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BiTS INTERVIEW: CLAUDE BOURBON

Claude Bourbon is a phenomial guitar player. Living in the UK for many years he has until
COVID travelled relentlessly for gigs all over the country and elsewhere. Despite the fact that he

has often billed himself as ‘The Frog with the Blues’, his repertoire consists of a wide range of
styles and types of music all flawlessly delivered. Ian McKenzie spoke to him by telephone at his
home near Penrith.

BiTS: What I want to do is to talk to you

about your career thus far and maybe
some stuff about what you're doing now.
Tell me something about your
background. Where were you born, and
how did you learn to start playing the
guitar?

CB: Yeah, well, I was born in France, in
the North East of France and then I grew
up in Switzerland. My parents moved to
Switzerland when I was really, really
young, I was six months old, so that's

where I grew up and then I went back to
live in France for a while in the 90s, and
then I moved to England just over 20
years ago now.

BiTS: You're here permanently now, are
you?

CB: Well, yeah, for the last 20 years,
yeah. We've been here for a long time.
We used to live down there in
Portsmouth, and we moved up here to

Cumbria four years ago now, and so yes,
that's where we are now. Middle of the
sheep [laughing]. Sheep everywhere.

BiTS: Tell me about how you started to play the guitar. What music were you attracted to when
you first started?

CB: Well you know, that was back in the mid-seventies, early seventies I would say, I was very
much into English rock bands like Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, people like that and when I heard
these people play like Ritchie Blackmore or Jimmy Page, I felt like I wanted to give it a go and you
don't really know where it comes from especially since I don't have any people playing music in the
family and yes, I just loved the sound of the guitar and then you want to try it for yourself to see

how it goes. Then I started to learn classical guitar when I started to play the guitar. I went to
school to learn the classical, the proper way with one foot up [chuckles] and reading the notes and