A founder member, Ian was with Jameson Raid until 1980 and plays on both EPs and ‘Hard Lines’ from Metal For Muthas II.
He co-wrote several of the songs with John Ace including ‘The Raid’ and ‘It’s a Crime’.
He’s emailed me with a full write up of his gear: “I was working at John Birch Custom Guitars in Rubery, Birmingham. Bought my cherry red Gibson SG (the only guitar I kept till now), from a guy there. It was made between 1972 and 1974. I put Schaller machine heads on it, a John Birch high output pick-up in the treble position and a fully adjustable bridge. I stoned and contoured the fingerboard and it’s still a great guitar to play, good intonation, nice low action with lightweight strings. I also only ever played with old sixpences, the milled edge gives a scraping graunchy sound, on the wound bass strings, plastic plectrums just didn’t do it for me (I got this idea from Brian May – Queen). People would expect that you break a lot of strings playing with a sixpence…. untrue. I also used a custom built treble boost to overdrive the pre-amp on my Laney 100 watt amplifier. I had 4 Laney cabinets, each one a 4 by 12 (4 x 12” crescendo speakers) and a Laney reverb unit to thicken the sound. Play a chord and your knees bend…. Also used a CryBaby wahwah pedal (as Hendrix did) and a Phaser unit. Working at John Birch making guitars was very useful. New set of strings every second gig.”
After leaving Jameson Raid in 1980 he left the UK to, well... I think it best if you read his life story so far in his own words, here.
He currently runs a hotel in Northern Thailand with his wife, Vassana. Looks like a nice place :-)
