1985 - The Les Paul years begin

By 1985 Dancing Shiva had finished as a band, but Dewi and I continued a close friendship and a love of Hawkwind, which included going see them live a couple of times, as well as the Lloyd-Langton group several times as well.
LLG released their first studio album that year; and it had a big impact on my budding aspirations as a lead guitarist that year.
Meanwhile, Hawkwind were going through a creative peak, with Alan Davey on bass, leaving Harvey Bainbridge to pursue the keyboard role full time. They released a landmark album that year, the critically acclaimed 'The Chronicle of the Black Sword', which they toured extensively and filmed for a video release shortly after. The legendary science fantasy writer Michael Moorcock, who was involved with Hawkwind a decade earlier made special appearances at some of the gigs providing narration, as the project was based on his successful range of 'Elric' books, around which band wrote all the songs for the album.
The album included some inspired guitar playing from Huw-Lloyd Langton, which had just as big an impact on me as his solo album that year.

On the band front, new directions would take place this year. I had spent much of the early part of the year practising and learning the six string guitar, but had grown very weary of the cheap Les Paul copy which made the guitar more difficult to learn. It was thanks to drummer Tony Ruston that I was finally able own a decent quality guitar, when he signed the HP forms for me; and I walked out of Carlsboro Sound Centre with an original Gibson Les Paul standard, tobacco sunburst, 1981. This made such a huge difference to my efforts to learn guitar, and I felt that I made much faster progress for having it.

In the meantime, a new pub called 'The Malthouse' had opened up, with live bands on Sunday nights. Local guitarist, Ty Garner, (who had originally introduced me to Dewi) had secured a regular gig there, and was looking for a bass player for a new blues band he'd put together, and asked me if I fancied the job. I told him that my heart was now in playing the guitar, but I agreed to join if he would allow me to do a couple of numbers on the guitar. He agreed, and so my first performances as a guitarist took place with his 'Red House Blues Band' at the Malthouse in 1985.

Later that year, the opportunity to play guitar full time in a band came along. Ex-Dancing Shiva drummer Glen Annable played with Ty in a rock covers band called 'Stoney Road'. When Ty left to focus on playing the Blues, Glen also parted company; leaving their guitar and vocalist Dave Manley, and bass player Jim Ward, needing a drummer and lead guitarist. Dave and Jim were local buskers who I vaguely knew, and I called up drummer Tony Ruston, and arranged a get together and rehearsal for Stoney Road. Things seemed to gell, and soon we were ready to roll.