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from our listening, our music listening, and again, I think that our music listening
was coming from a root. Again, we were just talking about this because the albums

that we listened to a very long
time ago were of a kind of
acoustic blues, Mississippi

John Hurt and the like. We
were working together. Again,
one of the things I enjoyed was

in particular the “Blues In The
Mississippi Night” and all of
that history of blues that

became part of that.

BP: Sonny Boy number 1, and
Memphis Slim and Big Bill

Broonzy on that record.

MS: And then in particular, I
remember at one time I was in

London performing actually,
performing acoustic music and I was in London on my own with another chap. I

picked out a couple of albums at the time and one of them was Memphis Minnie and
I would have to say I picked that out for myself and I also then got an album which
I really loved which was the Carey Bell/Big Walter Horton album, and I got that for
Brian. Also I would have to mention the influence of John Lee Hooker, and again

really that acoustic, or that stripped back kind of sense of blues, was very much part
of our language and part of what we had as a communication and a way to

communicate a very fundamental sense of what was blues expression.

BP: Ian, if I can jump in, we played for so long without electrification because no
one we knew owned electric guitars [chuckles]. We’d have people come back to the

flat after the pub closed and sometimes, they'd be playing on a three-string guitar.

BiTS: Yeah.

MS: Very blues.

BP: There were no frills.

BiTS: I’m a bit of a musician myself, or at least I was, and I've done some busking.
It is huge fun. I used to love busking. It's like being able to do a rehearsal with nobody

to criticise you [chuckles].

BP: Yeah, that's it. Well if you're on the street, Ian, as you know, you play for hours
where you wouldn't normally sit in the chair and have a cup of tea and then play for

six hours. Whereas when you're busking, you do. Nowadays, of course, there's
licensing and it's a whole tourist attraction, but in the old days, I used to busk with