Mad: About Me

After growing up listening to my sister’s rock and roll records, I learned to love the music more and more. After hearing Eric Clapton on Cream’s albums, I wanted to recreate that sound- the problem was that I thought that Jack Bruce on bass guitar was making the lead guitar sounds I loved from these albums. I wondered why Rolling Stone magazine raved so much about Clapton while not saying much about Jack Bruce! I almost ended up getting a bass for my first guitar. I saw the thick strings on it and I ‘knew’ that you had to have those thick strings to make the kind of sound I loved from these albums. I would’ve been very disappointed! My brother John’s wife Betty had played some guitar but had given it up, but was kind enough to loan me her acoustic guitar and some chord books where I learned to play classics like Red River Valley and She’ll Be Comin’ Round The Mountain. To get the most enjoyment out of these, I started singing the words. I recorded my singing on a tape recorder, and damned, I found that I wasn’t a half-bad singer! I even wrote my first song, Never’s Too Long, which I eventually added more lyrics to and changed the name to Never’s Forever. I progressed on to Bob Dylan songs, etc. but didn’t actually get an electric guitar until years later so I still didn’t have that Eric Clapton sound, but my skills as a lead guitar player still developed playing classical music from Mel Bay instructional books, as I continued to develop my singing to accompany the rhythm guitar that I was playing from songbooks. Because I wasn’t playing with a band, I still needed something to fill in the gaps between 2nd and 3rd verses and decided to take another page from Bob Dylan and buy a harmonica and harmonica cage for leads while I played rhythm guitar. Over the years, I’ve written many songs and played in many bands.