THE ULTIMATE 60s DRUMMER. THE HISTORICAL FACTS!

I sit here at 56 years of age and you ask me how I started drumming?

There's both music and longevity in my family. My mum 90 now and she still plays the piano and that was how I started. I played for a couple of years and I must have been quite good as my music teacher used to parade me about as part of a PR job for her department. My grandfather used to work at Leed's Empire, the entertainment theatre, so he was very musical. The only one out of the family who wasn't especially musical was my father.

A Yorkshire lad, I left school at 15, in 1952 and went to work cutting ladies costumes in a factory. I was there for six years.

I was really interested in trad jazz which was the pop music of the day. There had been a big revival in the Forties of trad in London which was still circulating around the country. Most of the trad bands were seven piece - like Chris Barber's band used to be. I used to watch jazz concerts and educate myself that way.    

I watched a lot of top well named drummers and thought - with that precocious arrogance born of youth - that I could do just as well. So having decided to prove myself, I went to a second hand music shop and bought a snare drum. It cost 30 bob, or œ1 - 10 shilling, which was a week's wages. I still have a replica of it to this day, and it's a great favourite of mine. I then sent off to Boosey and Hawkes in London for a pair of brushes and sticks for 1/ 6d and I've still got them. They remain in mint condition because I quickly escalated to flashier sticks quite soon after.

I found a drum teacher and had 18 months of drumming lessons. Alick Sidebottom - a great Yorkshire name - was a good face with a handle bar moustache. He was a good teacher and a good drummer and he helped me a lot. Sadly he died a couple of years back.