The earliest recollection I have of doing anything musical was trying to play tunes on a little guitar my brother used in a kids stage musical. It was a prop, made of tin. I did play recorder in school like millions of other kids, and like most of them I didn't progress beyond the basics. In high school I sang in a few musicals. At age 16 I acquired a beat up Yamaha gut string - which I promptly strung with steel strings! A friend at school had been playing a couple of years and suggested we form a band with him on lead and slide and me on bass. He turned me on to the Allman Brothers, the Doobies and other American guitar bands. My fave players were typical of the time - Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Steve Howe, Jan Akkerman, Ritchie Blackmore. Looking back now I can see that all these guys were not much older than us, but each had already forged a distinctive guitar sound and style. All the info we gleaned about these guys from the pages of "Melody Maker", and "New Musical Express" (UK music papers), "Rolling Stone" (US music paper) and the just published "Guitar Player" magazine. I bought an old "Excelsior" 'beatle bass' from a hock shop and joined a band whose advert I saw in the local record shop. "Record shop" - yes this was long before CD's ! The ad said : "Bass player wanted for band to play Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Beatles.". Luckily for me it didn't say "beginners and incompetents need not apply" ! The band was Vermillion and the leader one Greg Gillett, an extraordinary talent who played drums like Sandy Nelson, bass guitar like John Paul-Jones, sang like Robert Plant, Mick Jagger and Elton John - and played piano like the latter, with Beethoven thrown in for good measure. Greg became my mentor - teaching me about music and, as it turned out, instructing me in Martial Arts for the next 6 years. Greg also wrote original material - a lot of original material! As well as innumerable pop songs he churned out classical rock epics in the Yes and ELP vein. Some of these pieces went for 20 or 30 minutes and everything was written out. However by no means was he beholden entirely to a score as one of his big influences was Oscar Peterson and Greg was in later years to entertain thousands of people in Sydney venues such as the Albury Hotel with his vocals and Jazz piano stylings. I graduated from the Beatle Bass to a Maya Strat copy on which I attempted to develop technique by playing scales with alternate picking... as you do ! Then followed an Ibanez Les Paul copy. The next band of note was led by Greg Spicer, a 16 year old who had learned violin from an early age and then picked up electric guitar and play it with the sound, tone, phrasing and licks which were and still are the backbone of rock guitar. The other band members were no slouches either - with the bassist Dave Neideck being a capable organist as well. I benefited immensely from playing with these guys and we used to rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. We also did gigs ... ... where we played quite creditable covers of Led Zeppelin, Kiss (they were topping the charts at the time), AC-DC and Rolling Stones, plus a smattering of Queen. I found my first decent teacher playing with a latin-funk band in a wine bar. In the corner was a Gibson Les Paul poking out from under a huge sombrero. The first guitar solo began with a dazzling arpeggio covering more than 12 frets, then segueing into smoky blues licks. I had to learn from this guy! After much pestering Keith Crook agreed to teach me and I spent 2 years making a weekly pilgrimage across town to work through Bill Leavitt's "Modern Method for Guitar" books 1 and 2. Some time later I advertised in the Sydney Morning Herald for a guitar teacher who - "... must be able to teach me to play Mahavishnu style...". Well known guitarist and arranger Dev Gopalasamy answered the ad and I spent a couple of fruitful years going into the intricacies of fusion with him, as well as working through basic musicianship workbooks such as "Metre and Rhythm". Dev suggested I attend the 1978 Jazz seminar held Jamey Aerbersold at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. This was a treat - real American jazz musos including Dave Liebman and the chance to rub shoulders with many of Sydney's pro musos. That week exposed me to the music of Freddie Hubbard, Elvin Jones, Pat Martino and Horace Silver for the first time. Entertaining pianist Dan Haerle had loads of practical advice and insight to impart on the daily mechanics of being a pro musician. And his tale of reading "War and Peace" in a nightclub proved to be a valuable example as I developed my ideas about focus and concentration during performance in later years.