[ Sleevenotes ]

Colin Michin - editor (and guitarist)

Hello; my name is Colin. I am a guitarist. The seeds of my addiction were sown at the Odeon, Penge in the early 60s when I was exposed to the seemingly innocent delights of The Young Ones with Cliff Richard. The film was more (Ealing) Broadway musical than the rock'n'roll I sought until the moment when The Shadows burst onto the screen with matching red Fenders and stage drop, playing The Savage to a screaming audience of kids. In an instant my ambition was laid before me. I wanted to be Hank Marvin.

I was not alone either. Ex-Soft Machine guitarist John Etheridge shared exactly the same experience and it set him on his way to becoming one of the finest jazz rockers in the land. He even got to fill the legendary Django Rheinhart's shoes, playing with Stephane Grapelli.

It worked out quite differently for me. Despite dabbling in many a band both part time and professionally, I ended up as a film editor at the BBC, most recently, as luck would have it, cutting this series.

I've learnt much in the process too; from the instrument's historic ancestors in the middle east, to the Mojo Triangle in southern USA; through the quest for volume and sustain to the joys of Wayne Henderson's luthier and pickin' skills. Plus the fact that in the UK at the start of the 60s, everybody wanted a red Stratocaster like Hank's, including such luminaries as Dave Gilmour and Mark Knopfler. Actually, I wanted a white Burns Marvin. Still do.

The Shadows launched a thousand boys' dreams of being a guitar hero and soon The Beatles and The Rolling Stones picked up the baton and ran around the world with it. Then it was the blues boom which caught me at my most impressionable age.

My next guitar obsession was due to Hideaway by John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton. This is still, in my opinion, Eric's finest hour. Extraordinary tone and nuance from one so young, wrought from his Gibson Les Paul through a cranked up Marshall combo. It was the first time I had heard the name Les Paul. But just who was Les Paul? Was it perhaps a French group? I soon found out he was a man who was there right at the start of the electric guitar, experimenting with his own attempts to amplify back in the 30s, going on to become a household name in America with daily broadcasts across the nation and is still, at the age of 93, playing every week at his club, Iridium, in New York.

Twelve years ago, I made the pilgrimage to New York to see him, only to find out he was off sick that week. I got my first Les Paul in 1977 but after working on this material for some time, constantly tempted by images and anecdotes, and with a weak dollar as impetus, I've ended up with a couple more.

The hardest thing an any programme is what you have to leave out, especially so with this series as some of the things that interested me most ended up on the cutting room floor. Luckily, some of it can be now be shown here.