mostly david ephgrave

Today, I took the opportunity for a rare tour of Abbey Road Studios as a belated 40th birthday treat. And while I anticipated it would be emotional standing in the rooms where so much magic was committed to tape, I still wasn't quite prepared for the visceral impact. Not the first long-haired yob to enter the building. It's not just its connection to the Beatles that makes it such an extraordinary place. No other building on the planet has produced so much music that's woven into our collective consciousness. It's the invisible location of countless performances we know so well that often touch us deep in our soul, and the zebra crossing outside makes it easy to arrive on foot. Though whether you choose to wear shoes is up to you. My arrival. I first visited that pedestrian landmark in 1996ish as a teenager with my guitarist friend, Rich. I'd been desperate to go there for years and would drop hints about it whenever I was in London for something touristy. I've ...

It’s not every day you get to see half The Beatles jam onstage with a Rolling Stone, though in my case, I got to see this  yesterday. It was the undeniable icing on the cake to a typical (or atypical) three-hour Paul McCartney gig at the 02, marking the seventh time I’ve seen him live (if you don’t count the two times I briefly met him and the occasion I saw him looking out of the window of his Soho offices; I AM NOT A STALKER ). Every time I attend a Macca concert I can't help but wonder if it'll be my last, a thought that gains likelihood as the years roll by, but last night’s show certainly proved there’s plenty of energy in the old Moondog yet as he showed stamina that'd put most performers half his age to shame; and if he chooses to bring out Ringo for a Fabs’ rhythm section reunion rendition of ‘Get Back’ as an encore then who am I to argue? (The Rolling Stone, in case you were wondering, was Ronnie Wood.) While I enjoyed last night’s show, I s...

As far as pictures of me playing the bass go, this is one of my favourites. They call me Mellow Yellow (quite rightly). It was taken during a soundcheck on the 19th May 2011 in a theatre in the Netherlands whilst on a short tour there that crossed with my thirtieth birthday. The actor and guitarist Tim Pont took the photo of me playing whilst seated on the stool I had to use for much of the run, thanks to the onset of labyrinthitis, which meant I couldn’t play standing up due to dizziness; I’m about as un-rock-&-roll as un-rock-&-roll can get. I didn’t really want to be away for such a significant birthday, but the tour fell at a time when I could do with the money, plus the run was brief enough to not get in the way of my other commitments. It just so happened I had a few days off close to a gig in Amsterdam, so my wife came over for that, thus making at least that part of the run a bit of a working holiday. The show was a Be...