I was 12 years old when me and Danny [Goffey, future Supergrass bandmate] first got together in his bedroom. He had this really crappy drum kit that was falling apart, I brought a little keyboard. We were like, “we’re gonna make a band!” I quickly realised the keyboard wasn’t very cool, so I ditched it to learn how to play guitar. I had a couple of guitar lessons at school, but they were so dull – I learned G, E, D and A and then ditched the lessons and thought, that will do me. I could write punk songs with those four chords.
All the parties we used to have – get-togethers, family dos. A couple of my uncles were good guitarists, and we would have big singalongs, with all the oldies getting really hammered. There was always a piano in our house. My older brother Rob learned to play it when