synopsis4

The local music shop starts giving him guitar repair work but the infamous flat in Beckenham is badly damaged by fire in late 1974, the fire having been set by a crazed schizophrenic who has escaped from the local asylum and worked his way into the confidence of one of Steve's legitimate house-guests. The mental patient has taken exception to Steve's painting of the Garden of Eden and thrown turpentine up the wall and set a match... when the fireman eventually brings the painting out of the wreckage, it's just black.

Two years' work is gone forever. There is no photograph except this one from many months before the fire; at the time of the fire it had got to be pin-sharp and there was a rainbow lighting the valley:~

Forced to move out from the charred flat, Steve sets up workshop in the loft above the music shop and throughout the summer of 1974, trade explodes into a frenzy of ''busy-busy'' guitar fixing...

He performs a completely "race-tuned" rebuild on a brand new Fender Stratocaster for Jeff Beck, who uses it to record the million selling album "Blow by Blow". Steve receives no credit, of course. To the contrary, Beck insists in interview that he does all of his own guitar 'tech work. This is the shape of things to come.

A wave of strange kharma follows in his wake...

1976 ~ Failing to take adequate safety precautions whilst working with two-pack plastic guitar lacquer nearly kills him with massive peritonitus. A blood count of 2½ out of the normal 14 and an open wound for three months is no pretty sight...

In 1977 he spends a few days with Marc Bolan to fix ("race-tune") all of his guitars, including an ancient Gibson Les Paul given to him by Eric Clapton, who had covered it in white emulsion paint, strings, pickups et al. That particular job is to keep Clapton's paint job intact but make the thing work again as a musical instrument. Perhaps naïvely keen to let Marc hear some of his own latest recordings, he suggests a brief listen to cassette and Bolan's last words to him are, in a taxi from the studio:- "There will be time!" but ironically Marc dies in the car crash the following day leaving his favourite guitar on Steve's workbench; the roadies are quick to collect...

Later that year he gets to rebuild the famous original red Hank Marvin Fender Stratocaster guitar (bought for him by Buddy Holly) with which The Shadows had all of their early hits, like "Apache", "FBI" and "Wonderful Land". Hank had abandoned it some years earlier (its 'set-up' having dulled) to a glass display case, in favour of an English-built Burns model (and in the process fundamentally changing The Shadows' own distinctive sound) but now, thanks to Steve's re-build, it (the Stratocaster) works like new again so, remembering how the band used to sound, Hank takes it into the studio and records an instrumental version of "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" with it. That track sells a million units and goes to number 1 in the charts...

Steve receives no credit, of course. Fair enough; he got paid £10 to fix it...

During this period he comes to be known as "The Magician" by some of his many private guitar-playing customers. This is because he can see what's wrong with a guitar, often from across the room and without touching the instrument; he is also often able to give a full status report and cure analysis before hearing or touching it...

There is no magic in this though. It is purely about strings, how they prefer to be treated to "give of their best" (and the way that ambient light is reflected from a fretboard among other things). He is much in demand, a kind of "Red Adair" of the electric guitar, travelling far and wide with tool kit in hand...

Strange and bizarre instruments continue to emanate from the workbench...

Here; an electric multi-harp with seven sets of six strings to each harp, a cross-fader section and individual tremolo system for each harp set.

For cross-fading six-string chords.

In 1978 the summoning comes to go out to Hilversum, Holland. Status Quo are recording the "Rocking All Over The World" album at Phonogram studios, a complex of high-tech studio and workshop environment arranged as a square around a large grassy atrium, centre of which stands a huge old oak tree. Quo's guitars all need the "Magician's touch"...

At the very second he enters the studio, bag of tools in hand, there is a massive lightning strike, which splits the oak tree in two and blows every fuse in the entire complex...

Some entrance! Wary sidelong looks are cast in his direction... the lightning strikes (web site page included on this CDROM).

This involvement brings him to the attention of the band's management and producer and a songwriting deal is struck.

Sketch for toy-maker.

Way too ugly!

The publisher tells him that despite his musical talent, he is just too ugly to front a musical act or band and that the best way to use his talents would be to invent a new "Wombles" - type project for childrens' T.V. - so he goes to work on just that.

For a period of two years, the "Oggy" project is assembled, working in conjunction with the music publishing house in London's Mayfair, toy manufacturers and film animators.

Oggy, his girlfriend Peggy-Ann, their pet dinosaur Fizzle, the Rubber Band Fairies, and the Snallops (space slugs who live in clogs) are the resulting family corporate identity for the project and detailed storyboards are written for the animators who have become involved...

The Rubber Band Fairies>

Fizzle likes lemons and spends spare moments listening to the "fizzing" of the needle on the 78 rpm record an old wind-up gramophone.

Snallops (space slugs who live in clogs)

The Oggy project attracts the attention of a major toy manufacturer, who produce 400 painted and dressed promotional sample dolls for distribution around the music business but, in an act of amazing but typical stupidity - makes them in toxic prototype plastic entirely unsuitable for children to handle! Situation normal...

Several song tracks are recorded and childrens' T.V. executives are excited about the project; the music, characters and prototype dolls are all set but the publisher (archetypically) holds out for more and more advance money; leading to raging arguments and frustration.

Rubber Band Song, Clog Dance and Kangaroo Hop (here only represented by crude cassette copies) are considered by all concerned to be obvious strong novelty first singles but everything is on hold for the "right deal".

The arrival of the film ET (The Extraterrestial) heralds the end of the project as all eyes turn that way. Steve parts company with the publisher and "Oggy" is dropped.

Snallops live in clogs.

Very little now remains of the Oggy project; just a few muddy cassette tapes and drawings...