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Played in bands since 1982,starting with Option Zero at school whose members were Ali Barr on Bass and vocals,Hamish Gray on Drums and me on guitar and vocals.Many Sundays were spent rehearsing in my folk's garage and Ali's at Craigleith Road in their basement annoying the neighbours.My good mate Stevie Hay was always around with his words of wisdom.We recorded three songs at Pier House Studios.Hamish Gray was sacked after our Stevenson College gig and replaced by Neil Sommerville.We became the "Heights".
The Heights rehearsed between Niddrie Street and Jimmy Boyle's place in Abbeyhill I think called the Washhouse.We played the Waterloo Bar and Chambers Street Students Union in Edinburgh and also a memorable occasion at the then brand new Stevenson College Students Union which was memorable cause the place was in the middle of a building site.Inbetween we played the La Sorbonne or Casbah a few times in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh gaining a situation where if the band for the night failed to turn up the Moroccan guy who ran the place would call us and we'd shove our gear down Niddrie Street in about half an hour,play and get £40.Eventually our claim to fame came at this venue where we ended up completely out of the blue playing with the Clash where they supported us on their busking tour(after some discussion with Joe Strummer in the front bar,Joe was more than happy to go on first and bought me a pint and chatted afterwards).We were called the Heights,we split up.Then became the Handsome Devils.We continued with changing line ups of Phil Long or Dave Mckee on bass,Neil Sommerville on drums and Colin Watt also on guitar and backing vocals.We were all mates from school(apart from Colin Watt),including Neil Mackay who was an old friend of us all.In fact Neil Mackay,Phil Long,Steve Hay and I all shared a flat at Atholl Place in Edinburgh in the eighties.Great parties we had,believe me.The Handsome Devils had a few radio plays on either Radio Forth or Radio Scotland a few years ago now plus recorded a video at the Venue in Edinburgh which was filmed for broadcast in Berlin on a cable channel for a project called"The Berlin Tapes".My mate Dave Bogie produced the promo for us.A live radio interview was done also between me and Bruce Findlay(Simple Minds manager at the time)for his radio show plus the broadcast of a song I wrote called"My Very First". Bruce was very complimentary.
Then the whole band featured in a live interview for Radio Scotland.That line up was me,Dave Mckee,Colin Watt and Neil Sommerville. We recorded three times together once at Ice Station Zebra Studios then twice at Chamber Recording Studios.In between this I recorded with Dave Bogie, bassist from Edinburgh band the Dancing Bears. Hours of fun were had putting tunes together every Sunday at Dave's house in Edinburgh.We remained good friends and Dave was always very encouraging to me about my music and set up a session with Scott from the Dream Disciples for me to play guitar which I did as a one off.Dave and I also contributed a version of"Intravenous"for the Catherine Wheel Covers Compilation under the name "Crank".These tracks were all done either through the night or very long evenings as Dave used his technician position at Napier University to the full to get together recording time for us both.It didn't happen enough though,before Dave had his accident we were going to do a cover of the Pixies"Monkeys Gone to Heaven"but alas it never happened.He loved that tune,lots of bass! However we had great times and we are left with 3 great covers of Neil Young's "Rockin in the Free World"(what a 12 hours we had!)The Sugar song"A Good Idea"and the Catherine Wheel's classic song "Intravenous"Thank God for Napier University's Coates Crescent Department of sound and vision studies and their great studio. Thanks we both used it well.Our version of"Intravenous"is available on the net through Lewis Slade's Catherine Wheel site as are all the tracks on mp3 at the Catherine Wheel's Covers Compilation site.Dave sadly was killed in a motorbike accident a few years ago.I still miss him and look back happily on my times working with him.A complete music nut just like me.Since then I played with Bryan Mcritchie and Kirsten in Edinburgh band "Crank"and recorded a demo at Chamber Studios with Jamie Watson.4 original tracks were done then with help from engineer Grant on drums and bass guitar-"Strip Me","Lloide","Alone"and"Was I Ever There".Bryan wrote most of the songs for this band.Crank disbanded in 1996.All my demos were done at either Ice Station Zebra studios or Chamber Studios in Edinburgh or of course Coates Crescent.I've continued to do my own thing recording via my 4 track at home doing bass,guitars and vocals myself.I do this still mainly for my own enjoyment.
