STEVE HOWE
Guitars, Guitars, Guitars
“I wasn’t immune to music before the rock ’n’ roll revolution started. My parents had Les Paul and Mary Ford records on 78, you know, singing How High The Moon and The World Is Waiting For The Sunrise. Amazing recordings. I heard them and they were just part of my life. There was also a guy called Tennessee Ernie Ford and he had a couple of great players on his records called Jimmy Bryant and Speedy West. Those records were pretty exciting. And then rock ’n’ roll and Chuck Berry came along and I was just thinking, ‘Guitars, guitars, guitars…’ I was moaning at my parents, ‘I want a guitar! I want a guitar!’ and I finally got one for Christmas in 1959, when I was 12 years old. It wasn’t a Framus, but it looked like a Framus f-hole acoustic archtop.”
Shut Up ’N Play Yer Guitar
“Chuck Berry was one of the big inspirations, but I liked all the rock ’n’ roll acts. I started to notice that singers often had a good guitarist alongside them. Like Bill Hailey had great guitarists, Ricky Nelson had James Burton, and Elvis Presley had Scotty Moore. So I modelled myself on being a guy like that – the guy who stood
