When You’re Young
“Most kids want to be professional footballers or firemen. I just wanted to play music and I thought guitar was a good start – the piano was a bit too big and expensive. My mum and dad, bless them, they saved up their pennies and bought me an acoustic guitar to start the ball rolling. I was a bit clumsy, just dabbling to start with. But if you want to do something good, you’ve got to do it on a regular basis. And I just went on from there.”
Trading Places
“I joined The Jam as rhythm guitarist. They had a lead guitarist in Steve Brookes and Paul [Weller] was on bass. But when Steve left, we auditioned a few players and they either weren’t good musically or we’d have found them hard socially. So Paul said, ‘Let’s try it as a three-piece. You take bass, I’ll take rhythm/lead, see how we go.’ That’s how it finished up. I didn’t mind moving to bass. I wanted to perform live, and if that meant changing instruments, I was prepared for it. The only thing is that if you’re at a party and someone says, ‘Give us a song, Bruce,’ piano or guitar is a lot easier] all the time!”
