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NS:  I got my first guitar when I was eight.


    BiTS:  Really?

    NS:    But  I  didn't  play  it  [chuckles]  until  I  was  14.  My  dad  bought  it  for  me  for
    Christmas one year and I think my brother got one as well. He was much older than

    me at the time, and he went off and started playing it and I just kind of sat with it on
    my lap and didn't do anything with it. It was when I was 14 that I picked it up again
    and that was to do with a move. My dad’s job moved around the country quite a bit,

    and so we were originally in Stowmarket in Suffolk, and then we moved to Ipswich
    and then we moved to Manchester. Then we moved down to Ascot.  So a fair bit of
    travelling around. It was in Ascot that I picked up the guitar because we moved down

    at the beginning of the summer holidays, so I had like five or six weeks and I didn't
    know anybody. I didn't know anything. I didn't know where I was, and I picked up
    the guitar and learned how to play it.


    BiTS:    Did  you  do  it  from  a  book  or
    anything? How did you actually learn?

    NS:  Just a book. It was called A Tune A

    Day, and I would like to say that it was
    The Bert Weeden Way, but it wasn't. It
    was  just  called  A  Tune  A  Day,  and  I

    started  off  with  very  simple  stuff,
    transposing because it was all for a right-
    handed  guitarist,  so  I  had  to  sort  of

    translate  and  decipher  some  of  the
    symbols and things. I did, and I played it
    like that.


    BiTS:  You're a left-handed player, but
    you don't play with the strings in the normal way.


    NS:  Yeah, when I'm holding it, the bass string is at the top, so it's normal. It's a mirror
    image. It's nothing weird.

    BiTS:  Because there are some people that play it upside down completely, as I'm

    sure you’re aware.

    NS:  Yes, I know, and is it Doyle Bramhall III who plays left-handed but with his strings
    upside down? Very, very hard. Very odd thing.

    BiTS:  Very hard indeed. When you first started, what sort of stuff were you playing?

    I mean, I guess it was the kind of folk songs and things that you find in the book.

    NS:  Yes, the track that I remember was something called ‘Oats And Beans’, and it
    was just a very simple little kind of one finger exercise. It took me a while to get into

    chords. I think the first thing I remember playing was ‘Glad All Over’ by The Dave
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