Tim Gray

Tim was initially taught guitar by his Mum, aged about 11,(Ed's note - Tim, not his Mum) and saved up with a combination of school dinner money and lifting  fivers from his Dad's wallet for a shiny Kay Les Paul copy from the local music shop aged 12 (Ed's note - Tim, not the local music shop!) Tim's Dad was less than impressed and could already see the writing on the wall, school was out and rock was in!

By the age of 15, Tim had the world's (and Merthyr Tydfils') longest hair, cheekiest smirk and most powerful licks, chops and riffs and found himself with a never-ending stream of gigs along with his school band, 'Dejavu.' The gigs were mainly on the working-men's club scene....a bit of a novelty act really, a bunch of kids, none legally old enough to smoke or drink, entertaining a bunch of drunk, unemployed ex- miners/steelworkers/factory workers - 'Dejavu' were their entertainment between the bingo, tote, Open-The-Box and the occasional meat-raffle. The highlights were sharing the dressing rooms with the Sunday afternoon strippers - the lowlights were slipping and sliding on the residue baby-oil used by said strip-queens. Seriously though, can you imagine how much fun it was to be driven around in a transit van by the drummer's mother (none of them were old enough to drive, let alone rent a van), earning hundreds of pounds a week each, then spending it on fireworks and the like....no taxes and the innocence of youth = sheer bliss!!

'Dejavu' culminated in a split, due to over-ripening ego's and the loss of innocence, just as they'd made it onto Bob Monkhouse's Opportunity Knocks! They were beaten by a West Country comic dressed as a 'yokel' in a smock, with his punch-lines taped to his wrist in the form of a stuffed hamster to disguise his crib-notes - there's no justice - which meant Tim was forced to look for another gig. (Ed's note - just think how much more money Dejavu could have gotten in the clubs with "as seen on TV" added to the posters!!!)

Tim spent the next 10yrs on the road, (mainly as a guitarist, but also occasionally as an engineer) and has worked with/for/collaborated with a totally diverse set of scoundrels over the years including The Strawbs, Caravan, Eddie and the Hotrods, Medicine Head, Rose Among Thorns, The Prodigy, The Blues Band, SmartAss, The Gutterband and loads of others. Highs and lows were many and great: Biggest audience - 17000 at Cropredy Festival whereas the smallest wage packet was 35p after a 3 week tour behind the Iron Curtain (the band worked it out that toilet-roll was more valuable than the local currency per sheet, so were "forced" to live it up while they were out there) with Wild Willy Beckett and the Psycho Surgeons are just 2 examples of the bi-polarness of Tim's career. He's recorded 6 albums (Ed's note - I believe some of Tim's albums are still available in the shops amazingly, don't be shy, go and buy folks!) and produced/co-produced/engineered a bunch of others....some credited (thanks guys), plenty not (you know who you are!!) and has worked as road-crew, rockstar, tea-maker, driver, service engineer, systems engineer, 2nd man, 3rd man, guitar-tech and general dogsbody for more acts than he'd care to mention.

Finally, after tiring of eating beans out of a tin and never having any clean washing, Tim somehow managed to earn/steal a job in the world of pro-audio and didn't play another note for 6yrs, which was alarmingly easy to do. Thankfully, a chance encounter with a cheeky Gibson Songbird acoustic in a music shop in Streatham resulted in a large impulse-buy and an N.D.E. (Near Divorce Experience) off his (then) wife, and lo - he was hooked again!

A 13yr stint in London and then the South Coast finally tipped him over the edge of insanity and Tim returned to Wales, land of his fathers, to finally begin the settling-down process and a spot of tax-evasion! He currently plays in a few bands (Ed's note - but I'm trying to persuade him that 5CATFish is the meaning of musical life) and manages to hold down a day job, AND has fathered 2 rugrats......it's about time he had a rest, he looks like he needs to lie down.........................

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