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comes from my parents having the coolest record
collection ever which covered all the greats such as
StevieWonder, Luther Vandross, George Benson and
stuff from the earliest stage. And I was like man, what
are these guys saying, what are they doing? For me
that was the starting point, and I’ve just been listening
and singing along to it.”
Before he got enthralled into music, Leigh played
guitar and drums in his teens at school. “I actually
first started playing drums when I was 12, because
I was all about the groove and this music was great
to play along to, you know. So I bought a drum kit
from my cousin for £50 and just battered it to bits so
that fell apart.” At the time, unable to afford to piece
the drum kit back together, Leigh had already started
playing the guitar and it was at this stage of his life that
he started listening to bluesy music of StevieWonder,
RayVaughan, BB King, rock guitar legend Eric Clapton
and blues guitar legend John Mayall. “I was going
through a differe t phrase in terms of my listening, so
it wasn’t just listening to stuff from the 60s and 70s, I
found myself going back. I was around 14 at this time.”
Allowing the power of the blues to influence his
taste in music which would eventually lead him to
create his own music, Leigh describes the initial effect
this genre of music had on him. “It was the guitar
songs that had the most effect on me. I mean classic
guitar is beautiful but piano I think was made for