The Beginning & “Cold Blooded Innocence”
The Masked Musician was born in the town of Berwick upon
Tweed, Northumberland. At the age of 4
he was bought his first acoustic guitar but only learned to play a couple of
basic chords. His first real step in to music was at the age of 7 when his
mother sent him to classical piano lessons, he immediately wanted to quit but
his mother - a musician herself - would not let him. He stayed with the lessons
for what turned out to be 12 years, only leaving to go to University.
At the age of 12 he began teaching himself to play guitar,
it was at this point his interest in the piano began to decline as the guitar
became his main instrument. At the age
of 11/12 he joined his first school band as a keyboard player formed with some
schoolmates and called "The Screaming Skoda's". It wasn't until his mid teens that he joined
his first real band (not school connected, though they did still practice in a
school) as a guitarist, the band was called "Paranoia". "The band was mainly a hard rock covers
band, but we did knock out the odd song of our own. Unfortunately we rarely got out of the practice room but the
crowning achievement of the band was playing a spot at the National Music Day
event at the local arts centre in front of about 150 people, that was in June
'93", says The Masked Musician. Shortly afterwards the band recorded a
couple of songs from their set list with the aid of Mark Russell a former
school teacher of the band members. Shortly after this the band split and he
formed another band in a similar vein, this band suffered from many of the same
problems of being tied to the practice room but did manage to play a couple of
pub venues. This band split in 1995 when various members, himself included,
left to go to University. He moved to
Newcastle upon Tyne.
Whilst in University studying for a degree in electrical &
electronic engineering, he attempted to form a new band, unfortunately these
attempts were to be in vain and resulted in little more than a few jamming
sessions. During these jamming sessions he began teaching himself vocals as a
result of the sheer frustration of not being able to find a good reliable
vocalist. These vocal skills developed and he bought an 8 track recording
machine. This was to prove a significant turning point in his musical
development, as when attempts to form a band proved fruitless he decided he
could do it better alone and with his 8 track had the means to make this a
reality.
It started out by recording a mixture of cover versions and
songs he had already written himself from November 1997 onwards, sometime
around 1996 he adopted the performance name "The Masked Musician"
which he still uses to this day. These sessions were to prove to be the early
roots of the album "Cold Blooded Innocence". Some think the name was inspired by a cameo
appearance he had in a Bruce Dickinson music video called ‘Killing Floor’,
because he wore a mask. This was shot
in 1998 though, so the name had already been in place for 2 years prior to
this. He happened upon the cameo by
chance due to the fact that he was working as a runner on the video shoot at
the time.
On the song writing side, The Masked Musician had been
composing piano pieces in the early 1990's, he first ventured into writing rock
songs for the guitar in 1993. "The first song I wrote for the guitar was
an early draft of 'The Day I Stopped Caring', that song will always be very
special to me for that reason", says The Masked Musician.
In 1998 after graduation, The Masked Musician moved back to
Berwick upon Tweed for what was supposed to be a temporary fix, that ended up
being 4 years. This incited the birth
of ‘Cold Blooded Innocence’. After a
difficult uphill struggle to produce a finished product, the album finally got
a very small scale release in June 2002.
The album is currently deleted, but will be re-issued in the near
future.
Copyright 2006 The
Masked Musician / Tempest Eye Records