Probably the most significant thing that happened to me as a teenager was when I formed a rock band with a friend of mine. His name is Roy Hill and he now lives and works in London. He’s still in the music business and doing quite nicely I've been told. I knew he would actually, he had a real flare for it. He took to music like the proverbial duck to water.
            I had always been interested in music and especially the guitar. I even made a fake guitar out of a piece of hardboard and used to mime to records. That is something I’ve never told anyone about before so there you are, one of my many secrets. I did have piano lessons when I was about nine or ten but I found it all very boring because I was quite capable of playing most tunes on a piano anyway, not with both hands mind you but if I heard something on the radio, I would go into the front room and play it on the old ivory keys.

            Anyway, back to the rock group. My father eventually bought me my first guitar and it so happened that my friend Michael Hodgetts had one of the same make. A Martin Coletti. I don’t think it was a very expensive one because my father couldn’t afford anything to dear. But I loved that guitar and I wish I’d never sold it.

A Martin Colletti guitar. My thanks to David Barnes who e-mailed me this picture and others from Australia.

My apologies for the quality of the pictures but they are quite old, dating back to the 1960's

This is Roy and me,( I'm on the right), practising in his back garden.

            I think it was around the same time that Roy had his first guitar and that was an electric one. To me, it was the bees knees and he had an amplifier to go with it. Well an electric guitar isn’t much good without an amp. The trouble was, Roy didn’t know a thing about music or playing a guitar. I’d been having a few lessons off my Uncle who’d shown me a few chords which I picked up quite quickly. Anyway, Roy came to see me and asked if I could tune his guitar for him and show him a few chords. He took to it like a duck to water and he turned out to be much better than me at working out chord sequences for songs, although we did tend to work together on those things.

            We needed a drummer now and that’s where Chris Smith came in. He was good. I mean he was really good and he agreed to join us but our equipment wasn’t up to much. The drum kit was one that my uncle loaned to us and was something from the thirties but we were grateful. Then Roy’s dad went off to Worcester and came back with a new set of drums for Chris and a pick-up for my acoustic guitar so that I could plug it into Roy’s amp. Eventually though I acquired a real electric guitar thanks to my dad who lashed out his limited monetary resources to get it for me. The group was made. Or so we thought.

         Here's Chris doing his stuff with his new Premier drum kit.

   We needed a bass player and so after a short discussion, about five minutes to be precise; I agreed to be a bass player and bought a Vox bass guitar off someone I knew for five quid, a lot of cash for a schoolboy in those days. I started by plugging it into Roy’s amp until my big bro bought me a bass amp.

This is us all together, Roy on the left, Chris drumming and me on the right.
          

  Enter Jim Wilkins on rhythm guitar, just to add more sound to our music and a change of name from The Upways to The Crestas and we were on our way. Bookings came rolling in usually for small village hall dances and parties. We didn't charge much anyway, just enough to make the payments on our kit. The biggest gig we ever did was at the Malvern Winter gardens when we were supporting a big band which no one has ever heard of. We got paid five quid for that but the deal was that if we were asked back, we could name our price. We were asked back but unfortunately, we broke up before we had a chance to do it.

Roy stayed with the music business, and has done really well. He has written and recorded his work as well as writing for others. To see how well he's done, click on the link below.

                           http://andybrouwer.co.uk/royhill.html

This is Roy as a teenager. He was really proud of his hair back then and coudn't walk past a window without checking it and combing it. The guitar is a short scale Rickenbacker, a wonderful instrument for it's time and great to play.

Click here to see Roy in action a few years ago playing a song he wrote and recorded.