The first person I interviewed for Guitarist was indeed The Shadows’ legendary lead guitarist. It was before I joined the mag and was working for Fender in London. Hank had come down to try out some Strats, and the year was 1985.
The Shads were rehearsing at Nomis Studios, the brilliant but ultimately doomed brainchild of Simon Napier-Bell. It was a luxurious rehearsal complex around the corner from Olympia, and all the big bands rehearsed there.
I recall interviewing John Page of Fender’s Custom Shop there some years later, and we could hear Queen hits blasting out from an adjoining room. When the music stopped, bassist Pino Palladino emerged.
Pino said he was standing in for John Deacon while the band rehearsed for the Freddie Mercury tribute concert on 20 April 1992. I never quite fathomed that one out, but I’m sure it’s as I remember it (although I admit things become hazy over time).
Just after I joined Guitarist, Fender opened an Artist Centre in Nomis so visiting players could try out and even borrow gear for their rehearsals. John Hill from Fender asked if I’d come down to check over the guitars and tweak any that required a setup.
He then invited me to attend its opening day (when Jeff Beck roared up in a 1930s hot-rod Ford in Sea Foam Green with a matching Strat on the back seat).
That was also where Mitch Mitchell brought Jimi’s white Woodstock Strat for me to set up, prior to him selling it, and where I got to meet María Elena Holly, wife and guardian of the estate of the legendary Buddy. María Elena was there to cut the imaginary ribbon, pronouncing the centre’s opening.
One evening, John Hill was showing me around the operation’s many facilities, and again music was leaking through the door of the largest rehearsal space. This time it was Beatles songs. “McCartney’s rehearsing guitarists for his next tour,” John told me.
For a second I thought I might knock on the door and ask if I could have a go. I would nab a guitar and amp from our room and, just as in a Hollywood movie when the star falls ill and the understudy takes over, I would win miraculous acclaim and monumental success. Naturally, I abstained from causing myself almost certain humiliation.
Big Eyed Beans From Nomis
Anyway, back to Hank. I had no typewriter and would not have known one end of a word processor or computer from another. So, after conducting our interview over a lunch of beans on toast in Nomis’s excellent canteen (where I’d queued behind Ade Edmondson, Nigel Planer and Rik Mayall of the spoof heavy metal band Bad News), I laboriously wrote out our chat in longhand. My girlfriend typed it up and I duly submitted it.
It was a real shame when Nomis closed as it represented a remarkable moment for music. Anyone who was anyone rehearsed there. But Napier-Bell says he had put himself in hock to the tune of £2 million just before Britain’s economy tanked and interest rates rocketed.
“At one time or other just about every top music artist in Britain was in that building,” he recalled in 2018. “Songs were written, hits made, groups formed, managers fired, and bootlegs recorded. Drugs must have been ingested in ruinous quantities. And I should think a fair bit of sex went on, too. But mostly, bands just rehearsed.”
That included me, as I was also hired to play alongside a raggle-taggle bunch (including Argent bassist Jim Rodford) for one of McCartney’s celebratory Buddy Holly ‘lunches’. So although I bottled crashing the Macca rehearsal, I did finally get to play for the man (well, kind of). Did you ever visit Nomis? If so, please send in your stories to the usual address!
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