MUSIC BIOGRAPHY:

My father, Geoff Garvey, was a semi-pro sax player, and I grew up hearing Ambrose, Lew Stone and Duke Ellington with seasonings of west-coast, bebop, Spike Jones and some classical stuff from Bach to Stravinsky on 78s. And the test-card.

My parents professed to hate rock 'n roll, but "6.5 Special" was on every week on TV and we seemed to hear everything from Bill Haley to Jerry Lee Lewis.

My brother Nig and I used to compose songs from an early age, latterly on our old piano, on which I learned how notes fit together - barring those that were missing. But once I heard Hank Marvin in 1961 it was the guitar I wanted to play, ideally one with horns and a tremolo bar and a label saying "Fender Stratocaster - 160 gns".They didn't

 teach guitar at Grammar School, though, and that plus the ousting of the Shadows by the Beatles had me learning violin and picking up Nig's taste in 20th century classical music. I still listened to Manfred Mann, but thought of myself as a classical violinist, if a poor one.

That is, until Cream's final concert (which I was dragooned into watching on TV by a guy in my zoology set) re-awakened me to the fact I ought to be a guitarist. A loud one.

The week after I got my first guitar a random encounter with a Rev Gary Davis tablature made me realise the possibilities of acoustic guitar. So when I got to Cambridge I ended up in the folk club rather than a rock band, hearing the likes of Martin Carthy and Roy Bookbinder, but particularly the young virtuosos like Keith Christmas and Gordon Giltrap.

It was then I formed a folk-rock duo, Peculiar

Lucan Sauce, and did over 200 gigs performing our own Gospel-based songs. This was only interrupted by my marriage and the breakup of the band.

Silly hospital doctor hours excluded music for the next few years, but in 1983 I decided to start afresh, finally bought a Strat, and began writing and playing rock in the band i2i.

A couple of bands, and three Greenbelt Fringe performances later (I played the very last set in 1986!), I found myself mainly being a worship-leader in churches, which guided my writing and playing for several years. Then I started recording my back-catalogue.

In 2005 I started learning sax seriously, using the same instruments left to me by my father, plus a 1975 soprano. Nice to have a bit of continuity, isn't it?

Currently I play guitar in a church band, sax in a couple of wind-based groups and both in a rock/soul outfit. I'm still writing and recording stuff at home.