I was born in Birmingham, England on the 17^th of November, 1946. My Grandfather had been a violinist in his own orchestra in Paris and, although my Father wanted to play Clarinet, he became an engineer. He never lost interest in music and as soon as I bought my first guitar he gave me albums by Barney Kessel, Jim Smith and Wes Montgomery hoping to broaden my horizons!

My schooling progressed from Kings Norton Grammer, to Tudor Grange Grammer, then onto Lanchester Polytech, later to become Coventry University.

The music scene in the mid 1960’s was big enough to provide most bands with as many gigs as they could handle -  more than was wise for someone in full time education!!

In 1966 I took the plunge and moved to London with a friend, Chris, who had played Saxophone in our band “The Moonrakers”. We had been promised work in the band led by Screaming Lord Sutch, (Ritchie Blackmore was once a member), but we were let down.

Work was scarce but we finally landed a gig with a Bogner Regis based band, “Motivation”, who had backed Beau Brummel. The catch was we both had to play Sax. I bought a Tenor Sax on Friday and spent the weekend practising and auditioned on the Monday. Luckily my flute playing from school helped me bluff my way through.

The band became a Blues band in 1968, after metamorphizing through Soul, R&B and Pop. We backed visiting soul artists such as the Coasters, the Drifters and Lee Dorsey. We even recorded a single “Lady Godiva”, for Liberty Records, written by their in-house songwriter who always seemed to be glued to the piano. His name was -- Elton John!

We shared a house with a bunch of mad Scotsmen - a band called Hopscotch . They would later become the Average White Band, and Alan Gorey sang and played bass on a track with us.

We all played up in Dundee on New Year’s Eve with Pink Floyd, featuring the new guy, Dave Gilmour. (That was one crazy night!!)

The Motivations now became Gethsemane and ended up playing blues clubs all over England. I was happy being back on guitar and also playing lots of flute.

I had heard stories of Jethro Tull, The flute player that looked like a tramp, a great Bluesy Guitar player and their reputation was growing fast.

I eventually saw JT in the summer of 1968, at the Sudbury Blues and Jazz Festival. They were modestly billed below Traffic and Fleetwood Mac, but they were very good. John Gee, the Compere, swept the stage afterwards, humourously cleaning it of crawling insects!!!

We met when Gethsemane supported JT in Plymouth at a Blues Club called the Van Dyke. We all chatted afterwards.  Four months later, while we were playing in London and about to split from lack of money, Terry Ellis sent his card up from the audience asking me to audition for Jethro Tull. After a second attempt, I got the gig, seemingly on probation!!

Christmas 1968 was spent learning material that was to become the album, “Stand Up”.

At first the English audiences didn’t like it - they remembered the Bluesy Jethro Tull. The breakthrough came at Manchester University where all the new music finally found favour.

Soon afterwards we supported Hendrix in Scandinavia. On returning to England, we recorded “Stand Up” and then immediately flew out to the USA for the first of many wonderful American journeys.

1969 saw the band establish credentials in Germany as well. We played with everyone from Led Zeppelin, Paul Butterfield, Grateful Dead, Jeff Beck, Hendrix, Blood Sweat and Tears, Chicago, -- well, I could go on and on - but maybe that’s another story!!

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