1989 - Away from Hawkwind and back to the blues

1989 was a year of two halves. Dewi and I were still firm friends, and still going to Hawkwind and Huw Lloyd-Langton gigs, and still jamming from time to time. I was still doing some home recording, and jamming with Jim Ward quite a bit. And both had made 'guest appearances' on a couple of my home recordings.

Towards the end of the previous year, I'd made a new friend called Dave Drury, who was a great guitarist that I started having regular jams with, and he introduced me to quite a bit of new music. Dave was a big fan of Black Sabbath and Jimi Hendrix, amongst others; and was also into jazz/rock fusion, and guitarists like John McLaughlin.

He introduced me to such guitarists as Alvin Lee, and other jazz/rock stuff like Colosseum II; featuring ex-Thin Lizzy guitarist Gary Moore. Dave was a big fan of intense blues/rock players in the vein of Hendrix, such as Stevie Ray Vaughan, Johnny Winter, and Canadian guitarist Jeff Healey, who had burst on to the scene the previous year with his debut album; 'See the Light'.

All this new blues oriented music, most notably the discovery of Stevie Ray Vaughan, and just jamming with Dave, definitely influenced the direction of my playing around this time; as I began to get more interested in blues based rock; prompting a returning interest in Led Zeppelin again, but this time as a guitarist rather than a bass player.

My curiosity was piqued by jazz guitar to some extent. In my conversations with Huw Lloyd-Langton, he had mentioned the influence of jazz guitarists such as Wes Montgomery and Django Reinhardt. My attention had recently been turned in this direction slightly, after seeing a documentary about one of the creators of the electric guitar; Les Paul; which included concert footage of him play jazz standards like 'Lover', 'Dark Eyes', and 'How High the Moon'.
I'd also been reintroduced to rock 'n' roll through a belated interest in the Stray Cats, via an album lent to me by Jim Ward, and I began to recognise the jazz flavoured influence in the playing of Brian Setzer and Alvin Lee.

After 10 years in the band; Huw Lloyd-Langton left Hawkwind that year, and as a consequence, I began to lose interest in them as my passion turned towards playing blues/rock; and I formed a new band as a vehicle for this change in direction; with my friend and previous band mate Jim Ward on bass guitar, with Jim's older brother Dave on drums. This would be a blues/rock band with myself and Jim sharing vocal duties, and we would play mostly original material of our own with a few covers thrown in.
As 1989 turned into a new decade; the Hawkwind years for me, were all but over.