Within days, I managed to meet up with some local guys who were all Shadows fans and wanted to start a group playing Apache, FBI and 36-24-36. They only had beat-up acoustic guitars and no drummer, so I offered to play the drums. This I accomplished by borrowing my mate's Boy Scout snare drum and used my auntie's upturned metal cake stand as a cymbal. We called ourselves the Vulcans. Everything was very primitive and probably sounded dreadful, but it was a start. I was on my way.

One major stumbling block was the fact that I played piano, and all of these groups that I was coming across used two guitars, a bass and drums. It became imperative, therefore, to get myself one of these instruments. Playing an upturned cake stand had not done a lot for my confidence as a budding drummer, so I decided to have a go at bass guitar. My dad duly forked out the money for a shiny second hand Antoria, which became my pride and joy.

The second major move was to get myself in with the local area's top up-and-coming group. They were called the Timebeats, and although they hadn't done a gig yet, their name was whispered in awe by my fellow thirteen year olds because these guys were fifteen and they could really play! I can't remember the exact circumstances, but in a short while I found myself as a member of the Timebeats and not only that, but we were going to be doing a gig!

This momentous occasion was going to take place at the Orrel Park Conservative Club, so even though it was only around the corner from where we lived, we hired a Bedford van to take us there (driven by a father/roadie) just like the big guys did. I remember that apart from the nerves (which included knocking over a table full of cakes) we actually managed to survive and play quite well. Our pay was 10 shillings for the band and all the coke we could drink. So now I felt like whatever was going on in Liverpool, I was now part of it. As far as being a professional musician was concerned, my schooling had started.

During the following year, I found out that several of my schoolmates at Cardinal Allen were also chomping at the bit to be in a group, so I gathered them together under the name of the Fortune Tellers. The group didn't last very long, but we did manage to score some great gigs in our short existence, including a couple of lunchtime sessions at the Cavern. Now I had really made it, playing at the Cavern! Unfortunately, our absence from the school did not go unnoticed and letters home put an enforced curfew on my group activities.

The Timebeats did continue however, and by the time I was fifteen, we had morphed into a three-piece called Joe Ray Me. I was Joe of course (the Jose came later in life following the suggestion of a numerologist friend), Ray Madden was on bass and Colin Hewitt (the Me) was our drummer. We must have been very popular around the suburban dance circuit because my diary from our second year of existence shows that we did 250 gigs in one year. The pay was usually fifteen pounds less commission so we must have been making a bit of money. I had my first experience of backing other artists through this group (and in Liverpool at the time there were thousands of wannabees who would strut their stuff at the local working men's clubs). These great opportunities that Liverpool was providing were continuing to give me the necessary experience to enable me to decide on a career in music later on.

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