Sunday, January 29, 2012

My Bands that I played in etc

Hi, I thought that today I would share with you a little bit of my history! I was born i north London in a place called Upper Holloway as Christopher Paul Barnes, When I was 9 years old,My mum got me my first guitar, It was a small but perfect Italian guitar that was well in fret, My brother John showed me three chords ( all he knew ), From that day on I played morning noon & Night driving my parents u the wall with that guitar! When I reached the age of 13, My dad said , Son, If you keep improving as you have, I will buy you an electric guitar! Of course I did practise by of which this time I was pretty good to say the least! So along came that day when we went down o our local music shop called Berry's in Holloway road N7, To my delight he bought me a Hofner Colourama solid bodied guitar! This guitar made a great improvement to my playing!
By the time I was 14, I joined my first band it was called Mick Daley and his northern stars, The band consisted of three of us Mick on drums & vocal, Horace on rhythm & vocal ,And myself on Lead guitar & vocal, We played the local pubs for a while! Then when I was 16 , I discovered a recording studio  as I walked past an umbrella shop in Holloway road on the way to the music shop,In fact it was only a couple of shops away from Berry's, Little did I know that it was RGM sound run by the late Joe Meek, So being nosey as I was, I investigated by asking in the shop bellow about it! They said yes it is a recording studio with lots of famous groups and artists going in and out all the time, I finally got to meet Joe Meek and arrange to train as an engineer with him, In those days of 1966 mixer controlls were primitive as the slider control was yet to be marketed, So I learnt how to mix, One day I asked Joe If I could bring my little band which was then called the Rapids to record, To my surprise he said yes, So we cut a demo disc!  The Rapids consisted of my brother John on drums, Vince on rhythm, Mick Dowd on bass, And myself on lead guitar/vocals, The band only lasted 6 months an then we went our own ways,
In 1967 ,To my horror, Joe Meek committed suicide! I was shocked as I only saw him three days before! So that was my training finished!
In 1968 I was in a pub called the Half Moon in Holloway road, On the stage was a country band called The Lariats, After a couple of bears I got the nerve to ask if I could play and sing a couple of songs with them! I ended up joining the band as a led guitarist! In 1969 , My parents got a move by the council which meant that if I was to o with them ,I would have to leave the band,That is just what I did, So we moved to Bellingham SE6,
Because of my bad luck, I decided to change my name from Christopher Paul Barnes to Paul Christopher Burns , My parents were not happy about it but I did it anyway! 1970 came along and I auditioned for a band at Plumstead! I got the position as lead guitarist! After a few changes and misplacement we became a really tight rock band! We started with the name Grey, Then we changed it ti Impact and was told it was another bands name,So we settled on the name HUSH, We go a regular job with Bob Wheatley in one of his many entertainment pubs at that time, The pub was called the Harrows down on the A127 near Wickford! We played 7 nights a week and even played for Radio 1 on the Jimmy Young show! After nearly two years I left the band due to to much pressure!  Since then I have been in many bands but now I only play for pleasure!


Its funny how life turns out! 

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