and so it begins,....

I basically started writing songs at the age of twelve.

My dad bought me my first guitar, a Japanese nylon-string acoustic in 1977, which was pretty shoddy and hard to play. No problem though, with the first three chords I learnt, an AKG D 2000E microphone (which I still use to record my vocals - it's my 'Mojo Mic') and my dad's AKAI GX-4000 D tape recorder, I set about re-recording the early Beach Boys catalogue and other assorted goodies. What a way to learn. I also started playing the streets of my hometown of Hamburg, Germany, which also taught me a thing or two about performance, singing loud enough and how to hold a crowd's attention. All things that would come in handy in the years to come.

It was all very well to sing Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and James Taylor songs, but to have my own? Now that would be something. So I set out to do just that, writing and slaving away on mostly rather forgettable tunes that would go down lukewarmly between a John Denver and a John Lennon song busking the streets of Cannes and Paris while spending the summer Inter-Railing thru Europe in the early 80's. But I was not to be persuaded. As the masters of songwriting will tell you, you have to write 1000 shit songs before you write your first good one. (Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan also spoke of writing many drafts or "bad songs" before arriving at something worthwhile, emphasising that the process can be long and requires patience and resilience). Yes, resilient I was and am, I suppose. Smart move? Maybe, maybe not. But that's another story. Stay tuned.