INTRODUCTION
It seems to me that any musical journey any of us undertakes is a pretty solitary affair. We listen to music and practice playing on our own, for the most part, before ever playing with others in a band. I think that's the moment you take flight and soar. It's a bit like when your flight instructor lets you fly solo for the first time. In my case it was similar but just a little different.
It all started with my parents, who were really the first purveyors of music in my life. Mum was an Indian classical dancer with a bright future ahead of her. She definitely had the gift of music because she could play just about any Indian musical instrument she touched. Quite the prodigy actually. If I was a betting man, I'd say she passed on the musical genes to me. Not that I'd ever got to her level of skill.
And Dad, well, he couldn't play a musical instrument to save his life. But he had this life-long love affair with jazz. Jazz was something that wrapped its arms about me and welcomed in, without much prompting.
I have such warm memories of sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of his beloved wood-paneled sound system in the late-60/early-70s while he played vinyl records of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, Pat Martino, Johnny Smith, Howard Roberts, and a host of other jazz luminaries. There was also always jazz singing in the air in our house, be it Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Lena Horne, Billie Holiday or Satchmo. But Big Band and Dixie were really his thing. And I could see why. I've always found Dixie to be the happiest type of music around.
All of this, I soaked up like a desert-dry sponge. But lurking around the corner, was my musically-deviant sister who was going chuck me into another bucket altogether.
She would drag me into her room after my 'sessions' with Dad and tell me that all that jazz (literally) was rubbish. She would then play ungodly loud tracks from Black Sabbath, Nazareth, UFO, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and others to ensure my education was more, shall we say, well-rounded.
And it wasn't just rock that she piled on me, but also funk, disco, R&B and the blues. To this day, I wonder if I'd ever have grown to love black music as much if it hadn't been for her. From the Jackson 5, Commodores, Earth Wind & Fire and Ohio Players to more esoteric offshoots like Parliament/Funkadelic, funk was a mesmerising and yet-logical subset of jazz and blues. As was the soul of Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, James Brown and Otis Redding.
But Dad wasn't as backward as my sister thought him to be. Deeper in his record collection, I struck a seam of pure gold: the Mahavishnu Orchestra!
Birds of Fire was the first of many John McLaughlin records that Dad had. From the opening strains of the title track, I was hooked. That surreal gong and a combination of electric violin and guitar swept me off to the far, mystic lands of the East. I treasured that album but a former band-mate ruined it after I'd lent it to him. It took a trip to Hamburg many years later just to get a replacement vinyl record for my heartbroken father.
At the end of the day, it didn't matter all that much. I stole all of my Dad's albums to add to my own collection. And I still have them, tenderly tucked away in a dark corner of my room. One of the prizes was a little-known record of the Gordon Beck Quartet, with a very young John McLaughlin on guitar. Just a sublime album which I still listen to from time to time.
I still hadn't picked up an instrument at this point. I was just thrilled to be inundated by all of these different types of music. But 1976 brought me closer to the guitar. It was the year my sister introduced me to Queen. It was their A Day At The Races album and the track Millionaire's Waltz completely bewitched me with its 3/4 tempo and cod-opera. And then there's Brian May's orchestrated guitar solo. I'd never heard anything like that before. Or since. All the songs were fantastic and had that sing-a-long quality to them and I'd sung them countless times till I knew each band member's vocal harmonies. What better way to learn to sing than from Freddie Mercury himself?
Rush was also becoming part of my musical lexicon. I'd only heard bits and bobs from their 2112 album in 1975 but it was really in 1978 that I'd heard their Hemispheres album in full. It was brilliant, complete with an entire side A of the record dedicated to Greek mythology, which I was getting deeply into. On top of that, the second side had The Trees, Circumstances and La Villa Strangiato (an epic nine-minute instrumental). The instrumentation was staggering to me, even at that age. I was like that Looney Tunes bear during hunting season, with the body going in one direction and the head in another. I couldn't make any sense of it and it was wonderful!
That period between 1975 and 1979 was a glorious time. These two bands were to become a permanent fixture in my sonic landscape. And it wasn't all just Rush and Queen. There were Pink Floyd, The Police, David Bowie and jazz fusion bands like Spyro Gyra, Chick Corea's Return To Forever, Steely Dan and the Crusaders. So much music and so little time...
Pink Floyd was particularly appealing. Call it space rock or psychedelia, I loved every bit of it! David Gilmour always had that class about him in his playing. You kind of figured he could tear up the fingerboard at any time but was always restrained in the way he played. And that dreamlike tone of his...(sigh). Definitely an inspiration in my wanting to get a Strat!
PLAYING STYLE
It was around 1979/1980 that I actually picked up the guitar. So, I did what almost everyone I knew did: I got myself the Let It Be Me songbook and made a faltering start to playing popular songs. That book was the bible for any of us who wanted to play guitar and/or sing. Sure, the lyrics and the chords were often wrong, but it put us in the ballpark.
Then the New Wave scene hit Britain and punk was waning, the latter which I never really got into for some reason. Among the friends I'd hang out, with figuring out rock guitar chords and licks, I was already transitioning to artists like Japan, Devo, Talking Heads and Gary Numan.
Devo, in particular, tickled my funny-bone. Even way back in 1978/1979 they were releasing tracks which were just laugh-out-loud hilarious. And they'd managed to mesh the last vestiges of punk with weird-sounding analogue synths. Duty Now For The Future and Q: Are We Not Men? A: We are DEVO are some of my favourite albums from them.
As anyone living during that time will tell you, you wouldn't find ANY of this music on radio, which was as sad as what they passed off as programming back then. My only window into this new world of music was through friends who got their hands on various videos or cassette tapes from the UK.
In the meantime, I was lapping it all up. I already had a foot firmly planted in jazz fusion and was learning how play along (in the comfort and privacy of my bedroom) with the likes of Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour, Casiopea and all of these wonderful session players featured in both the East and West Coast of the US fusion scene. I even got to see Casiopea when they came to Singapore in the very early-1980s and managed to lose part of my hearing in my right ear - thanks to an errant soundman. But it was worth it. Issei Noro is and always has been quite a sensational guitarist and I liked how the whole band just swung. Akira Jimbo, their drummer, was also moving so fast his arms blurred. I'd always thought (and still do) that Neil Peart was the best drummer ever. But Akira came pretty damn close.
As I began borrowing records from Noah's Record Library in Far East Plaza (yes, you could actually do that back then), I was delving into even more artists and music. As far as I knew, it was the only place in Singapore where you could borrow records and it was a wonderful way to listen to any type of music and not have to shell out whatever little money you might have to buy vinyl albums or cassette tapes. And the nice thing about vinyl records was that they'd often have long passages of information about the various players on all the compositions, right down to what instruments were being used. That's how I learned about these session guys who kept appearing on so many albums. After a while, you got to recognise their style of playing as well.
I was also beginning to recognise nuances in playing. Take Larry Carlton was example. His first few album had some blistering guitars on them, which I found impossible to emulate. But successive albums had him playing more thoughtfully and quietly as well. It was like he was using the guitar like one would use one's voice. Ok, this was something else to be filed away for future use.
MAIN INSTRUMENTS
In terms of practice, I did the usual scales and modes. For hours and hours, in the first five years or so. Later, I just took to playing along with my favourite records and artistes. Playing along to Rush, in particular, would limber anyone up sufficiently. It's something I do to this day.
Fast-forward to 1988: My solo musical caravan was about to take on some hitch-hikers. After playing a gig of covers at NUS, I met two guys after the show who seemingly wanted to recruit me to their band. I really didn't want to play covers anymore - it just seemed so sterile to me. But these guys claimed to write all-original material and thought I'd be a good fit. Intriguing, to say the least. And they had a cassette of their recordings which they let me listen to. I couldn't believe the quality of the song writing and playing! It sounds trite but it didn't sound like any 'local' band I'd ever heard up to then and I, of course, thought they were having me on. The guitarist, in particular, had an unbelievable sound and his playing was astounding. It certainly couldn't be anyone from here. Oh, how wrong I was...
The lads convinced me to join them for a jam that weekend. I rolled up to this huge house near the Botanic Gardens area and promptly got lost in it trying to locate them. Thankfully, someone rescued me and steered me to the basement. After watching so many horror movies, you'd think I'd know better. Happily, I could hear strains of New Wave-ish music being played and I was pleasantly surprised to see five chaps in the throes of it. And in the corner was the guitarist, introduced to me as Michael B. I have to say, he didn't look too pleased to see me but I was so happy listening to him play, it didn't occur to me at all.
This was Breaking Glass. Apart from Zircon Lounge, no other Singapore band encapsulated local music for me like they did and still do. Songs made so cleverly with hooks galore and a sound and maturity that beggared belief. I was to learn that they wrote primarily synth-based music in the early days in Catholic Junior College. Michael, a founding member, introduced the guitar to the mix to stellar effect.
It was heaven. We spent days on end in the room of our lead singer, who lived in Serangoon Gardens, composing and playing songs we'd make up on the spot. I was familiar with movie magic but this was something entirely different. An idea would appear out of thin air and take form right in front of me. What else would you call it but magic?
Around the same time, I met my soon-to-be wife: Mira. As good fortune would have it, she loved music too. Queen and Prince being some of her favourites. What's there not to love, right? And she was always more of a radio listener, which brought another dimension to my music taste.
Obviously, one's tools pretty much determines one's sound. My weapon of choice then was a 1980 Japanese Strat, with which I could get the most chiming bell-like sounds out of the single coils. Then juxtapose that to Michael's aggressive humbucker-driven red Yamaha Strat-style guitar. The combined sound of our guitars was quite full and rich, with a lot of nuance and power. The challenge, however, was always how to play around each other. A lot of bands have just the one guitarist. In Glass, Michael and I had to learn how to keep out of each other's way and still sound cohesive. Over time, we found our sonic pockets but we'd stray from time to time, just to keep things interesting.
God, we must have spent YEARS discussing what the perfect sound should be or what equipment we'd need to achieve that sound. How do I get the sound that Johnny Marr gets? Or Brian May or Alex Lifeson or Andy Summers or Charlie Burchill?
Playing live, I noticed that Michael favoured going straight into the mixing desk without the use of amps. Curious. I'd always thought that you needed amps onstage to get a satisfying, organic sound. But he seemed to have much more control and his Tom Sholz Rockman sounded brilliant. I'm a creature of habit, so pivoting to new technology was going to take a while. In our usual maddening fashion, he's now more into amps while I just can't bear the thought of lugging amps to and from a gig! That direct sound (whether using a hardware/software amp simulator) seems like a God-send to me now.
Like most things in life, Breaking Glass wasn't to last. Right after we'd recorded our only album, Experience, the band broke up.
So Michael and I, after a suitable period of mourning, figured we'd form another band with our Glass bassist, Patrick de Silva, who incidentally introduced us to our drummer Sadiq Husein. Morpheus Dream was born out of the shards of Breaking Glass. But who was going to write the lyrics and sing them? We'd relied so much on our previous lead singer/lyricist, who's an astounding song-writer by the way. That Herculean task eventually fell to me.
It was something of dread, to my mind. I'd always been happy playing guitar in the background, making my odd little noises swathed in delay and reverb, and at the very most, singing backup. That was it. That was my function in life. Sure, I'd been singing to Queen my whole life up to then but that didn't make me a lead singer or lyricist by any stretch.
Besides, what on earth would I have to say, especially in a song and sound like I meant it? The first few years were painful and laid bare my inability to fit the role thrust on me. But it was also a time of discovery. Thanks to the guys, I was constantly encouraged to test my limits and put to use what I'd learnt in Glass. And eventually, the songs started to flow. More magic! And it never gets old.
OTHER EQUIPMENT
By this time, Michael and I were inseparable. Our friendship didn't just hover around all things musical. We discussed anything and everything from politics and world affairs to history and literature and art. We also shared a love of reading, especially science fiction. He introduced me to Frank Herbert's Dune, and we'd forever be quoting lines from it, Naturally, it annoyed the stuffing out of everyone within earshot!
We also shared GAS - Guitar Acquisition Syndrome, to the uninitiated. Over the years, I'd amassed 40-something guitars, now whittled down to 22 electric guitars, four bass guitars and four acoustic guitars. And not to mention a plethora of effects and gizmos - and Michael was absolutely no help here. But there was a whole world of knob twiddling (hehe!) to be had and we weren't going to say no!
At some point, I had this ridiculous idea about writing and recording a concept album, just like my heroes in Rush and Pink Floyd. Thus, my solo project (The Moors) came to life. I'd written all of this material back in the late-90s/early-2000s, some years before the twins were born. But it took almost 14 years before I had the nerve to release it. The Fallen was recorded at home and mastered by the inimitable Leonard Soosay, who was also ex-Breaking Glass. But even he couldn't polish a turd...it went up on Bandcamp and I wish so much that I could redo the damn thing. But the die had been cast and I had to live with it. Besides, I can't bleeding remember any of the parts anymore!
After MD's EP in 2000, Michael was barely playing guitar. What with work and family, he just couldn't find the time. This has always saddened me. We still got to meet and chat regularly, though. But we'd barely even talked about music at that point.
Maybe this was the reason why I embarked on a solo project. And also perhaps to prove to myself that I could do it all on my own. Yes, one would have complete control over one's writing and arrangements. But the quality really comes out when your other band mates start slicing and dicing each song. It's just like how Queen operated. To me their individual solo projects were never as memorable as their combined effort.
Luckily, I was able to entice Michael to back me up to launch The Fallen album at Harry's (Boat Quay) and Morpheus Dream had to be resurrected to accompany me, albeit with a different bassist and drummer. Suffice to say, the show was a smash! And some of our old Breaking Glass buddies were in attendance too - Andrew Lim and Leonard Soosay (who was our soundman for the evening). Mira told me later that some "random suit" had walked in on the gig but since he paid the toll, he was left alone by our friends (who doubled up as bouncers). That was Andrew, straight from work.
There was a poignant moment where Michael, Andrew and Leonard had their heads together huddled over a drink. I would have paid gobs of money just to have seen that alone. My heart was so full, I honestly thought I was having a seizure. My friends. Together.
OTHER LOCAL GUITARISTS/BASSISTS YOU FIND INTERESTING
Three years later, Morpheus Dream released Other Stories. Our way of writing has a sense of familiarity to it and harks back to our days in Glass. But we were completely in control of the craft this time and not subject to the vagaries of others.
I still don't know what kind of sound I'm after on guitar, it's like a cat-and-mouse game. For years now, I've been the counterpoint to Michael's sound and don't quite know where in the spectrum I'd like to be. And that's a good thing because I'm happy where I am, but it also means that there's always room to change things about.
As for the how we write songs and music, it has pretty much remained the same since our Breaking Glass days. We come up with a set of chords and meddle with it till it sounds nice and flows well. Not much of a mystery there. Words are different, I suppose. It depends on what mood the music evokes and a line or phrase may pop into my head or it could be something Michael and I talk about or even something heard in another conversation, movie or music. Really, it could come from anywhere. I've often wondered should the words and melody come first or the music as a whole. In our case, whichever gets us to our destination.
To me, the song is everything. Solos, fills, key changes, dynamics, crescendos, etc just adorn the bigger story. There's really no point in even having any of this if there's nothing to say or tell a story about. That's just my way, I suppose. The writing continues, as does our fascination with the world around us.
The real point to all of this is ultimately about friendship. It's funny how people come in and out of your life at different stages. Sometimes in good ways and sometimes not. All of these interactions, however, mould you in one way or another. And there's probably a higher purpose to all of this, which completely eludes me. But the one thing I do know is that it's far more fun to travel with your best mate then to fly solo!
PHOTO ABOVE
These are my current go-to guitars and only because they're easy to reach!
(Top L-R: Gibson 1992 RI59 Les Paul all stock, Heritage H150CM Goldtop with Sheptone 59 pickups, and PRS SE Sandblasted all stock - a gift from Michael)
Bottom L-R: 62 Reissue Japanese Strat with Lollar pickups, 54 Reissue Tele all stock except for the lipstick pickup, and Heritage H535 with Lollar pickups - this one's Michael's)
The left rack has a Focusrite Platinum Voice Master Pro, Avalon Compressor and RME Fireface FF800 soundcard. The right rack has a Joe Meek Optical Compressor - recommended by Leonard Soosay, a Line 6 POD Pro, and a Rocktron Prophesy II.
The amps I've used for years are the Fender Hotrod Deluxe (with a Warehouse Blue Dog alnico speaker and God knows what tubes) and a Marshall TSL 601 (can't recall what speaker or tubes this one has).
These amps are rarely used for recording nowadays. The Marshall was used on some of the tracks for the Other Stories album. When recording at home, the guitars are almost always using Amplitube in Cubase or going through the Line 6 rack unit.
All guitar and amp mods were done by Goose.
