I was around 12 years old when music got a hold of me, and it was British blues that did it; Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, Cream and the run of LPs John Mayall made with Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor.
When I picked up a guitar at 14 these were my template. I sat next to the turntable working out the riffs to things like "Rattlesnake Shake", "Have You Heard" and "The Supernatural"
There were no sites to download tablature, and no Youtube, so I (and everyone else my age) had to actually use our ears to learn things.
My path led me on to other things, and I only returned to blues and soul in the early 80's when rock music finally succumbed to style over content, and the synth/Linn drum interface was king.
It was to these original inspirations (and their black forebears) that I returned, and by 1990 I was in a fairly popular (In Australia) blues R+B band called The Bondi Cigars (Don't ask..)
One of the songs on our debut is a little ditty called "Howling At The Moon" which proves (much to my surprise, the bloke who wrote it in about 10 minutes) to be very popular indeed.
One of the earliest big gigs we did was as support to John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, where Mr. Mayall took a little shine to our possibly slightly different approach to blues, so naturally we gave him our debut CD.
Fast forward 20 years and we are still around, though not quite as busy as we used to be (15 years on the road in OZ took its toll)
John Mayall and his latest incarnation of The Bluesbreakers have just toured, and on this tour lo and behold he has been duetting on that very song from our debut with his wife Maggie.
This makes me very proud of course (It feels, I imagine as it would to Neil Finn if Macca did one of his..)but more importantly it feels as if a massive circle has been completed.
Here is audio visual confirmation.