Tim
Guitar, Keys/Synths & Vocals
Portraying: Alex Lifeson
Favourite Rush track:
Bio
I’ve been playing guitar for about a thousand years and you’d think I’d be able to play by now. I was blown first away by the sound of the first E chord in 20th century boy by T rex what a sound! After that it was learning bits at school, and from friends, trying to learn chords on an old acoustic guitar and not knowing what I was doing for about 3 years before gettng the idea of stringing chords together. You must remember there was no Youtube back then all you had was a record deck or cassette player and you had to keep replaying the same 10 seconds of a solo to learn that bit. I got my first electric guitar from Kays catalogue in about 1976. I learnt the whole of the Thin lizzy’s dual guitar music catalogue and that along with many other songs helped learn to play.
My Biggest Guitar Influences
My biggest guitar influences (there are so many) would have to be Bill Nelson from Be Bop Deluxe (still don’t know how he played some stuff, brilliant!), Pat Travers, Brian Robertson and Scott Gorham from Thin Lizzy, and Gary Moore. Then a little later Eddie Van Halen, Al de Meola, Steve Lukather, Gordon Giltrap, John Williams and many more.
From a band influence perspective, Be Bop Deluxe, Thin Lizzy, Wishbone Ash, Pat Travers, Triumph, ACDC, and of course Rush are all responsible for some aspects of my playing style.
In the 80’s I played in an original band with Owen called Phantom. Our sound was sort of like a mixture of Thin Lizzy meets Rush with a bit of Sensational Alex Harvey band all thrown together. We had some minor success but it all fell apart about 1988. After that I played in many bands, Rock cover bands, and club and function bands, I spent 5 years in a country band and then more recently playing classic rock covers in 51 Stone and Tin Soldier. I‘ve also done some other tribute bands such as Dizzy Lizzy and Paper Plane (Quo tribute) and Fleetwood Mad.
My top 5 (or so) favourite guitar solos of all time
Comfortably numb (Pulse Live) - Pink Floyd
Hotel California / One of these nights - The Eagles
Adventures in a Yorkshire landscape (Live) / crying to the Sky - BeBop Deluxe
Beneath the wheels (Grace under pressure) - Rush
Still in love with you (live and dangerous) - Thin Lizzy
Gear
Amplification:- Guitar- Boss Katana MKII, Synths –Behringer ACX900
Guitars:- Blue Epiphone les paul with trem and pearly gates pickups, Fender Stratocaster with Floyd Rose trem, Honey Epiphone Les paul.
Guitar synthesizer:- Roland GR 55 for acoustic, clean and 12 string sounds
Guitar FX:- Boss GX-100
Synthesiser:- Roland Juno-DS
Bass pedals:-- Roland PK-5
HP windows laptop running Ableton live software for triggering samples