Aged ten I had a little black radio given to me as a present by my Aunty Pat which I took to bed with me every night and listened to Radio Luxemburg untill the small hours, Emperor Rosko changed my life forever. It was always the songs that had an edge, the songs that were fuelled by the so called instument of the devil ‘The Guitar’, but I never saw it that way then (and still don’t). I was also fascinated by cities and their music, so for me it was Liverpool and New York City that mattered most. Cardiff was my country city (for the rugby boyo!) but I always go North or West and as New York was a little too far to the west as a young boy, the next nearest thing was Dublin! And to this day those four cities dominate my life like no other and I’m always happy in them…

And it’s those musical landscapes that will shape your life, even though where you start may not be where you finish. I still remember clear as day hearing songs for the first time, no matter if that was rifling through my parents records and discovering ‘Move It’ or Eddie Cochran and Chuck Berry, through to discovering the ‘Starman’ on my TV and ‘Rosalita’ on the Whistle Test, and I am not stuck in the past. I love to discover new music and it always feels to me just the same as it always did. Yes, it’s a drug, Rock n’ Roll for me is that drug, I crave it, every hour of every day, I need it, I feed it, I want it; just one more fix; nothing else matters, and there you go, my life is surrounded by song titles or lines from them… I’m with Gene Simmons you see, I Love It Loud, every Saturday night I have to crank that mutha f***in’ sound louder than hell…

You have to go back to go forward, to know where you come from, to know where you’re going, the cliches are true. It’s Johnny B Goode from ‘57, Townshend from ‘67, Eddie Van Halen from ‘77, Slash from ‘87, Wes Borland in ‘97, Chad Krugar in ‘07 -  the year matters not, change the guitarists, change the bands (insert your own). My point is Rock ‘N’ Roll is old, it’s dying, while it’s very much alive and thriving, it’s always been this way and so shall it be forever…

It’s early evening, snow is falling over the Welsh hills and I’m driving into the January night, into a new decade and through the city of light… Liverpool… Once again, but not to play in a club, or review a live gig. No folks I’m going to the pictures (sorry Cinema) to check out a brand new film documentry… It Might Get Loud…

This is a film that hooks up James, Dave and Jack and takes you on a ride through why the guitar matters to them and how they made it matter to you. The love of the guitar becomes obvious as the film progresses, but this is not some inverted tit-wank of a film, this is not guitar porn, this is the history of why they felt drawn to the guitar, why they did what they do, how they created some of rock ‘n’ roll’s finest moments. And how each generation looks backwards to go forwards, how each of these chaps has defined a generation in sound and vision, alongside how each of them can’t do what the other does, because they simply don’t need to!

Great guitar players like footballers, boxers, wrestlers, racing car drivers are simply driven to achieve, (no pun intended) have their heroes who inspire their desire and help them to keep the faith; they fuel the fire; but it’s the people who desire to take what they do somewhere new, exciting and where it never has been before.