a drum machine, (that was turned on and off by footswitches), and an organ foot operated bass pedal unit. Off he went, banging out pop hits one after the other. My initial scepticism soon subsided when I heard the reaction he was getting and, best of all, he was going to keep all the money. That was my true eureka moment. I knew exactly what I needed to do and set about getting a similar act together.
That was over 25 years ago and I have been a full time professional ever since. Equipment has improved considerably over the years and, I’d like to think, so have I. I’ve had some fun along the way. Worked with a few ‘names’; Stan Boardman (the Geermans), Jimmy Cricket, Joe Longthorne (best singing impressionist I have EVER heard), Bootleg Beatles, Bootleg Buddy etc. The list goes on and on.
Today I am still doing as many live shows as I can, and still loving it like the first night in that smoky Mecca Bingo hall. Hope to see you there before too long…
Axxe
The recorder was, and still is, a very user friendly instrument for little fingers. I quickly mastered the basics and in no time was sat with the girls, in morning assembly, playing the Hymns every day before classes started. However, playing the descant recorder becomes boring after a while and, although I had graduated to the treble and bass versions, it was still, after all, a recorder. One note at a time or monophonic. So imagine my delight when, on my 8th birthday, a guitar appeared!
It was a third hand acoustic that my mother paid the princely sum of £2 for, (I think, with hindsight, she was ‘had’). The strings were so far above the fingerboard that you would have been better off doing archery with it rather than music. But it was a guitar all the same, and I loved it.
I shunned lesson opportunities as, being a stubborn little bastard, I thought I could suss it out unaided. I bought a book, “Play In a Day” by Bert Weedon. It cost 1s 6d, (one shilling and sixpence), which equates to 7½ pence in decimal money. And it was rubbish. True, I picked up the basic idea from it, but the first song it taught you was, “Go Tell Aunt Rhody the Old Grey Goose is Dead”. If there has ever been a worse song written, in the whole history of music, then I have yet to hear it. I’d have finished the poor goose off with my bare hands if it would have shaved a couple of verses off of this dirge…
By the time I was 11, things were going along nicely. Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck were the radio stars of the day and I was gaily strumming along with them. “Please Release Me” and “Green, Green Grass of Home” were two I particularly liked as they were very guitar friendly songs for my limited abilities.
About this time, my mother approached the manageress of the local Mecca Bingo Hall; a jolly middle aged lady going by the name of Mrs Talbot, to see if she would allow me to sing a couple of songs during the mid-session break on a Saturday night. She indeed gave the idea the ‘green light’, and I found myself standing on the stage of a converted cinema, with my beaten up guitar and an ex-BBC microphone obscuring most of my face. I stared out into the smoke filled arena, at two tiers of bingo hungry punters. It was a full house on a Saturday night and over a thousand faces were staring back at this skinny kid on the stage. Their hardened stares belied their inner kindness. When I finished my first offering, the applause was deafening and I was swept up on a magic carpet of euphoria. Back in the office, I realised that Mrs Talbot and my mother hadn’t agreed a fee. “Here’s two pounds”, said Mrs T. “Is that OK?” “Oh”, retorted my mother, “That’s far too much. Give him ten shillings!” And in one fell swoop my pay suffered a 75% cut. I sacked my mother as my manager that very night.
One thing that the bingo gig taught me, (apart from negotiate your own fee), was that entertaining could be so uplifting. The inner feeling you get, when an audience applaud so warmly, is priceless… and addictive.
Teenage years quickly followed and the inevitable messing about in this and that little band started. It was a very unsatisfactory period as, just as you got good enough to charge money, someone would leave and a replacement drummer, bassist, singer etc would have to be recruited and trained up, only for the very same cycle to repeat itself ad nauseam. So at 15 I had a brainwave; join a band of ‘grown ups’ where there was a much better chance of some stability. And that’s what I did.
A local group called the Road Runners were looking for a lead guitarist. These guys were all way older than me and the band was already playing regular bookings in social clubs. It was an ideal opportunity to gain some experience of the club scene, and make some much needed money from my art. It was a fantastic learning experience. Every week-end I would be playing clubs in a 50 mile radius for (largely) enthusiastic audiences. And, at the end of the night, I got paid for it! The eagle had well and truly landed.
About 8 years on, I had tired of the endless circuit. I didn’t have a steady job like the others, and I was becoming increasingly frustrated by their lack of ambition. The gig money had increased, but it was nowhere near enough to live on. We needed much better money – or less personnel. A chance meeting was to prove pivotal in my next step on this musical odyssey…
I was in a local club on a Sunday evening, playing snooker, when a guy turned up and started setting up some gear on his own. I was intrigued. What on earth was this solo guy going to do? He had a guitar, a drum machine, (that was turned on and off by footswitches), and an organ foot operated bass pedal unit. Off he went, banging out pop hits one after the other. My initial scepticism soon subsided when I heard the reaction he was getting and, best of all, he was going to keep all the money. That was my true eureka moment. I knew exactly what I needed to do and set about getting a similar act together.
That was over 25 years ago and I have been a full time professional ever since. Equipment has improved considerably over the years and, I’d like to think, so have I. I’ve had some fun along the way. Worked with a few ‘names’; Stan Boardman (the Geermans), Jimmy Cricket, Joe Longthorne (best singing impressionist I have EVER heard), Bootleg Beatles, Bootleg Buddy etc. The list goes on and on.
Today I am still doing as many live shows as I can, and still loving it like the first night in that smoky Mecca Bingo hall. Hope to see you there before too long…
Axxe
