Originally from the East Midlands but now based in the Northwest of England, I was one of those kids who held a tape recorder to the tv speaker to record things and then mix them up with recordings of the radio to make his own mixes. Mostly Prince stuff.
That evolved into primitive sequencing and beat making on a 48k ZX Spectrum. Mostly stuff that tried to sound like Prince.
After a lightbulb moment seeing Jimi Hendrix Live at Monterey concert footage on tv I wanted to be a musician and spent a couple of years playing guitar until I borrowed a bass guitar and discovered I’d been a bass guitarist all along and not realised. Ridiculous really as the music I loved was all funky dance grooves.
I think I was always fascinated by the sound of music rather than the lyrics. I listened to I Am The Walrus over and over when I was very young trying to work out what was going on in there and I didn’t care what it was about then and I still don’t now.