5. CreamDisraeli Gears

A lot changes when you’re 16. A lot of changes take place in your mind. I remember being with friends at a public bath, we had a transistor radio and music was playing from it and then the song ‘I Feel Free’ by Cream started. I was hypnotised immediately. I couldn’t understand how they did it, the intro before Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker took off from nothing to top speed within less than a second. Afterwards I listened to quite a lot of Cream music. It was individual tracks that fascinated me, and ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’ was definitely one of them, and ‘White Room’. Being a solo guitar player at the time, Eric Clapton was a strong influence on my thinking about how to play guitar. Of course when Jimi Hendrix came around, everything was different all over again…