DAVE HILL

My First Guitar

“My first guitar was a really dreadful acoustic from the Kays catalogue. I was only 13 and I knew I had music in me, but it wasn’t the piano, it wasn’t the violin, and it certainly wasn’t the recorder. I spoke to dad and he said, ‘I don’t want to be wasting money buying expensive guitars if you’re not going to continue with it. I’ll buy you this one [in the catalogue].’

“It turned up in a cardboard box and, because I’m left-handed, I tried playing it upside down, so dad said, ‘I think you’re going to need some lessons. There’s a jazz guitarist at your school and he’s teaching a few kids how to play acoustic. I’ll tell you what, as it’s five bob a lesson, you put in half a crown from your paper round, and I’ll put half a crown in.’ When I turned up at the lesson with this guitar, the teacher said, ‘The first thing you have to learn is to play it the right way around’. I said, ‘But I’m left-handed,’ and he told me, ‘It doesn’t matter – you’ll get used to it.’ And I did.”

Starting With Skiffle

“When I started and from that we started to formulate something. We used to go up the youth centre on a Sunday morning and have a go.