At 16, I was a grease monkey in a garage. That was the colloquial expression for the lowest person there, and I was just a lad working my first job. I had two very good friends, and the three of us got some cheap secondhand motorbikes, because we didn’t have any money, and took them all apart and rebuilt them. That took a lot of time and a lot of commitment and a lot of energy. Because there was very little money about, we had to learn to do it all ourselves. So that was my main hobby – and it took a long time to get it all sorted because finances were very short. It wasn’t until much later that I got any interest in music – and when I got interested, the big thing that happened was The Beatles.
That was starting to be my big passion. I was able to subjugate my shy self, because I was very
