Simon Croft

Hello Everyone ! I'm a guitarist based in Melbourne, Australia. Apart from teaching guitar to about 60 students a week, you'll usually find me gigging almost every week with "Thunderstruck" (The Australian AC/DC show). Prior to this, I was playing guitar in the Australian production of the Queen/Ben Elton Musical "We Will Rock You". This gig involved a tour of Australia & two tours of Japan. It was a great honor to audition for & then be hand-picked by Brian May & Roger Taylor of Queen to play their fantastic music ! It was then a bigger honour to share the stage with them! Certainly an experience I will NEVER forget !I would say the touring highlight of this particular gig was playing in Japan where Queen are one of the biggest bands ever ! & WWRY had such a fantastic reception. During the first WWRY tour of Japan in 2005 I took part in the recording of a song from the show "No-One But You (Only The Good Die Young) along with the rest of the WWRY band, this song features a wonderful Lead vocal performance from Rebecca Jackson Mendoza, this song was issued as a single in Japan only. I managed somehow to find time (between WWRY tours) to play guitar & sing backing vocals on the Dave Evans (ex AC/DC) 2004 CD "Sinner" which has done really well in Europe, the USA & Japan,(one of the songs I co-wrote on this album "Sold My Soul To Rock n Roll" was nominated at the 2007 LA Music Awards). During my time in Japan I am fortunate enough to be involved in a project called AC Queen, which is an acoustic tribute to Queen, we try our best to play some shows in Japan at least once a year. I was also lucky enough to be invited by the wonderful Kurosawa-gakki music store chain in Tokyo to perform a guitar clinic for the official launch of the Brian May model guitar in Japan. I also met some great Japanese musicians & found playing all manner of gigs in Japan to be an absolute joy, on one of my trips there, not only did I get to see one of my all-time heros JEFF BECK play in concert, I also got to hang out & play guitar with one Mr Paul Gilbert, a guitar player of astonishing ability ! In late 2006 my endorsement with ULBRICK SOUND became official & I am now playing live with ONLY my stunning sounding STADIUM 80! The ULBRICK range of guitar amps are really the BEST in the World ! Late in 2007 I was asked to play guitar with ORCHESTRA VICTORIA for their "ORCHESTRA VICTORIA ROCKS QUEEN" shows at the Palms at Crown Casino, this was a great honor & the shows were an AMAZING experience ! For the rest of 2009 & early 2010 I will be playing guitar in the UK touring production of "We Will Rock You". I hope you'll visit me often here, I hope to be updating very often even when I should be playing my guitar!