guitars

Webmaster: Interesting choices. So what about a concert to forget?

Andy: Julian Cope at the Royal Court in Liverpool. I have never been a fan and only attended as a friend had a spare ticket. Anyway the first half of the show was all Julian’s new album which I don’t think many people in the audience had heard because in typical Liverpool fashion there was a call of “Play something Good” shouted from the back of the room. He did go on to play more well known material but to me it just seem to last forever. Each to their own though.

Dave: I saw Aerosmith at the Empire in Liverpool in the 1970s and although musically the band were great it was just too loud. From the start the volume hurt my ears and made me feel sick in my stomach. We walked out!

Simon: Sisters of Mercy at Leeds University in the 2000s. A childhood favourite so I was looking forward to seeing them. The whole stage was covered with haze and fog for the light show for the entire gig. You could see a musician once every four songs! I appreciate the lasers work best with the haze and we use one ourselves obviously but come on, the whole show covered? Sonically they absolutely nailed it but I may as well had stayed at home and played the vinyl. I walked out.

Webmaster: How about a gig you should have gone to?

Andy: Easy, Michael Jackson at Aintree. I wouldn’t say I was a fan but hey it was Michael Jackson!

Dave: Probably Yes last year (2022). I watched a few clips of them playing in Scotland the week before I was due to go and to be honest it wasn’t very good so I decided to give the Manchester show a miss. Several of my friends went and said how good they were. Damn!

Simon: I have two. I had a ticket to see Nirvana in 1991 at the Duchess of York pub in Leeds (before Nevermind was released I believe). For some reason I didn’t go. I gave the unstubbed ticket to a record collector ten years later. My biggest regret was not going to see Rory Gallagher at the Irish Centre in Leeds and my hero passing away a short while after. I never got to see him at a concert.

Webmaster: What inspired you to learn your instrument?

Simon: My mum and dad always wanted me to play guitar so they arranged formal lessons for me when I was eight. I hated the lessons and didn’t pick it back up until I was sixteen. It dawned on me that I could at least try to replicate my musical influences. Clapton, Knopfler, Green, Randy Rhoads etc, all gripped me with their phrasing and technique. I wanted some of that. My favourite thing to do is play live to an audience.

Andy: I began playing guitar around 1990 more because it was what all my friends were doing than I had been inspired to. Teenagers eh? Anyway as I began to get more into music I was drawn to the prog sound of Genesis, Yes and Pink Floyd. Obviously these bands have keyboards heavily featured in their music so after a few years I decided I wanted to learn to play some of the fabulous keyboard parts of Tony Banks, Rick Wakeman etc. So, I purchased a keyboard to learn some of the parts for my personal satisfaction rather than any aspirations to play keyboards in a band. It’s fair to say that my keyboard skills have come on a lot since then but as any musician will attest, playing an instrument is always a learning experience and a challenge.

Dave: I got an acoustic guitar in 1970 and had lessons with a neighbour who was a hippy. He taught me the basics and the band I worked hard to mimic was Creedence Clearwater Revival. I learned a lot of their songs including the whole of the Willy and the Poor Boys album. Then one day he played me Deep Purple and I went away and learned what I thought was the guitar part to Speed King. He pointed out I had worked out the bass line and the rest is history. Round about the same time I bought a sampler album called The Age of Atlantic, which had one track from different artists on the Atlantic Record label. One song stood out, it was Survival by Yes. The bass guitar sounded as loud as the lead guitar. I was hooked.

Webmaster: How important is it to recreate as close as possible to the original sounds on the songs you play with Mama?

Andy: Very. Attention to detail on this is important as the audience are familiar with every nuance of each song. I know in later years Tony himself just went with modern sounds however on certain songs like Mama, Home By the Sea and No Son of Mine the sounds are either samples of the original keyboards or rack versions of the original keyboards.

Dave: Everyone in Mama is totally focused on sounding as authentic as we can make it. Our aim is to play a concert so that even if we do not look like Genesis (we don’t go in for dressing up!) then we do sound like Genesis. This is probably more of an issue for Simon and Andy but when I play guitar parts on the double neck I use an FX unit to try to match the original sounds.

Simon: It is the most important thing for me and when I attended the audition for Mama, I was very well prepared. I spent an extraordinary amount of time getting the tones right with my equipment. Whilst I recognise I am not the best guitarist in the world, I absolutely do my homework. I learn the music and I want the sounds as close as possible. Looking at websites, listening carefully to the tracks and live versions of songs. There are a wealth of different guitar tones in a Genesis set and the audience have paid good money to hear that music replicated as it was intended. So we owe it to the audience to get it right. We have a very special singer and it’s up to us to ensure we compliment that voice with the requisite sounds.

Webmaster: Thanks guys! It’s going up on the website right….. NOW!