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FD: Absolutely. Tom, I must ask, Who have you ever asked for an autograph? Do
you take the opportunity to grab an autograph for people like that?

TW: Well, there was one guy, my saxophone hero is, David Sanborn. And me and

my dad were playing The Iridium Club in New York City, and while we were out
there, David Sanborn happened to be playing the night after us. And, so we went to
the show, and I, was like trembling and I was only like 14 at the time , we queued

up and I got a picture plus his autograph and I was lost for words, you know when
you meet your heroes, you don’t actually know what to say by the end of it, but he
was such a nice guy to me as a major fan and unfortunately he passed away last year.

So, yes, it was great I got to meet him, you know.

FD: Oh, incredibly lucky, and, and I
can imagine after you would have

left, you probably thought: "Why
didn't I ask him this?"

TW: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, [chuckles] of

course.

FD: When, when did you first pick
up, the saxophone or an instrument?

What was your first instrument, the
sax?

TW: I started playing saxophone

when I was eight. and there's a guy
called Ian Stewart, right? This is
quite a long story. [chuckles] But, Ian

Stewart, and he was- they were-
having a tribute concert for him in
Pittenweem up in Scotland, and my dad played a lot like him. And Ian Stewart

formed two bands, One was the Rolling Stones with Brian Jones and the other band
was Rocket 88, and they wanted to do a tribute for him in his home town and

obviously they couldn’t afford The Rolling Stones, so they brought Rocket 88 and I
was about 6 years old , and that band has about 4 saxophone players in it.

TW: I spent the weekend with them and I was just transfixed by the sax thing and

I was like Gosh, I want to play that , you know the selection was incredible. I went
home that day, back to Dorset where I’m from in England, and said to my Dad, I want
to play saxophone. But you can’t really start playing until you are 8 because it pushes
your teeth out, I would show you my teeth if we were in person, because it has sort

of pushed my teeth out. But my Dad was like, "Save me a few hundred bucks” so I
went on about this for two years until two weeks before my eight birthday, when I

got this saxophone and I was and have been playing it every day since, actually. I
love it!