Paul Powell I've been playing guitar since I was about 11. I always admired Hank Marvin and the Shadows and all the other instrumental groups that were around in the 60s. When I got to High School (Davenant Foundation, Loughton) I got together with some mates and we formed our first band, Sno. Al Hiscox on guitar, Dave Bataller on bass, Chris Morgan on drums and me on guitar. We played mostly covers of bands like Groundhogs and Stray with one or two original songs thrown in. I was always borrowing gear and in this photo I'm playing a friend's Les Paul copy through Steve Jolly's Fender Bassman amp and 2x12 with the only equipment I actually owned which was an un-named 2x12 underneath. After I got married we eventually moved to Sheringham and I started playing with a band called JIJA with Henry West on guitar, Clive Hedges on bass and David West on drums. No photos I'm afraid. I answered an ad on my sister's college noticeboard for a bass player thinking, "how difficult can it be", and joined Scorched Earth, a band playing Stones covers and general rocky stuff. After trimming down following personnel joining various universities the lead guitarist, Steve Rogers, and I were joined by Jif Boucher on drums to form G Squad and we gigged around Norwich for a few years spending a bit of time in studios recording singles. We were always very precious about not doing covers so the pressure was always on to write as much as we could. (l-r Jif, me, Steve) Later I asked an old mate who played keyboards, Tim Dawson if he'd come in with me on a project called Eyes Upward. We recruited my brother-in-law on bass and a Korg drum machine and we got that ball rolling. Again, we were playing all original material but the X-Factor types in London didn't see hit singles so we played a few gigs down there and a few up here and enjoyed it anyway.