End Of The Strangers

Although I mentioned Bryan Adams as being the catalyst that sparked my interest in guitar, it was really Oasis who firmly cemented that passion.  I was vaguely aware of them from their first album, Definitely Maybe, hearing kids at school mention this band, but for me it really started when I heard the track Morning Glory from their second album of the same name.  Cable TV was the new popular thing in the mid-90s in Britain, or at least Edinburgh where I was, and there were three music channels.  Morning Glory was on heavy rotation on one of them and I was drawn to the raw, loud electric guitars.  Then I heard Don't Look Back In Anger and that was it.  I bought the albums and for the first time I'd found a band where I loved almost all of their songs.  This was early 1996. For most of the year, Oasis were what I was listening to along with other Britpop artists like Ocean Colour Scene and Cast.  I also bought Best Of albums from classic rock acts like ...

I didn't feel good for the whole week between Christmas and New Year.  I put it down to a kind of flu thing.  I was able to go out with my friends to the Edinburgh Hogmanay Street Party, my first time there, with around 300,000 people crammed into Princes Street I think.  After some scary moments of crushing, I don't think they ever allowed those sorts of numbers in again. I returned to work after the New Year and within about a month I was ill again with the same symptoms I'd had during the Christmas period.  I needed about a week off work.  Then it happened again about a month later.  For most of 1997 this was the pattern... I'd be off work for a week, then return for a few weeks, then off again for a week, and gradually a week became two weeks and by the summer I was almost off work more than I was there.  I'd been going to the doctor during this time but he couldn't explain it.  They took blood tests, urine samples but I had to keep going back...

My journey in Music starts in 1996.  Just before Britpop enters my world, I'm floating around different rock artists like Queen, Bon Jovi and Bryan Adams.  I love listening to different songs but no artist has gripped me at this stage.  I was borrowing music biographies from the library and happened to be reading a Bryan Adams one.  The chapter where he described learning guitar put something in my mind and then around this same time I would notice a classical acoustic guitar sitting in the corner at my Gran's flat whenever I visited.  She had been taking lessons but it stopped and so the guitar was just lying there.  One day I asked if I could borrow it.  I had already bought a guitar book in between reading about Bryan Adams' experience and seeing this guitar at my Gran's place. The guitar book had a variety of classic rock staples I remember... Mull Of Kintyre, Paint It Black, So Far Away, Light My Fire, Black Magic Woman, Pinball Wizard, etc......