Around about eight years old I heard [Beethoven's] Moonlight Sonata and it changed me forever. I remember going up to my mother as a kid and saying 'I need to learn piano' and it wasn't that simple as we were a poor family. But my history teacher was a piano tutor on the side so that was it – I started learning how to play the piano. I had a shitty Casio keyboard with speakers in it. It had five buttons on it that played songs that you could either play along to, or pretend that you were playing. I can't play piano for shit now though…
I then moved to bass, played that for two months, and hated it so then moved to guitar. I think [with bass] I always felt like couldn't do enough, whereas now as a guitarist I have to refrain from doing too much. I love plodding along on the bass now but it could never be my main instrument and the moment I picked up the guitar, that was me done for life.
When I was younger, my friend and I started a couple of bands and used to cover songs and do house shows whenever his parents went away. They had a caravan down in Devon, not too far from Bristol, so they'd go away every weekend. That was it: out comes the booze, out come the guitars and we'd throw house parties and play shows at his house. Absolutely dreadful but it was so funny.