​​I was born in Sydney, Australia, at a very young age. My father was a musician, very well respected in Sydney. He never pushed me into music. He just waited until I asked to play something which ended up being a xylophone. I got the xylophone but we soon moved to Kalgoorlie, Western Australia and had to leave the xylophone. We gave it to a friend from school who had polio and was "imprisoned" in his home as was the custom for polio victims in those days.

 

Before moving to WA I lived in Cootamundra for a while and had already started to play the guitar with some friends from school but I didn't own one myself. I used to borrow a tenor guitar (one with four strings) and practice on that. The first band I was in was called "the Zodiacs" (well it was the 60s) and we had 7 songs in our repertoire. At our first gig we played 4 sets (called brackets in those days) and we repeated the same 7 songs for each set, carefully changing the order for each set so no-one would notice.

 

In WA, (in 1970) I was 16 when my father asked me if I would like to learn the keyboard and join his band (at that time the "Bob McGowan Quintet" later to change to "Hi-Way 1"). So my father had his guitar player, Nigel Stewart/Plunkett, teach me chords on a Farfisa Compact Deluxe Organ. Nigel was an incredible musician who had worked with the Ted Heath bigband in England and actually knew people like Count Basie and Charlie Parker (What was he doing in Kalgoorlie? That's another story). After learning all the chords for all the songs the band played I sat on the side of the stage quietly playing along with my Dad's band at a Pub called the Tower Hotel in Kalgoorlie. I did that for 6 months (Boy was my backside sore:-)).

 

We then moved to Perth where after a few months we started working in a nightclub called Lindy's in James Street, Perth. I started taking paino lessons and started to improve my playing and understanding of music. I was surrounded by great musicians all who gravitated around my Dad and every night at the nightclub we would have Perth's best musicians and touring musicians from all over getting up and jamming with the band.

 

One time we were invited to play at the Perth Jazz Festival and my Dad being a bit of a renegade decided we would play songs that were in stark contrast to the main theme of the festival. Nearly every band at the festival played Dixieland or Trad Jazz. So we started with a "modern" jazz song called "Worksong", then follwed that with Frank Sinatra's "That's Life", Blood, Sweat and Tears "Spinning Wheel" and a Chicago tune from their first album called "Prologue". When we walked out on stage there were about 5,000 people in the audience. I got the worst case of "stagefright" I have ever felt but my Dad got me through with lot's of smiles and encouragement. I had to sing the last song. Well we received a standing ovation and I was hooked. It also taught me about song choices and standing out from the rest.

 

This was the start of a lifelong love of music and performing.