Guitars & Vocals
Coming from Seaham Harbour, a town on the East Durham coast, Ed has been a fan of Emerson, Lake and Palmer since hearing ‘Brain Salad Surgery’ in 1974. He couldn’t afford to buy the LP then (being a skint schoolboy) so he listened to it at a mate’s house whose dad had a new fangled 8 track cartridge player. Oh man..! Scanning the Giger artwork and listening to the synths and lyrics sent him to a different place. Subsequently he did manage to raise the funds to buy ‘Pictures At An Exhibition’ in ‘75, which totally blew him away..!
Listening to Emo’s Moog inspired Ed to take up the keyboards. He remembers having a shitty little organ type instrument at home on which he tried to play ‘Promenade’ but it was awful and there was no chance of ever buying a decent one, so he went down the guitar route.
The guitar suited him best and he has never been far from one to this very day. Ed’s guitar influences were Blackmore, Page, Mick Ronson, Rory Gallagher and (for acoustic inspiration) Gordon Giltrap.
Vocals came later. Always having problems with temperamental singers who would either not be good enough or had an attitude or ego problem – Ed became the guitar/vocal in the band..!
He loved the 80’s synth bands such as Ultravox, Gary Numan and Trevor Horn’s ‘Frankie Goes To Hollywood’ and he had a band called ‘Souvenir’ with which he played this stuff and gigged in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur in 1984.
The vocalist that has had the most impact on Ed is David Bowie. His performances with ‘The Spiders From Mars’ in the 70’s were awesome, and all the bands that Ed has played with have always done a Bowie song. In 2005 he appeared on Granada TV’s ‘Stars In Their Eyes’ show as Bowie singing ‘Space Oddity’ and since then has played the UK theatre circuit with his own tribute – ‘Ultimate Bowie’
In late 2011, Ed was looking for some ELP on Youtube when he came across Noddy’s Puncture. On visiting their website he discovered that they were in need of a “Greg Lake”… and the opportunity to play this stuff was just too good to miss…!!
So to bring things up to date, here’s a quote from Ed: “I’ve been rehearsing a hell of a lot of material with Tom by means of e-Jamming online which sounds great. So it’s onwards and upwards and here’s to great things in 2013…!”
Ed Uses:
- Ibanez SR-600 NTF Bass
- Yamaha CPX700 12 string electro acoustic guitar
- Taylor 314-ce electro acoustic guitar
- Music Man – Steve Lukather signature model electric guitar
- ADA midi controller (for guitar)
- Tech21 Sansamp PSA1 Midi guitar pre-amp
- TC-Helicon voicelive play GTX harmonizer
- Alesis QSR synth module and Midi bass pedals
- Shure SM58 beta mics