Seriously though, I don't know. Sang hymns at school, songs in school plays or assemblies, sang pop songs in the charts at home, or at least bits of them. The earliest memory I have of life on earth is when I was 2, singing. It was 1965 and I was singing the chorus of "Get off of my cloud" by the Rolling Stones. Technically it was singing !
When I was 10, my teacher at school asked me to join the local church choir as he thought I had a good reading voice. It was good fun. Sang at school with my mate Adam, who played guitar. Sang silliness with my cousins. Singing was just always there, not something I gave thought to at that stage of life and I tended to sing till my voice broke and then I fell into smoking and didn't really sing for close to 10 years. But I'd always liked singing {except at school in Nigeria where I spent 4 years. My school only ever sang one hymn and I absolutely refused to join in as I was a bolshy teenager ! } and wanted to sing, especially after getting into heavy rock. I thought my voice was shot though. In my early 20s I became a christian and the people in the first church I was in persuaded me to sing. I told them I couldn't really sing but they said, well just have a go. So I did and they all just went 'wow !'. Personally, I thought it was ropey crap but I did practice from then on and as the years went on I sang quite regularly. But as I was a bass player (of sorts !), I found it impossible to sing and play bass at the same time. So I concentrated on bass. At one point in this church I was part of, we had 9 guitarists but for varying reasons over the next 12 months, 7 of them left so I thought I'd better learn guitar. It was a prescient move because the remaining two were gone within 6 months so I became the sole guitarist and I could hardly play. Fortunately over the next couple of years there were people that could sing so I didn't have to but I just got the feeling that there was trouble in the wind so I forced myself to play guitar and sing at the same time. Not long after this I started multitracking as I had these songs coming out of me and so I really made more of a vocal effort. That really started to take off when I became friends with a couple of buddies, Esther from Switzerland and Shetu from Sierra Leone. They were among the first people I had ever met who actually sang because they truly loved it and they really spurred me. Actually, we made a pretty sound vocal trio and they did loads of vocals for my weird stuff and because of that, we lost all shyness and could sing anything. We really pushed each other over a 8 or so year period and I learned so much about singing and was encouraged like never before or since.
I don't think I have a great voice, but it's passable and has some expression and there you have it !
Well, Ido, you did ask !
