About

Hi! I´m Tommy, born and bred in the East End of Glasgow.  It´s a monumental struggle to become an experienced musician in the kind of environment which writer Piri Thomas, called “mean streets.” He was writing about conditions in Spanish Harlem but my trajectory here in these mean streets of Parkhead, Tollcross and Shettleston has been just as tough.

I was a late starter in music. At 17 in ´78 and in the wake of Destroyer and Alive by American rock showmen, Kiss, I took a shine to the guitar.  I was lucky. My sister, at her Catholic girls´ school, had shown no talent and even less enthusiasm for the acoustic guitar and passed her cheap guitar on to me -  when she saw that I couldn't put it down.

That guitar was the best gift I ever got. I stopped hanging around causing trouble with my pals and locked myself away with it.

For a year.

When I emerged from this monastic seclusion, I started looking around for other musicians to form a band, but in 1980 I couldn´t find anyone who shared my musical tastes or ideas. Every musician I met hated the kind of music that I loved, even ridiculing a band such as Queen. In Britain, music at that time was so pigeon-holed it was impossible to listen to good American music, unless you bought expensive import albums. Punk was all the rage and there I was, trying to form a hard rock band. Had I been living in Los Angeles, the world might have been my oyster. Hard rock was thriving there, and all over the USA. Kiss, Journey, Utopia – I loved them.

So by the early eighties, when everybody was crazy about Boy George, Duran Duran and Adam Ant, America was basking in Journey, Styx, Boston, Cheap Trick, Kiss, Angel, Utopia, Ted Nugant and Van Halen.

What was I supposed to do?

Since I couldn't stand not being a musician, by 1983 I was gigging around Scotland, playing covers of hits around pubs, clubs, and weddings. It was great experience, and some bands were very good, but most of the musicians regarded playing as a part-time thing after their jobs and weren´t as serious– or as desperate – as I was.

I'm a musician, I thought.

So, despite struggling with the legal tender, I chose a life of music.

Later, I played in a few original bands that were on the verge of a record deal but it never happened. One band released a single in the eighties that got air play, but it never became a hit.

But I plugged on. I taught myself to read music and studied music theory so I could understand harmony (something we should all learn, perhaps, since if we all vibrated at the proper frequency we might have world peace!).  I went on to teach a few friends to play the guitar, becoming a mentor to some. 


So by the mid 90s it was pretty clear that I should pass on my skills for a living. This is where you come in – if you want to play guitar, call me. I´m an RGT (Registry of Guitar Tutors) tutor and teach the RGT/London College of Music Grades, as well as assisting pupils with their GCSE Music studies. 


I teach all styles to Advanced Level but I specialize in Rock Guitar. 

The next logical step in any musician´s life is, of course, composition.  I had always written music but in 2005 I began to contribute to a New York music library, called Kingsize. Now I´m writing pop, rock, metal, country, blues and many other styles for the wonderful Peter Primamore – check him out here.

It´s been a long slog, and I´ve a way to go yet, but I just could not be anything but a guitarist.  


As Todd Rundgren has said, the whole universe is one giant guitar.

So call me and we´ll play it!