Hannah - Biography

Born 1980 in Redhill, Surrey - somewhere that really should be in the middle of nowhere, as there is nothing to do other than drink and play music. My first musical memory is wanting to listen to one of my dad's queen albums, because I liked the look of the cover. Over the years, I continued to rummage through my parent's vinyl collection and discovered such bands as the Kinks, Rolling Stones, Creedence and not forgetting the king himself, Elvis (hehe!).

By the age of about 9 (I think?), I realised that I could play music too - I just had to learn how! My mum organised some lessons for me and from what I remember, lasted for only a few weeks, as the teacher was a scary little ginger headed man and put me off wanting to play.

When I reached secondary school, music was still pretty much all I was interested in. By now, I had discovered bands such as Guns 'N' Roses, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and the Chilli Peppers. Soon, I found out about a band called Jane's Addiction. This band were (to me), the most amazing and exiting band in the world. I wanted to do what they do, I wanted a chaotic lifestyle and more importantly, I wanted to play THOSE songs. Through the encouragement of a close friend (who funded my first electric guitar and practice amp) I started to learn as many songs by different bands as possible.

I started jamming with different people and trying out different styles and sounds, but it was not until I started hanging around in Croydon, which led to me joining my first real band. This band was an aggressive, hard-core, noisy and thrashy sounding band called Fatal Reality. By this time I was a massive Pantera and Skid Row fan, which is how I met the lead guitarist and founding member of the band. They were a typical Spinal Tap band and were already well established (more through behaviour, than music) and had an ongoing changing line-up.

After about a year of alcohol fuelled aggressive and angry music, I sobered up a bit and left the band, after playing a gig in which we were cut off half way through (YES - we were that bad and we were that drunk!).

My taste in music changed and I went back to listening to some of the more older/classic bands (Aerosmith, Led Zep, Sabbath etc.) as well as bands such as Warrior Soul and Dogs d'Amour. These were the bands that reminded me of why I wanted to pick up my guitar in the first place.

I continued to play in various bands, some gigged and some didn't. I eventually got bored and out of desperation, decided to form my own band, with someone I had always disliked (and will continue to do so). We were called Beyond Dysfunction, weird name I know, but we could never be bothered to change it. We played a weird mix of music - rooted in rock'n'roll, but with a few weird twists.

We received some label interest, but eventually had to get rid of the bass player who was also our singer. As you can imagine, this caused a few problems for the drummer and myself and although there were various reincarnations of the band, nothing really worked out.

At this point, I had again started to look for other bands to join and I even experimented with a "Nu-Metal" sounding band, purely as it would be something different. I soon realised that it was not for me and all I wanted to play was straightforward Rock, - music like the bands that made me want to play in the first place.

As I was about to give up looking, I saw an ad looking for a guitarist; the description given in the ad was me. I phoned up and straight away managed to impress the band's manager with my Gibson SG and JCM 900 (as well as my knowledge about AC/DC). Before I knew it, I had an audition for the band.

After playing the first song at the audition, I tried to act cool, but so badly wanted to be in this band; this was the type of band I had wanted to be in for so long. Not only did the music rock, but they were really cool guys. Before I knew it they had offered me the job and without hesitation, I accepted the offer - which is why I have had to put together this little biography of myself. I hope it was not too boring for you to read!