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I saw him do this, I thought, well, that's easy. I could do that [laughs]. Of course, it wasn't easy, but
I thought it was when I first saw it. So that was my
introduction to open tuning. I was also a big, big Bo
Diddley fan and went to see Bo Diddley quite a lot. So Bo
Diddley was using open tunings and I soon realised that
was how he was playing.

So yeah, the open tuning thing and also another
important factor in my history is that all three brothers
– I have two older brothers, David and Alan. My brother
David is a promoter in London. He's a music promoter.
My brother Alan is a photographer and he started in
London in the 60s with Deborah Hoffman. So he was
working with The Beatles and all those kind of people at
that time. But he went to live in Nashville in the mid to
late 70s, 76/77, and he's right in the middle of the
Nashville music scene. I went to stay with him back somewhere in the late 70s there and that was
a big, big moment for me. Seeing not blues, but people playing roots music. A lot of bluegrass, a lot
of slide playing, a lot of lap-style Dobro.

At that point, I don't think I really differentiated the different musical styles. It was this whole roots
thing that was really big for me. Rod Stewart was doing that kind of stuff on his records. There was
always acoustic guitars and mandolins, acoustic slide guitar. I didn't particularly differentiate
between all the different styles. It was just that, as I say, that rootsy thing that really captured me.
And then, yeah, it started to become an obsession and the more obsessed I became [chuckles].

BiTS: My experience is that the music gets in your ears and in your heart at the same time.
MM: Yes, it does. It absolutely does, and nothing can stop it. Once it's done, nothing can stop it. My
friends all used to come round to my flat after the pub on a Friday night for a smoke and drink and
listen to music, suddenly I was in there and they were, what is this? What are you listening to? You've
got to listen to this guy. You've got to hear this Blind Willie McTell. This is unbelievable. I could see
they didn't quite get it. And I just kept going. I just kept going. And then I moved away. I moved away
with my girlfriend. I went to live in North Yorkshire for a few years.

This would be 78 to 82/83, and we just wanted
to escape, basically. We found a way of doing so.
So we lived up on the North York Moors, the two
of us. She was an artist, I was working on my
music, and we just did what we did for a few
years. Then we broke up and I came back south
and I went to stay with some friends in
Bracknell, Berkshire, and they were very
involved with the South Hill Park Art Centre in
Bracknell, which at the time in 82/83 at that
point had three, four major festivals happening
there: jazz festival, blues festival, folk festival,
classical music festival. And there were gigs
every three or four nights a week in their club
at this place. I loved going to this place and I got
a job in there. Just anything, just a job, because
I wanted to be involved in what they were doing.
I started to play in the venue. I started opening