You went to St Andrews University in the early 70s to read Theology. Any particular reason?


Why not? I was, and still am, interested in spirituality and would hope that there is some evidence of that in my songwriting. How did you get started?


I got my first guitar when I was 17 with some left-over holiday money. It cost £14 and was a second-hand ‘Yairi’, an excellent Japanese nylon strung instrument, although I hadn’t a clue about its quality when I bought it. I went into the shop (Forbes in Dundee – which sadly closed in 2004) and said ‘I want a guitar – what can I get for £14?’ I played every waking hour.


I was very lucky. I did my first of many T.V. shows for the B.B.C. (Sunday Set) two years later using that guitar. The fee was 12 guineas (£12.60) plus Five pounds, ten shillings and sixpence expenses (£5.52) so my first ‘big’ gig paid for the guitar.


What music were you doing as a teen and at university?


The first song I remember playing was The House of the Rising Sun. It has five chords, which was two more than most songs in those days. My pals thought me incredibly clever, the girls stopped regarding me as a bad smell and I started to get party invitations (so long as I brought the guitar!). The fact that my guitar was nylon strung dictated that I was an acoustic player so I got in to anything folky. Scottish, Irish, American, Contemporary, it did not seem to matter so long as I was playing.


I bought the first of my Yamahas after the guys at my local Folk Club (The Inn Folk) encouraged me to perform and suggested I try steel strung guitars to get a more balanced sound when finger picking and a louder, more effective, one when strumming.


I got it on H.P. for £109 (viz pay the deposit then head for the hills!) my father was furious when the bailiffs came to the Manse door for the money (I was long gone) but he paid up and then calmed down a bit when I told him over a melting telephone line that it could have been worse. ‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN?’ he bellowed (and boy could he bellow!). ‘HOW COULD IT POSSIBLY HAVE BEEN WORSE?’


‘I almost bought a motor-bike,’ (his worst fear) I replied. Silence. It was never mentioned again. To this day when anyone asks me (and they do) how to get started on guitar I always say buy a budget Yamaha and learn The House of the Rising Sun.


Who were your early musical influences?


I had been brought up in a household where Robert Burns hovered five feet off the ground and farted apple blossom into baskets of receptive rose petals. I loved the poetry but most of the song accompaniments were a bit twee. I tried a few Burns songs on guitar but it was not until Maartin Allcock opened my ears to open tunings that I felt I had something original to contribute to the genre. I still have the little notebook of tunings that he painstakingly wrote out for me in the very early 80s. When he was the instrumentalist in my wee band (he left us to join Fairport and we all cried).


My biggest contemporary influence then was Tom Paxton but for pure acoustic sound I loved Ralph McTell’s playing on ‘Spiral Staircase’. The percussive ring of his Gibson J50 and his magic touch really made me tingle. Some years later I bought a J50 from Martin Simpson (who also taught me about plastic nails and superglue) but I could never get it to sound like Ralph’s – not even close.


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