My Guitar Heroes
When you achieve something and think that you finally arrived, there always seems to be one extra hurdle to get across the finish line. At least that's my experience. When I decided to be a professional guitarist at age 19, I imagined it would be hard to make a living as a musician however I underestimated how hard it would be. If I could go back and tell my younger self what the future holds I'd make a lot of changes. I'm sure some of you feel the same, right?! Firstly, I would've taken the opportunity to get my A-level in Music, gone to university and studied to have a better grounding in my subject. Instead, naïvely, I thought I could learn all I needed to by myself. I bought many books on Music, jazz play alongs, I listened to as much music as I could in different genres and I took my teachers advice of working with as many different musicians as possible.
My first gig was an Irish band, then a soul band and a few original projects that didn't takeoff. If I had gone to university, as I've seen so many other people do, you get such a strong understanding and grasp of what it is to be a musician. Also, you meet lots of like-minded people which can be the catalyst for getting great work and can lead to successful outcomes. I'd followed the advice of my guitar teacher, who was a self-made, guitar virtuoso. He was born above a jazz club that his dad ran. He had absorbed all of this music at a very early age and was in the generation where effort, skill and a bit of bravado can get you where you wanted to be. There were less barriers to getting work in those days.
My personality on the other hand is much more on the introverted scale. I know you might find that hard to believe, but I extrovert myself to perform on stage. I'd much rather be out-of-sight really but there's this burning desire inside me to perform. I had chosen the hard way, and I don't think I was well adapted to it. I've been taught from a very early age and spoon-fed music. Learning to teach myself and push myself forward proved to be very difficult. Without the opportunities of university, I found myself with knowledge gaps compared to my contemporaries. I struggled. My parents were very supportive of me and still are. My Mum has a very positive attitude to life and thinks everything can be achieved if you just keep trying. It’ll work out in the end. That requires a lot of faith and I've had that a long time. But it gets to a point where you think ,“am I good enough?”, “can I really get there?”, “should I change careers and do something else?”
Fast forward to 2018 and I was well into my third year of being a cruise ship musician. I’d achieved much. I've worked in a show band for six months on the Carnival Pride, made some great friends, seen some lovely places but most importantly had grown my skills up to where they should have been maybe 10 years previously. I continued on to be solo guitar vocalist with Princess Cruises (thanks to Emily who I met on Carnival who had recommended her agent to me and got me the gig). That was also a massive learning curve. I must've learned 200 songs in the first two weeks. Now my repertoire is about 500 songs give or take.
By 2020 I'd stop cruising, not because of the pandemic, but because I didn't want to live that lifestyle anymore. You would think cruising is a great lifestyle, and it is for a while. For me it was always about getting better at what I do, becoming a better musician, singer, guitarist. I wanted to take that back to land. But when I returned to the UK, the pandemic started and we all know what happened to the music industry while that was going on. The gigs I had lined up for 2020 were cancelled. Some permanently, some postponed. But I was out of work and I didn't have a Plan B. 2020 turned out to be a very good year for me in my personal life as I met my future wife and we had a marvellous time learning about each other for six months and got married the following year.
So I find myself in 2024, not really making ends meet back in the UK. House prices are ridiculous, inflation absurd, trying to make ends meet on two salaries, still very difficult, especially for me who hasn't got a degree. By this point I had started a degree. A business degree and I'm doing really well with it at the moment. It's gonna take a few years more to finish but I should've done this years ago. My wife who is an excellent planner, despairs at me sometimes with my lack of planning! I don't blame her. I've learnt a lot from her and I'm very grateful. I love her very much.
To help bring in a few more pennies I'd suggested I should go back on a cruise ships for awhile. My wife, having 2 degrees and a very big brain, wanted to try and help me find the best way to be a musician and provide for my family and not be away all the time. I mentioned the idea of being a guest entertainer. What they call in the trade a “fly-on” entertainer. You fly to the ship, do two shows, either fly home again or go onto another ship. You're away a bit but your home more often and the renumeration isn't too bad! But I'd need a show. If you read my previous blog post, it tells you about the formation of the Eric show and I won't bore you with it here! However, one detail I left out was that a guest entertainer (who's a friend of a friend), Ashley Rose, who does an excellent ABBA celebration, helped me get in touch with Blackburn International who are now my agents. Without that connection I wouldn’t be doing my Eric Show. Thanks Ashley!
Once I had the Eric Show, I sent an early showreel to Ashley and she really liked it, but then she dropped the bombshell… you need two different shows to get hired! Eek. I’d spent so long getting my first show ready now I had to make a second show?! Bother, I thought!
My introduction to Blackburn was via a very lovely lady called Karen Grainger. She's the most amazing vocal impersonator and she works on cruises all over the world. She was kindly helping me to get ready to work with Blackburn. Her idea for my second show was some sort of guitar heroes show. With face – melting solos and a trip through the decades.
Karen Grainger doing her thing!
Guitar Icons was born!
So, now to the crux of my post… who are my guitar heroes or ‘icons’ of guitar. There are many! I went through a whole list and had to isolate and remove some. Karen and I went through several versions of the songs that I should choose. One person I knew I had to put on the list was Jimi Hendrix. How could I not?! He is the epitome of a rock guitarist and such a flamboyant character. Another artist I knew I should put in there, which is one that Karen suggested, was Eddie Van Halen. Eddie made face melting solos his forte! Lots of guitarist went through the planning process. I really wanted to put Eric Clapton in there of course but because I had my other show to dedicated to him, I had to keep him out of it. So without spoiling the show for everyone he wants to come and see it at some point there are some artists in there which are… a little left-field.
“ One person I knew I had to put on the list was Jimi Hendrix. How could I not?! “
One of my guitar heroes, an artist that didn't make the cut in the end- was Mark Knopfler, who had initially thought about doing a tribute to. Although his songs are very recognisable through his work with Dire Straits, they just didn't seem to fit. Sultans of Swing is one of my all-time favourite songs and one which I've learnt to play with a plectrum rather than with my fingers and I think it sounds pretty good! So maybe he'll find its way back into the show at some point in the future.
As the show is supposed to be through the decades, I needed a couple of more modern guitarists to cover in my show. One who came to mind immediately was John Mayer. I consider him to be Eric Clapton - mark II. He has been so inspired by Clapton and he's playing shows it. Mostly simple playing, tasteful and plays just what's necessary. So I added it in the song New Light.
Each show that I produce has to be written for a seven piece orchestra. Piano, bass, guitar, drums, saxophone, trumpet and trombone. As you can imagine, scoring that is a lot of work! Karen had put me in contact with some arrangers that she had used and I managed to get a couple of score sets from those authors. Unfortunately, many of the arrangements needed adjustment. Call me a perfectionist if you will! So I spent many hours re-scoring the charts.
The Jimi Hendrix chart was to be a medley of Jimi Hendrix songs and I couldn't find anyone anywhere who had scored something similar. So I had to do it I use a software called Dorico, which is a very advanced score writing software. It will playback what you've written in real time. It makes writing music easier and helps locating and removing mistakes. It's not until you actually hear the orchestra play those charts that you get a feeling of what it really sounds like. I am very happy with the results.
Well, I hope that's given you a small glimpse of how I got to where I am now and where my inspirations have come from. In the next post, I'll take you through the drama of the first performance on Guitar Icons. And in the meantime you can check out some of my videos with clips from the show or if you want to find me on social media and follow me, that would really help me! The links are at the top right hand of this page.
Many thanks for reading and see you on the next blog post everybody!