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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