Bill wrote:
I saw this on YouTube the other day. What a fantastic job, note-for-note. Well done, John! No wonder they were pleased.
Just wondering. Have you ever been in, or ever considered being in, a Roxy tribute band?
I have considered being in a Roxy/Ferry tribute band but it could not be a note for note type copy as there are some good bands who already do that and it's something that I have never been interested in.
I would have to form a Roxy tribute band with a female singer, a string quartet, acoustic guitar and piano and do completely different arrangements. I have had this idea for a long time even before Roxymphony did their shows.
I have never been interested in learning mucic note for note. I like to play around with music and play for example uptemo guitar songs slow on the piano to make something new of them.
I see an instrument as being one of 3 things:
(1) A blank page so you draw what you want (compose original material)
(2) A colouring in book where a picture is there but you choose what colours and materials to colour it in (covers done a different way to the original
(3) A photocopier where you just reproduce exactly the same thing.
I have never been interested in being a photocopier but I admire those who can nail some stuff like that, I just don't have the ability sometimes, or have a need to most of the time and never a desire to.
I have a studio where I write and record music but also play in bars and hotels doing weddings etc at weekends playing the usual sort of bar band rock/pop party music as a bit of fun. I don't really listen to the originals closely, I work out the chords, hear the style that it is in then just play the music my own way within my own capabilities, inflences and style.
Guitara (as Andy Mackay called it in a recent e-mail to me) was a different thing altogether. It became a little excercise for me. I wanted to do something different and had the idea of doing Tara as if Phil Manzanera had written it so I had to copy the notes and it was a good excercise and some musical discipline for me. Although I was copying the notes, the fact that I was using a guitar and not a sax meant it was never going to sound like the original anyway so that gave me enough interpritive satisfaction in that it was the concept that was creative if not the choice of notes as they were already set in stone for me.
If I had to do something like Diamond Head I would have to do it as a piano piece.........(now there's a thought......watch this space)
To answer Roger's "anorak" question:
I have a Boss GT Pro sound module and a Yamaha FX770 and lots of 'plug ins' on my Logic Pro X on my Imac and the guitar sound would have come from a combination of all that.
Regards
J.O'B.
. I soon became a fan of so many different musical styles from Bach to Roxy, from Abba to Manhattan Transfer, from Bossa Nova to Soul & Funk - but I always did every kind of music "my way". There were only a few songs I had to learn from note sheets because they were too complicated 
. And that's still my approach to music at the age of 60.
). Although she studied music at that time (and today is the director of a secondary school in Bavaria) she was not able to test my new Yamaha keyboard without some classical note sheets ...
.