I
began learning the piano accordion for 3 years at age 7, and made my stage debut
at 10 on this instrument — playing a Ricky Nelson song Hello Mary Lou.
I got given a guitar (acoustic 'F' hole) for my 13th birthday —
it took me a year and a half to learn to play it, teaching myself from chordbooks
and strumming along to G, C, and D chords while my mother played the piano.
My first electric guitar was a pink Stratocaster copy — bought on hire purchase when I was 16. I loved the sounds of bands like The Who, Kinks, Yardbirds etc. and The Byrds. When I heard Hendrix's Purple Haze for the first time I went out and bought a fuzzbox.
In the mid-70s I played in a covers band called 'Zylvian', doing songs by Bowie, T. Rex, Stones etc. Following that I played in 'Toucan Two', an acoustic duo with Nigel Clements — after gigging around Wellington the two of us moved to Sydney and began writing a lot of our own songs. After a few years of acoustic stuff — and getting sick of sitting on high stools in a corner of some wine bar and being drowned out by drunken yuppies — we saw Neil Young's movie Rust Never Sleeps and decided we were ready to make noisy music again.
So the first 1985 line-up for Let's Planet had me and Nigel on guitars, Helen Cairney on keyboards, Caroline on drums, and Tim Pike on bass. This version lasted about 18 months, doing supports for Flying Nun bands like The Verlaines, Chills, and Sneaky Feelings, and headlining our own gigs. We split early in 1987 when Caroline was offered the drumming slot in The Chills — we both went off to Europe to tour and record the Brave Words album (I was roadie and guitar tech for Martin Phillips).
When we returned to New Zealand in 1988 we revived Let's Planet and set our sights on world domination …
Apart from completing demos for Let's Planet IV (the Runes album), I'm currently working on songs for my first solo album. Watch this space …