It's here in the Biography section that you would normally find the bit that says "Born into a family of musicians, Clive was surrounded by music from an early age and it was only a matter of time before he became a musician himself..." and stuff like that.

But it's not true at all. To the best of my knowledge, there are no musicians in my family, and I have no knowledge of any musical ancestors. True, I grew up on a steady diet of music via my parents' record collection - Abba, The Beatles, Val Doonican, Sam Cooke, The Carpenters, John Denver, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra - but no-one around me when I was young made music.

My first love, and the thing that now pays the way for my music, was computers. I got myself a ZX Spectrum in 1983 and was instantly hooked. I learnt to program in BASIC and obsessed over it for years. Nowadays I work as a website programmer in the City, and am doing OK on it. But when I'm coding or designing, I always have music on in my headphones... ;-)

Then, in around 1988 at age 14, I noticed something strange going on at school - kids in my year were buying instruments and having "jam sessions". Odd, I thought. But cool... so I decided to join in and become a drummer.

And when I discovered how much drum kits cost, I decided to become a guitarist.

That December, Santa was very kind to me indeed. How he got down that chimney with a white Strat copy and a 30 watt Laney amp I'll never know, but he made it, and away I went. 18 months of guitar lessons and painful plinking up and down the pentatonic scale, and I decided to go it alone. I found a few friends with similar tastes, and a little garage band called "Sister Steele" was formed.

A few months later, I had myself a nice Fender Heavy Metal Strat in Ice Blue, and I'd started hanging around with a bunch of guys a couple of towns over, and that led to the forming of a rock/metal band called "N.S.K.". It was with them that I did my first ever gig, on July 10th, 1991. I still have it on video somewhere. It was a glorious event (for a 17-yr old), and we all went home happy.

Well, that lasted a year, and then I found myself in a thrash/power metal band called "Ugly Seed". Then a progressive/funk metal band called "May 19". Then a superb pop/rock/progressive band called "Strange Machine", who spent most of their time in the studio. Lots of cool recordings were made, some of which I still have up on my homesite. Those were great days.

Following that, I joined "Iguanahead" - a poppy rock band in a sort of Crowded House/Del Amitri vein - as an acoustic rhythm player, and ended up as lead guitarist after other members quit. This was the band with the biggest chance of making it, I reckon, and our manager at the time (who has since passed away - RIP Keith, I'll see you when I get there) got us some good high-profile London gigs, but sadly to no avail. To the best of my knowledge, I believe that the main force behind Iguanahead, Mr Logan Wilson, is still going strong and I wish him every success. :-)

And that was my last full-time band. Since then I've done a few gigs here and there (most notably Millennium Night - I'll try and get some pictures up sometime...), but mostly I've been focussing on the "Earthman" project.

Available to buy

Earthman

Brothers  (Mp3 4.4Mb)

Until the end of the World  (Mp3 4.9Mb)